Conference moira::parenting_v3

    This is wonderful!  
    
    You are so right that parents need to insist that their children get
    the education they have a legal right to.  Unfortunately, school
    systems have less and less money to work with these days.  I hate to
    say this, but I have been subjected to intimidation tactics by school
    officials trying to get me to back down.  I kept in close communication
    with my child advocate.  She kept me informed of my son's rights, and
    my rights as a parent.  My son is now in an appropriate program in a
    residential school because the local school could not meet his needs.
    
    Three cheers for all child advocates everywhere!!!!
    
    Wendy 

    ... three cheers for the parents who won't be intimidated, too!
    
    It's normal for busy people to defer to the experts .. to assume
    the auto mechanic knows just what's wrong with the car, the doctor
    knows just what's wrong with you, the IRS agent knows just what
    you need to do with your taxes.  Indeed, none of us can ever be
    experts in every topic that touches our lives.
    
    But, when it comes to our children we've got to realize that it
    is the parents who are the experts on their childs needs.
    

    In re: .2
    
    It seems to me both sides of .2's assertion are at least
    oversimplified, if not downright wrong.  I know few people who
    automatically accept the first medical opinion they receive, fewer
    still who implicitly trust auto mechanics, and none at all who assume
    that the IRS is infallible.
    
    On the other hand, it would be a foolish parent indeed who thought s/he
    could be or needed to be the expert on all of a child's needs.  Any
    responsible parent will draw on the expertise of a pediatrician
    regularly, perhaps of a child psychologist if the need arises, and of
    experienced teachers during school years.  This is not to say that
    parents can or should lightly cede responsibility for decision making
    to such professional experts.  Or that these experts are more
    infallible than any others.  But goodness knows that parents are not
    infallible, either, and some do a very poor job at times in being
    perceptive and objective in judging the real needs of their own children.
    
    		- Bruce

    geessh, Bruce, I don't see anything wrong with .2
    
    The school system is only prepared to achomdate those parents who don't
    question the authorities.  They seem to get distressed by a parent that
    takes additional steps.  That only leads me to believe that not every
    or even a majority question 'the system'.
    ed
    

    The times I have most needed to have a child advocate with me has been
    in meetings with school officials.  I needed to have someone with all
    the laws at their fingertips.  Someone to say "No, we are not here to
    decide what the therapist's schedule will allow, but to decide WHAT
    THIS CHILD NEEDS and provide it."  And variations on this theme.  Last
    fall I moved into a town with a very good reputation for their school
    system.  Unfortunately, they had just run completely out of money.  One
    of their cost cutting measures was to do away with their learning
    disabled, and their behaviour disorder classrooms, lumping these kids
    into a resource room.  Obviously the wrong thing to do.  The school
    system was charged by the state with knowingly being in violation of
    state law chapter 766.  But nothing was being done to help these kids
    unless the parents fought back.  I fought back.  I don't want to talk
    about what they did to get even with me.  But finally my son became so
    violently disruptive that they had to send him out to a private school,
    at great expense.  He was not the only one who was sent out to other
    schools.  Now they want to set up a behaviour disorder classroom and
    pull back these kids with expensive tuitions.  Jerking the kids around
    more.  And what of all the kids who are quietly, not noisily, slipping
    through the cracks.
    
    There should be a child advocate at every CORE meeting.  Parents know
    who this kid is at home, teachers know who the kid is in class,
    therapists all have their reports with the results of the tests they
    give.  But the child advocate knows the kid's rights, and the laws that
    back them up, and how to calmly resist pressure to give in to what's
    easiest instead of what's best. 
    
    Wendy

    Has the basenoter considered posting this note in the Learning
    Disabilities file?  Although it's not a real "active" file, it would
    probably his a real necesary group.
    
    Your dedication is wonderful!
    Lyn
    

thanks for your suggestion....it has been posted in the
    Learning Disabilities file.