We are now a few weeks into the new school year, and hopefully your child has settled into the new school year, the new routine, and has gotten acclimated. Hopefully, too, if your child has an IEP, the school has begun to get the bugs worked out and things in that process are starting to fall into place. But are you sure?
By now you should have begun evaluating how your child’s IEP is operating at school. You should be asking yourself: Is everything working? How well? If something isn’t working or not working well, then why? Is that issue serious? Can it be fixed with just a small tweak, or is it something bigger? Am I sure the teacher, school, and I all have the same interpretation of that IEP accommodation, modification, or other support? Have I started communicating with the teacher to make sure we are all on the same page? Are we all on the same page?
It is a large number of questions. But they are ones every parent should ask all the time and every parent should be asking them from day one of the school year. By now, things have settled down a bit and hopefully, you are able to begin getting solid answers to those questions.
Remember the old adage about the early bird getting the worm. Well, this is the same principle. The earlier you solidify those lines of communications with the school and begin problem solving any issues you identify, the better an opportunity your child will have to be as successful as possible academically. As usual, it is work, and you have to be willing to devote your time to doing this and keep doing it again and again and again. While your school staff will be asking those questions (or something similar) all the time, you, too, need to be asking them. Remember, this is your child we are talking about.
