So mad I could spit nails!

[Hero_From_Sector_7G]

Having worked with some IEPs on the other end, I understand your frustration.

There are advocate groups that will fight for your IEP child’s rights on your behalf. This is their job, and they do it well. I don’t know your area, so I can’t give specific advice. But Google IEP advocate and your location, and you’ll likely find a few. Talk with other parents and see if they know someone they like.

A bit of warning, these advocate groups usually are student oriented, which means they will fight for what they feel best serves the student’s needs. Obviously they work with the parent, but they aren’t necessarily echo chambers for your opinion.

Good luck!

[SticksAndString]

BoyoJim–when you have a kid you learn to curse creatively. When I get REALLY pissed off, I start yelling in either Spanish or Klingon.

[elbows]

Is it possible they feel it would benefit him more to be challenged than to have his ‘immaturity’ reinforced?

I’m going to agree that you need to let the old school go, it’s not coming back around. Your anger is no doubt obvious to principal and Slim.

Let them try things their way. Parents are sometimes surprised, y’know, even though they no doubt know their child better than any teacher. In the school room, with his peers, he may be a very different child. Perhaps they feel, you’re right, but over estimating meaning or effect. Perhaps they are witnessing improvements in his maturity that you are not?

I think you should let them try it their way first, there will be plenty of time to get mad if it all goes wrong. Leave a little openness in your mind for the possibility that things could go well, at the very least, and good luck to you!

[Rachellelogram]

@elbows

In the school room, with his peers, he may be a very different child. Perhaps they feel, you’re right, but over estimating meaning or effect. Perhaps they are witnessing improvements in his maturity that you are not?

This is really key. I don’t know a parent who would say they don’t know their child. But depending on the child, they may hide a lot from you. I was a surly, unpleasant, silent teen at home (because my mother was a crazy controlling bitch). At school, I excelled academically, teachers loved me, I was happy and even borderline gregarious in band class. When we went to my senior honors dinner with my English teacher, she was pretty much gushing about how I was the best student ever. My mom made some snide reference about how she wondered where I was hiding that girl.

It may sound ludicrous that this could possibly be happening to you, OP, but how can you know for sure? Being a parent doesn’t make anybody an expert on child development. You owe it to your son to get an expert opinion on his development and mental health. And if a professional recommends letting him advance to the third grade, then for the sake of god hold your tongue about it.

[MandaJo]

As a high school teacher, I have had quite a bit of experience with kids on the Autism spectrum and their parents. Without commenting on the specifics of your case, I will tell you that I have noticed one particular pattern–a kid with processing issues and an extremely overprotective parent that never wants to risk failure or change. When change is rocky, as it often is, they then take it as proof that they were right all along instead of accepting it as part of the process.

The other aspect that I commonly see in this pattern is a parent who insists upon and thinks they have total control over what their kid knows, thinks their understanding of their kids’ emotional state and perspective is flawless and unique. They think they and only they can speak for their kid. In fact, they don’t think even the kid can speak for themselves.

They tend to doctor shop because they “know” what’s going on with their kid and will keep going until they find someone willing to agree with them: anyone who doesn’t isn’t listening, or is stupid or greedy or whatever.

I don’t know if you are one of these. I am not being coy, there isn’t enough information to judge. But I will tell you that these are the autism spectrum kids that never get better.

[SticksAndString]

To be totally honest, we’ve only switched doctors with Slim one time…and that was because the other pedi we saw before was the ONLY doctor in his office, overloaded with cases and whenever I called for an appointment, I was told unless he was actively throwing up and/or feverish, it would be at least a week before the doctor would be able to see him. A couple of years ago, there was a straw-that-breaks-the-camel’s-back moment..I called to set up his annual wellcheck about six weeks before his actual birthday. I was told that because I hadn’t called SIX MONTHS ahead of time, they wouldn’t be able to fit me in. We switched doctors that week. Because that’s crazy (IMO).

think you should let them try it their way first, there will be plenty of time to get mad if it all goes wrong.

The way I see things, moving him (and a bunch of other kids from our neighborhood) to NewSchool WAS letting the district try it their way first. If I had known at the outset that PrincipalMan didn’t believe in Content Mastery (or a lot of other things, apparently, none of which have to do with education and that’s a different post altogether) I would’ve tried harder to keep him at OldSchool.

