O-M-G! The last few weeks have been insane - culminating in an IEP meeting yesterday that was a bizarre experience to say the least. Warning - this is long...
DD's headaches were continuing daily and the nurse (she has been discussed at great length on another thread) actually contacted our pediatrician to say that she doesn't believe DD or us about the headaches. She asked the ped to write a letter "outlining all of your concerns." WTH? We never signed any sort of release allowing this sort of contact so it led to a very long meeting with the pediatrician to discuss the whole situation and a letter that turned into a powerful weapon for us.
Simultaneously DD's anxiety was getting ramped up big time. First a staff member, ”Mrs. O”, who DD was very, very close with informed her that she was leaving. This triggered an epic meltdown and increased anxiety that built up until Mrs. O’s final day at the school. The day after this staff member's last day DH was scheduled for surgery so of course DD had a lot of anxiety brewing about that too. Not a good combination for a sensitive kid with anxiety.
At the same time the school was preparing for a ridiculous program that they refer to as "Positive" but just like the color charts that trigger DD's anxiety (also discussed on another thread) this is also a public display of who has been good or bad. Everyone is awarded a large paw shaped sticker ("Patch") and those kids who have a history of bad behavior lose theirs. Yeah, this is positive not punitive right? Anyway, it's harder for the older kids but most K/1 kids earn them. It is rather traumatic for those that don't to walk through the halls, sit through the assembly and hear all the talk about the "Positive" event. A lot of tears that day. As part of the event each specials teacher awards one kid per grade for "demonstrating outstanding effort or excellent behavior as a positive role model." DD won this from the librarian in the fall and music teacher this marking period. There are only 4 awarded and DD has won 2 of them - probably a pretty good indication of how she behaves in school I would think. Also each classroom votes for one kid to get a big award for the same thing - these kids receive a pin, though, and the students in the class vote on who receives it. DD was nominated for the award in her classroom but didn't win. For some reason she then had a meltdown over not winning it. We have no idea what triggered it - probably the result of all the anxiety over DH's surgery and Mrs. O leaving. This happened 1 and 2 days before the departure/surgery.
It was a monumental effort on my part to get DD back on track and feeling positive about school. I somehow managed and we actually had 2 days last week without a visit to the nurse followed by a day where she went and said she just wanted her medicine and to get back to class right away. This is an awesome turn around - right? Well it was until the idiots at the school decided to strip her "patch" because of her meltdown the previous week. Really, a kid with anxiety, and who has an IEP to address it - not to mention who has won 2 awards for her outstanding behavior and been nominated for the big award for her class, is now supposed to be the child shamed. Not just a chart in her classroom - now she has to walk around the school with the badge of dishonor. Really? Seriously?
Our education consultant had met with the district the day before to work out how to get the situation over the hat and ibuprofen to settle down. The director of special services for the town assured our consultant that he would make sure the school understood that they needed to back off and then the next day they pull this. Really?
That night DD decides that this means that she will have to repeat first grade so she can "learn not to cry." The only thing we can think to do is remove her from school the day of the awards ceremony because we don't see any possible way for her to successfully navigate this situation without a meltdown. I have a blow up with the teacher when she tells me "It was a close call but we decided we couldn't in good conscience have the other kids in the class see her receive a patch when they saw her meltdown." Really? They saw her previous meltdown and you then nominated her as the best role model in the class. If one was so egregious why wasn't the other? The only difference we can see is that we hired a consultant and they are retaliating against DD for it.
So we have our IEP meeting yesterday and the director of special services was there. He had clearly told his team to knock it off and agree to whatever we asked for. The few times the iron-fisted principal tried to be obstructionist he shut her down. I asked for and received a change in lighting in her part of the classroom, for her to be provided access to the outdoors to try to help with her headaches, differentiation including having her provide her responses orally whenever possible, increased speech therapy services, etc. The district will be paying for the new neuropsych eval and consult with a child psychiatrist about how to better address her anxiety issues. The nurse was the only one who didn't play nice. She put on a show like a petulant child and made clear to everyone in the room what we have been experiencing.
After the meeting we had our consultant speak with the director of special services again - about the nurse and the nonsense they pulled with the whole "Positive" situation. He made clear that as far as we are concerned they had violated both the spirit and the terms of her IEP, had intentionally triggered her anxiety without giving any thought to how they would manage her the day of the event and prevented her from having access to her Free and Appropriate Public Education in the process. The district has promised a full and complete investigation. In the meantime, hopefully, they will go back to handling her as gently as possible.
So after weeks of very little sleep, high levels of anxiety and tears on more than one occasion I think (hope) we are back on the right track. I asked the consultant why they seemed to have caved and given us everything we asked for - was it because they realized we were right and that they had behaved badly? "Maybe. Either that or they are just afraid of you"
Let's hear it for the power of being a mama bear protecting your cub!