IEP's - what to do when you disagree with result?

I would be less worried about the head circumference than about the prenatal alcohol exposure. Many of our Chinese kids, for example, have head circumferences that are scary to American doctors, but most of them turn out to have at least normal intelligence and no learning problems. My daughter is one of them, and I've got to tell you that she is the most verbal monkey around, and an outstanding student who began kindergarten at 4. However, prenatal alcohol exposure is strongly associated with learning issues, impulse control problems, failure to understand cause and effect, hyperactivity, etc. Depending on the amount the birthmother drank and when in her pregnancy she drank, a child could have anywhere from a few minor problems to some huge ones that will be with her throughout life. Were the testers aware of the alcohol exposure? If your child had no prenatal exposure to alcohol, I would agree with the folks who wrote your IEP -- give it time. However, given the alcohol issue, I'd say that your child should have a lot of testing, and not just in speech, by people who understand the potential effects. Of course, one problem with FASD is that it's hard to diagnose before school age. Toddlers and preschoolers are often impulsive, fail to understand cause and effect, and constantly on the go. It's only when a child is older that you can really see how much is normal child development and how much is FASD. All in all, it's probably worth contesting the IEP -- and asking for testing on more than just language skills. But do understand that not all EI programs are good at dealing with post-institutional children and children with conditions like prenatal alcohol exposure. If your resources permit, have your child evaluated at an international adoption clinic, such as the one at the University of Minnesota or the University of Washington. The University of Washington, in particular, has an extremely well respected FASD clinic that serves both adopted and non-adopted kids, and it should be able to give you both a good overall evaluation and an evaluation of FASD issues. A good person to contact there, in this regard, would be Dr. Julia Bledsoe. Then, have the experts help you to find good resources in your own community to pick up where they leave off. Yes, they won't be cheap, but some -- though not all -- of the care may be covered by insurance. I commend you for thinking about these issues early. One thing that becomes very clear when you look at FASD or other conditions is that early diagnosis and early treatment DO help. Hugs are not enough, with children like yours. Your child may also need some therapy to deal with emotional trauma caused by her history with her birth family and/or orphanage. Attachment issues will complicate the other problems that your chld may have, so it's also worth talking with experts about serious strategies to promote attachment. Sharon

First, did you sign off on the IEP report?When they send you the results of the IEP meeting there is a form that they ask you to sign and send back. On this form it has check marks - do you agree with the findings of the IEP, do you disagree, etc.If you disagree, say so on the form.Did you provide the IEP team the results of the independent language assessment you had done for your child?If not, by providing them with this report, it automatically triggers a re-evaluation per law.Are you in the US? If so, many of the school systems have special ed parent councils that can provide guidance about how to navigate the laws, though, from personal experience, they don't often have much advice for parents of IA kids who come home after the age of 3 - most IA kids come home and will get EI and then go through the IEp process -that is what the school systems have dealt with.I had to fight for over a year to get our son a speech IEP. His cleft lip and cleft palate were repaired in China when he was 18 months old and he came home at 34 months old. He had hearing loss (since corrected with ear tubes) and was in a tiny orphanage with older mentally disabled children. He had no concept of verbal language as a means of communication.Personally, I would not emphasize the head circumference - this will carry no weight at all with most schools.Our school system refused to even test him for speech because they said he was speaking his native language (he was not) and to treat him as having a speech diability would be a violation of his civil rights. In addition, when they tested him for physical disabilities (he was emaciated when he came home and had no mjuscle mass whatsoever) they said he did fine for a child his size (he was the size of a 16 month old) - they should have tested him for a child his age.I was so angry when he was denied IEP services, and had no idea what his and our rights were under the law. The spec ed council was the best resource for us in terms of learning what our rights were and what resources were available.I, too, was so worried about would our son have enough speech by the time he went to Kindergarten. He started K this fall and while his speech is difficult to understand, he is mainstreamed in regular K and loves it.Melissa N.

We did sign the IEP report saying we disagreed with the speech and language assessment but agreed with everything else. They gave us the number to call to appeal the decision. Truthfully, I'm even more upset by your story than ours. It is hard to believe that you had to fight for a year. I'm glad to hear your son is doing well. Since I've slept on this, I've calmed down a bit, but I'm still pretty annoyed. I spoke with the speech person the day before they tested our daughter and when I hung up the phone I said, "She just lectured me on how we are choosing to work with our daughter on learning colors (she has Nystagmus and we were worried about color blindness.) We won't get services, she has an attitude and thinks all adopted kids need to learn is love." Now you think this "attitude" was from lack of knowledge. Nope she is an adoptive parent - international nonetheless. Then to rub salt in the wounds we spoke with DH's mom and she said that the speech therapists told her the same thing years ago re: DH's little sister adopted from Korea as an infant. They were wrong, she is MR but in the high functioning category. By the time it was caught the early intervention work that could have been done was past. --Current research now shows that for those kids early intervention between age 2-5 adds 10 points to your IQ. DH was livid last night. Thank you for your advice on finding the local parent group. I'll see what I come up with.

