Posts

Seventeen Years of Being Needed, Then What

Nobody ever talks about how hard it is for a stay at home mom to go back to work after years of solving problems for her little people. You do not just return to the workforce. You grieve an identity you did not realize you lost. I did not want to give up my career. I worked hard for it. I earned it. I never went to college. Not because I was not smart. Not because I was lazy. I was struggling with something I did not understand at the time. School was always hard for me. When I finally had enough credits to graduate, I was done. Because I did not have a degree, I had to work harder to prove myself. I landed a position as a Life Claim Analyst at a major insurance company because someone believed in me enough to open a door. The training was intense. Four to five weeks of nonstop learning, and I loved every minute of it. I did not realize until then how much I loved analyzing things. Looking back, that makes perfect sense. In just four months, I went from analyst to Senior Life Claim An...
Post a Comment
Read more

The Screeners I Never Got to See

In the spring of my son’s senior year, I requested his K-3 reading screeners. With the advocacy lens I have now, I just wanted to see them. What did we miss? What did THEY miss? Was there anything in those early years pointing toward dyslexia? Because it still hits me that it took until 8th grade for anyone to truly recognize there was something going on, and even then, it wasn’t the school who figured it out. I wrote the email, reread it probably 159 times, and finally pressed send. My friend and I always use the same phrase after sending something like that: “And now we wait.” Part of me wasn’t even sure if I really wanted to see the results. I knew they could make me angry or sad or confused, or all of the above. But early literacy data isn’t random paperwork. It’s the foundation of a child’s educational story. So when I got the follow-up saying they couldn’t find them, I felt sick. Wait… what? How do you lose screeners? Aren’t they part of a child’s record? How is this even ...
Post a Comment
Read more

When Failure Becomes Fuel

How did I keep going when I felt hopeless and powerless? That’s a tough question to answer. Bottom line, I sure as hell wasn’t accepting failure when it came to my kids’ future, just like I never accepted it for mine. To backtrack a little bit, I too struggled in school. I was born in the late 70’s and learning disabilities were just not a big thing at that time. I always wanted to do well and couldn’t understand why I kept failing - I knew I was smart, but school was hard. Every August, I promised myself I’d finally get my act together - study, read, do the work. By mid-October, I was toast. School was so overwhelming to me that it crushed my soul. It made me feel worthless, and honestly, I wasn’t sure I’d ever be successful. I remember being in some sort of pull-out reading intervention in Elementary School. And I remember feeling like a loser for being in there. I’m not sure why that intervention ever stopped, but I can tell you it was a mistake. I didn’t read a book cover to ...
1 comment
Read more

When There’s No School for Your Child

I’ve been talking with a few families in my district lately. They’re struggling to find the right school for their children. And it hit me—I never really found one for my own son either. I guess I didn’t fully put it together back then—that there wasn’t a school out there that could meet his needs. Because in the end, he did graduate. Not in the traditional way, but through a small, quiet ceremony. The most important thing is that he has his high school diploma. But getting there… let’s just say I’m certain it took at least 20 years off my life. And for him, it created a deep distrust of humanity that I can never erase. The families I’ve been talking with have different stories, different struggles. But we share one heartbreaking truth: we never found a school for our kids. There is no placement for children who have survived years of being forced to mold themselves into environments that were never built for them. And here’s the hardest part: all of this could have been avoide...
Post a Comment
Read more

The Power of the Parent Paper Trail

 I tend to over communicate. Is that a bad thing? Maybe sometimes. But in this case, it was extremely helpful. I’d lay awake at night writing emails in my head. I was always thinking… How can I fix this? Really, what am I missing? What are THEY missing? When things got bad in 7th grade, I combed through my emails. Much to my surprise, I was able to find messages I had written to the school all the way back in 2nd grade. I didn’t know it at the time I wrote them, but those emails told a story—the story of me pleading for help. Each of those emails was met with Band-Aids that never worked. On repeat. From K through 7th grade. Until they had no choice but to address them. Those emails are what got my son outplaced to a private school in an IEP meeting—which is rare. I’m still a little shocked at how easy it was to get them to agree to it. I’ve heard horror stories about families being forced into due process and how hard it is to win. I was told it depends on the mood of the roo...
Post a Comment
Read more

When Advocacy Breaks You - And How I Kept Going Anyway

 Let’s talk about the emotional trauma you experience as a parent advocating for your child. Never in a million years had I imagined this was even a thing when I sent my first child to school. I truly believed they had his best interests at heart and would do whatever was needed to help him learn and grow. Well, that thought didn’t last very long. “What do you mean you don’t see that he can’t sit still? Or that he can’t focus for more than five seconds? Or write with normal spacing and letter height on the lines of the paper?” “So wait, you’re saying it’s okay that he’s writing letters backwards?” That one still throws me for a loop. “We can read what he writes,” they said. Eventually, it turned into: “It’s just his ADHD.” And I fell for it. Repeatedly. I walked out of every meeting feeling like an overprotective mom. That mom. And it didn’t just end with my oldest son. It continued with my other children too. “We don’t see that here.” Okay, great. Just because you don’t...
Post a Comment
Read more

The IEP table isn't as equal as they say.....

  I can promise you that no parent walks into that room wanting to fight. All we want is for the school district to understand who our child is, what they struggle with, and brainstorm how the district can support those little humans that we love so much. You spend many nights before the meeting lying awake, role-playing in your head. You spend your days researching, overthinking, preparing, and looking for any past evidence you can find to prove your point. Then you walk into that meeting. You, a regular education teacher, a special education teacher, an “administrator,” and anyone else who can contribute—which sometimes can be multiple other people. You hear that you are just as much a part of the team as the many other people in that room. But are you? Because it seems to me that you’re outnumbered. The school team asks for your input, which you give. The input you’ve spent days gathering. The input that you think will hold a lot of weight… And then you hear it. Those fiv...
Post a Comment
Read more