I will admit, I have a VERY tough time trusting anyone in the public school system. I feel extremely fortunate that up to this point, Slim has had teachers who were supremely suited to their jobs. But I know that’s not always the case..I have a friend who had to have her child (who is “normal”, neurotypical, whatever word you want to use–I like nypical myself) because the teacher was singling him out and punishing him where she wasn’t punishing others who behaved the same way. I know of another teacher who was failing to input her grades correctly into the system so it looked like a friend’s daughter was FAILING when in fact she was making As and Bs. I don’t trust the teachers who, in trying to make their lives easier, push medications on kids.

I don’t know how to explain my stance on meds–I believe that they do in fact work for SOME if not MOST people. Not ALL, however and at least the one we tried did not work for Slim. Having seen how badly the side effects affected him and knowing that most (if not all, correct me if I’m wrong) ADHD meds have the same side effects, we are a little gun-shy about trying that again.

I am trying my hardest not to fail him as a parent and I feel like I"m working without a net here. I want so much for him to succeed but I am truly afraid if they advance him to the next grade level, he’ll fail big time because the challenges will be too overwhelming for him and that the emotional fall out from failing 3rd grade will be worse than if we had held him back and let him grow and mature a bit by repeating 2nd grade.

If he had been born just 30 days later, he would still be in 1st grade right now and we wouldn’t even be having this issue. But we are because of the district’s strict policy on who gets held back and who doesn’t. This isn’t the first time we’ve tried to get him held back..we also asked for him to be retained in Kindergarten but were again told, no, he’s done too well so we can’t hold him back even though he’s not maturity-wise/emotionally/socially ready for first grade. It pissed me off then, too. But there was not a dorking thing I could do about it.

[MandaJo]

Your son has processing issues and an IEP and the only doctor he’s ever seen is a pediatrician? Never a specialist of any type?

And for the record, I don’t think you are doing anything wrong. I think you might be on the cusp of a path that will not end well.

[Inigo_Montoya]

@SticksAndString

I am trying my hardest not to fail him as a parent and I feel like I"m working without a net here. I want so much for him to succeed but I am truly afraid if they advance him to the next grade level, he’ll fail big time because the challenges will be too overwhelming for him and that the emotional fall out from failing 3rd grade will be worse than if we had held him back and let him grow and mature a bit by repeating 2nd grade.

If he had been born just 30 days later…

Doesn’t matter when he was born at this point, he’s been branded as being in the same class as next year’s 3rd graders. Make him do 2nd again and he’ll get it from next year’s 3rd graders as well as the 2nd graders. People go their entire lives being well-adjusted even if they do poorly in 3rd grade, even if they drop out of high school in most cases. It’s not the path you’d want for them, but it’s their path not yours. My point is, academic recovery is always possible. My kid didn’t learn a damned thing between 3rd-6th grade. He’s got some holes, but he’s filling them in 7th, and has over a 3.0 GPA. He’s had enough to overcome being “the crazy kid,” but he’s not also had to endure being “the crazy *retarded *kid.” Holding a kid back is no joke, and the school admins know better than anyone what the playground fallout will mean to Slim. My kid went to 3 different elementary schools. The middle school is fed by all 3. He’s well known (for good and bad), and if he’d missed a grade it would be no secret.

You’re not working without a net. That IEP is a golden ticket that entitles Slim to all kinds of help the regular trouble-makers (who may be pathological but whose parents, for whatever reason, haven’t considered their kid might just be nuts) don’t get. If my kid had an Aspie stamp he probably could have dodged the felony charges and the misdemeanor he had to cop.

[SticksAndString]

MandaJo–he has been seen by the school’s diagnostician several times now as well as our pedi’s in-house Learning Disorders specialist. The LD specialist WILL NOT test for Asperger’s until a child turns 8 years old, thus the reason we are not having him tested until school gets out for the summer. We’re pretty certain he’s on the spectrum due to certain behaviors he has (handflapping and/or spinning when he’s excited/frustrated/pissed off, for example) but he hasn’t been diagnosed as on the spectrum as of yet.