In our case our child is from europe so the head size comparisons are relevant. Interesting that schools won't care about this. I guess I'll just have to fall back on the fact that she is more than two standard deviations behind and therefore she qualifies. We don't know as much about our dd's FAS and alcohol usage. She was removed from two alcoholic parents. The orphanage told us that she didn't have the facial features or personality traits of FAS - which has been mostly corroborated. The IA doctor said she doesn't have the facial features for FAS. Nor is she ADD/ADHD, she has an attention span and can stay on task. However, I think she might be a bit hypervigilent so if she doens't feel safe she sometimes comes across as having an attention issue. She very clearly understands consequences and reminds herself of these consequences days or even weeks later in the same situation and transfers the information to a slightly different situation. She is small, was premature, and does have an issue with her eyes. We are seeing a psychologist that is considered to be the best in the state for FAS and attachment issues. He says it is too soon to know what impacts she may have from the alcohol, we have to track her closely. Maybe it will just be size and her eyes. We just won't know, but she is being tracked. AND yes they knew about the alcohol. The physical therapist thought there might be a nuerological issue and is glad to see she has an appointment in two weeks just to follow up on her eye issue and a few other things. How one person on the IEP team can tell me they are worried there is a nuerological issue and the other can tell me she needs time, is beyond me. Thank you for your feedback. This helps me make sure I've got all of my bases covered.

Menlo: My daughter was talking mostly babytalk and a few words - turtle, corn, mama and MINE (in Spanish). Her head circumference was also small -- so small that the doctor who did the physical in her native country advised me to reject her and ask for a "better" one! As if!Her head is still a little small, but all the brains are working, the language is there (oh is it there) and with a fluffy hairstyle she looks great. She also can wear hats well!

what they are looking for to qualify her is how is she currently unable to access education. how is she currently disabled. if you and your dr think the small head circumference is an issue. figure out how it is impacting her learning somehow, and document that. document how her speech effects her ability to (something educational), and how her FAS keeps her from accessing (something educational). draw the connections for them. make them see how the problems she is having NOW effect her NOW, and also will effect her later. does that make sense? don't dwell too much on the later, as they are mostly concerned about the present. this is a tough battle. be armed with information!it is frustrating to not be able to get the help you need for your kid. i've tried more than once with more than one of my kids....and have been denied more than i've been approved, when clearly (i think) at the time my kids needed help. my oldest was denied an iep originally bc his iq was low, they said he performed at his ability level. he was in the 3rd grade and couldn't read. but with no help from them...6 years later, he's almost a straight A student. my 6 year old last year was losing information.....seriously getting dumber before my eyes. i pulled him out to homeschool after i got nowhere at school, and he is excelling. my 3 year old has sensory integration disorder. he walks on his toes, hides under tables and makes snow angels in the carpet if it is too loud, but they didn't want to help him either. about 6 months ago, he taught himself to READ. so....as frustrating as it seems now....sometimes not getting help at school doesn't keep a child down. you know?hang in there and don't give up yet.:)

Thanks for the advice and information. I do know that we can get the services elsewhere since my mom has been doing an excellent job. She just doesn' t live close (1/2 across the country). But I feel like I've already paid for these services since they are tax payer funded. I hear stories like some of these and I have to wonder who exactly are they helping because I thought that our tax payer money was going to help kids with lower IQ's, sensory integration issues, ESOL, etc. Seems crazy and not fair. I thought that the NOW would be justified by the fact that she scored in the 12th percentile and that you can't really call that average. It fits the definition of developmentally delays by a long shot (25% below average) and every expert that looks at her scores says so. Just this one lady feels that due to her background she is doing marvelously, so she must not need help. AND her teachers, plus my mom who is an educator, say there is something more than just needing time to learn english. I guess we'll go through the admin review and then on to an independent evaluation so that two professionals can fight it out. Thanks

An option might be, if your child will not qualify for spec edu services right now, would be to qualify your child for pre kindergarten based on Language. If a student is English as a second language most times you can get them qualified for pre kindergarten through the public school and the exposure of such a program might be enough to help get your child on target or in the environment for future testing when needed. Just a thought...

Thanks for everyone's advice. We went to the nuerologist who recommended a speech evaluation due to her delays (not knowing we were already turned down by the county.) We went to the speech evaluation at the hospital and received their recommendations (speech delay and need for therapy). We also got an MRI which shows a medical reason for the delay. So we are now having an IEP reevaluation. I decided that as long as the same woman isn't involved in the process, I'll hold off on the remediation complaint. We'll see what happens. All of our "expert opinions" came from the large children's hospital in the area so it would seem to me to be difficult to ignore their findings. With the medical findings it seems our medical insurance will also cover some therapy's so I'm going to try to follow up on that as well. Thank you for responding.

Just wanted to say good luck. Out of what I read the thing that is most obvious to me as an issue is that your DD had limited speech in her native tongue. If she was over 3 at that point with only 2 words to her vocabulary then she NEEDS speech services. I'm sure with the hospitals recommendations (and 2 months "time") they will now recommend Speech. Good luck! ~Christy:flower:

I can't even begin to describe how frustrating this process was - but we are now getting speech articulation services.... They didn't even buy the non-verbal in her first language because that could have been due to environment AND it isn't fair to the child to label them with a disability if the delays are just due to environmental issues. I knew they felt that way, but I didn't expect them to express it. I said that what was really unfair is the cards she was dealt early in life that got her to this point AND then to not help her because everyone was worried about being too PC. Anyway as good as that statement made me feel - that isn't what turned it around. I had filled out the mediation and due process forms and sent them in. So when I sat in the IEP review meeting I had a mediation date set two weeks later. Everyone was at the table and seriously talking about how to help the child vs. what their personal view was on how fast adopted kids should be learning. Managers came to the meeting and they listened and tried to be objective. So we still have philosophical differences but our daughter will get the services she needs. Hooray! Oh - the only negative comment was that I needed to not be discouraged by her low test scores and that they were really amazed with how far she had come. And they just needed me to know that yes, if she had been born to us and had these test scores they would indeed be terrible - but I really needed to concentrate on her improvements over the past six months. blah, blah, blah. So at least I was able to address it head one and say that we weren't discouraged. We were far from discouraged. We were impressed with how far she has come. What we are most impressed with is her persistence and true interest in learning. Therefore, we want to make sure she has a chance to fill in these missing holes so that she can achieve to whatever level "achieving" is. And when it comes to speech articulation, we believe you need an expert, that understands the background and can help fill those holes. We are far from discouraged, we just need your help. ----Yae, and we got it. Luckily the manager was there as well and had hand selected the speech therapist that would work with her - even though it isn't the school that we are zoned to. So that is a good sign as well. Next on the list - meet with our state senator/representative to explain how unfair this law really is to all of the kids here who don't have a nuturing environment and parents to fight for services for them. Basically, the law here is being read to say if there is a thought that the delays are due to environment, they do not get to receive services. So the kid loses because now the schools are ignoring the delays as well. Painful.

So glad she's finally getting services! That's ridiculous. Half the kids I saw had disabilities due to "environment" (sometimes meaning Mom and Dad couldn't articulate so the child couldn't either or they were a bit neglected at home (in the US) and of course we gave them services. You can always discontinue services once the child catches up - that's the point of early intervention!!! I'm glad they finally came through but so sorry for your frustrations along the way. Good luck!

Honey, trust your gut. You know you need to do more than "wait and see." What kind of a person drawing up an IEP would be against early intervention?! Its a more than a little ridiculous. Do you have early intervention programs? In ohio the Help Me Grow program is free and effective early intervention. Call your pediatrician and ask for the number of something like this, and ditch this person who doesn't want to help your preciousness! That makes me so angry, I have to say, because so many kids are made to wait-and-see and then have problems, when it is well documented that early and aggressive intervention can give kids a much better outcome - and what's it going to hurt?! Its not like there's some risk in a little speech and occupational therapy.

Thanks for everyone's advice. We went to the nuerologist who recommended a speech evaluation due to her delays (not knowing we were already turned down by the county.) We went to the speech evaluation at the hospital and received their recommendations (speech delay and need for therapy). We also got an MRI which shows a medical reason for the delay. So we are now having an IEP reevaluation. I decided that as long as the same woman isn't involved in the process, I'll hold off on the remediation complaint. We'll see what happens. All of our "expert opinions" came from the large children's hospital in the area so it would seem to me to be difficult to ignore their findings.With the medical findings it seems our medical insurance will also cover some therapy's so I'm going to try to follow up on that as well.Thank you for responding.__________________[url=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z8APuHEPHd8]ps3 games download[/url][url=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z8APuHEPHd8]downloadable ps3 games[/url]

Hi Doramide7, I am just curious what happened to the re-evaluation? DId they finally give speech to your child? I have been denied speech 1 for my child then the 2nd time they wouldn't even assess him because it was almost a year.