[papergirl]

I just wanted to mention this resource. When I taught special ed, I used these books with my students: http://www.skillstreaming.com/
They’re excellent for kids with social skills issues. Each skill (say, asking a question, giving a compliment, introducing yourself, etc) is broken down into three or four very basic steps. I would discuss in class and make a simple poster which I’d post around the room and use for referral later. (“Eric, remember the right way to ask a question? Look at the steps again…”)
It might be something you could use with your son on occasion, or a resource you could even mention to a teacher/tutor.
Just a thought, and best luck with your dilemma.

[Snowcarpet]

I don’t know how to explain my stance on meds–I believe that they do in fact work for SOME if not MOST people. Not ALL, however and at least the one we tried did not work for Slim. Having seen how badly the side effects affected him and knowing that most (if not all, correct me if I’m wrong) ADHD meds have the same side effects, we are a little gun-shy about trying that again.

Just to leap in, it’s not always a given that the side effects would be the same, even a dosage change might be enough to cause different effects. I say this not as a parent but as a former medicated child. My mom didn’t like seeing me zonked out on Ritalin, so I took the lowest possible dose once a day in the morning on school days when I was small, then later moved to 10mg in the morning and with lunch. Kept me focused at school and left me alert and able to eat the rest of the time. Then no more drugs after about age 12 or so. In other words, you may be able to make the medicine work for him, and not against him. All of my issues were social, not academic.

[Sierra_Indigo]

So:

• You want your son held back a grade for social reasons
• Despite being advised several times that holding a child back for non-academic reasons is a recipe for teasing and social disaster
• You have no official diagnoses for any of these conditions whatsoever
• You’ve tried ONE medication at one dose and on the basis of that have decided that NO medications will work for your son, ever
• You’ve decided that the school system is possibly corrupt, because you “know” of a teacher who was inputting grades falsely to make a child who was passing look like they were failing (Why. WHY would a teacher do this? What’s in it for them? Aren’t teachers assessed on how many of their children pass?) and because of a story you heard from a friend about a teacher picking on their child
• You’ve also decided your husband has been “drinking the Kool-Aid” because after a discussion with the Principal, he’s come around to the Principal’s way of thinking. Possibly not at all because the Principal might have valid, well-thought-out points?

Good luck with that.

[SticksAndString]

I’m going to address all of your points, one at a time.

You want your son held back a grade for social reasons

This is the second time we’ve attempted to have him held back..the first time was in Kindergarten. The first time was also for social/maturity reasons because he is one of the youngest kids in his class and we believed then that it would benefit him to spend another year in Kindergarten but because he was technically passing, the district refused our request.

Despite being advised several times that holding a child back for non-academic reasons is a recipe for teasing and social disaster

The only people who have said that have been here. Not that their opinions are not valid, but no teacher has ever said this to us. Ever.

• You have no official diagnoses for any of these conditions whatsoever

He was officially diagnosed with ADHD over a year ago, by our pedi’s in-house learning disorder specialist. Neither the school district nor the pedi’s LD specialist will even THINK of testing a kid for Asperger’s until after the age of 8. No, I’m not sure why.

You’ve tried ONE medication at one dose and on the basis of that have decided that NO medications will work for your son, ever

We tried one medication, at several different dose levels. We started him out on a lower dose (per the pedi and the LD specialist) which was deemed to be ineffective (according to the teacher and the sped specialist at school) and slowly ramped it up until it was at the highest dose allowable which seemed to be the ONLY level of dosing that seemed to have any effect on his behavior at school whatsoever. I didn’t say that NO medications will work for him, I said we’re a little gunshy to try anything else after having to put up with the horrible side effects of the one we DID try. It wasn’t fair to Slim to put him through that–he would have fits of uncontrollable rage and depressive spells EVERY SINGLE DAY when the medication wore off.

• You’ve decided that the school system is possibly corrupt, because you “know” of a teacher who was inputting grades falsely to make a child who was passing look like they were failing (Why. WHY would a teacher do this? What’s in it for them? Aren’t teachers assessed on how many of their children pass?) and because of a story you heard from a friend about a teacher picking on their child

I don’t know if the entire system is corrupt. But hearing these stories again and again not only from my friends but from other parents does make one suspicious.

• You’ve also decided your husband has been “drinking the Kool-Aid” because after a discussion with the Principal, he’s come around to the Principal’s way of thinking. Possibly not at all because the Principal might have valid, well-thought-out points

I actually don’t have a response to the last one..because I honestly don’t know what to say to that.

[Meyer6]

@SticksAndString

I will admit, I have a VERY tough time trusting anyone in the public school system. I feel extremely fortunate that up to this point, Slim has had teachers who were supremely suited to their jobs. But I know that’s not always the case..I have a friend who had to have her child (who is “normal”, neurotypical, whatever word you want to use–I like nypical myself) because the teacher was singling him out and punishing him where she wasn’t punishing others who behaved the same way. I know of another teacher who was failing to input her grades correctly into the system so it looked like a friend’s daughter was FAILING when in fact she was making As and Bs. I don’t trust the teachers who, in trying to make their lives easier, push medications on kids.

I’m not a teacher myself, but many of my friends have gone into teaching in the public school system and from what they tell me this attitude from parents is all too common. Are there bad teachers out there? Sure - hell, we probably all had a couple of them ourselves when we were kids. But more often parents latch on to little mistakes or errors in judgement and blow them up into an orchestrated and destructive plan directed at their innocent child. Everyone makes mistakes, and it’s important to remember that if you’re finding out about these mistakes from children they might not be the most impartial reporters. I think being deeply suspicious of all public school teachers is going to do more harm than good for your kid.

Having said that, you might also need to accept that sometimes shitty things will happen to your son and they will probably be unpleasant for him. That doesn’t necessarily mean that the public school system is failing him or that you need to immediately step in and do something. I’m not saying you should just let the school do whatever with your kid and never complain, and I know he’s still young, but at some point he’s going to have to learn to navigate some difficult situations without mom sailing in to save him every time, no matter what his issues are.

[WhyNot]

@Meyer6

Everyone makes mistakes, and it’s important to remember that if you’re finding out about these mistakes from children they might not be the most impartial reporters.

My mother is fond of telling her parents, “If you promise not to believe everything they tell you happens at school, I promise not to believe everything they tell me happens at home!”

[elbows]

But if you don’t ease up on the control of his life, you will deny him the opportunity to ever exceed your perceived limits of his abilities. There is a chance that your well intentioned protection of him, is actually severely limiting, at a time when, what he needs, is to be challenged, so he can move forward with his social skills and his peers, to a brighter and more successful future.

And if you just can’t find a way to cut the teacher’s/school some slack, then remove him and put him into another school. This time, misrepresent his birth year so he gets into the year you clearly think he belongs in, at the same time he avoids the stigma of failure before his peers.

I think you should seriously consider the second. You seem to have a bug about his being x months younger than the others, you’ve tried to have him held back before, etc. If you can’t let go of this idea, it’s going to colour your perception, and be the lens through which you judge everything you don’t like, about his schooling, thoughout his entire school career. If you can’t let it go, then put him into another school already. It will be easier on everyone, you, him and the educators don’t need to be fighting, such a silly fight, for the next 10 yrs. Just shift him to where you can get him into the grade you think he should be in, and try and move forward. Save everyone involved all the grief.

[ladyfoxfyre]

“Husbandface”? “PrincipalMan”? How old are you? These are real people, not characters in a comic book, right?

[Anne_Neville]

Think about this: is there anything that could happen, or anything anyone could say to you, that could convince you that the principal is right and you are wrong about your son being held back a grade? If the answer is no, you’re not thinking rationally about the situation. If the answer is yes, think carefully about what kind of evidence you might accept. Make sure you don’t, in your own mind, make this a story about you versus the bad school system- then you’ll be too focused on “winning” the argument, rather than figuring out what is right for your kid.

[SmellMyWort]

@SticksAndString

The way I see things, moving him (and a bunch of other kids from our neighborhood) to NewSchool WAS letting the district try it their way first. If I had known at the outset that PrincipalMan didn’t believe in Content Mastery (or a lot of other things, apparently, none of which have to do with education and that’s a different post altogether) I would’ve tried harder to keep him at OldSchool.

That event is unrelated to how they are addressing the individual needs of your child, so it is irrational to count it as some kind of first strike.

It’s more likely than not that this principal has seen dozens of kids like yours in his career as an educator and knows the damage that can be done by holding him back at this age.

[SticksAndString]

Well, we had a meeting today with PrincipalMan as well as the other members of his staff who have any bearing on Slim’s education.

PrincipalMan wants to wait and see if he fails 3rd grade before holding him back. :facepalm: