u/Plastic-Praline-717

We are still in the throes of settling our child’s IEP for September. They are transitioning from Pre-K to K.

My first question, she presently receives speech 3x weekly at school with some of her classmates even receiving up to 5x weekly. As part of my preparation for our next meeting, which will ultimately MUST result in the team developing something we can all agree to, even if temporarily, I’ve been reviewing the IEPs that have been approved (so far) for next year so I can ensure what I am asking for is reasonable.

In K-12, related services use a monthly model with the maximum amount of sessions being seemingly capped at 9 30 minute sessions a month.

Is it normal for there to be a reduction in the amount of related services offered once kids hit elementary school? I understand if a kid dramatically shows improvement or something, but just a blanket policy?

My second question, is that I’ve noticed every child placed in a self contained program has a service for “Program Aide” that they receive daily and either “throughout the day” or “6 hours” for duration. Well, every child except for one has this service item listed. What is this service? And if it’s just documenting that there is an aide in the class, why would every child except for one have it listed?

Edited to clarify: Our BOE posts their meeting agendas publicly and within those, they share, mostly redacted, copies of IEPs that were sent for board approval. I am not doing anything dubious or illegal to access them.

So our 5 year old caught an ENT referral because she’s picked up strep one too many times this year. I mentioned to the pediatrician that I felt like that was good because I also had some concerns, as she snores a good bit and breathes through her mouth when she sleeps/most of the time. She also struggles with a lot of post nasal drip stuff, too.

Here’s the thing… my kid is super into routines. An in-hospital sleep study feels like it would be impossible for her to do unless they medicated her to make her fall asleep. We had an EEG last year and it took over 1.5 hours to get the nodes on her head. She also never sleeps on her back and I can’t imagine a universe in which she would tolerate having anything stuck on her or her face all night.

Surely, we’re not the only people in this predicament. What was your solution? Can we tell them she’d require medication to have the equipment applied and to sleep in a strange place?

We are currently in nearly a stalemate type of situation with our district over our child’s initial school-aged services for next year.

It all started with the district attempting to create a plan without even so much as having a conversation with us. They called us, told us what they planned to do… and essentially tried to steamroll us into just going along with it by relying on a tactic of telling us whatever they thought we needed to hear, but just further raised my hackles. This has led to there being a lot of obfuscation by the district and us hiring an educational advocate to assist us with this process.

All we initially asked for was a copy of the data they were using to make their recommendations and for us to have meaningful participation in the development of our child’s IEP. Two months into this, we still haven’t been given any data from them and they still haven’t bothered to read any of the reports (preschool IEP progress reports, annual reviews, evaluations from outside professionals) we’ve submitted that back up our parent concerns, which they have still refused to even acknowledge.

What gives? I want to work with these people. I’ve not lost my composure in front of them, I haven’t been irate or rude. I wish I could say that I had received the same courtesies from them, but they’ve yelled at us, made sarcastic comments and try to intimidate us by emphasizing their job titles and degrees. However, we also have fancy job titles and graduate degrees, which is why this whole situation and their behavior has us flabbergasted more than anything.

How difficult is it going to be for us to work with them on things in the future? We’re very concerned about lingering hostilities and retaliation from them once this initial IEP process concludes.

So our child will be 5 in a few weeks. She was diagnosed with autism around age 2 and then ADHD as she was approaching age 4.

Last summer, the ADHD was ramping up and we were struggling with mega impulsivity and hyperactivity.

In the fall, we decided to give medication a try. We started with clonidine, but after a month- I felt it was making her seem depressed. So then we decided to try guanfacine. The guanfacine does take the impulsivity down a hair, but it wasn’t really helping with her attending and focus.

Our developmental pediatrician said our guanfacine dose probably wasn’t high enough and should be increased. So we reached out to the neurologist and he agreed to it.

We didn’t notice much difference in ADHD symptoms with the increase. However, one thing that was happening alongside of her starting guanfacine was that she was displaying an increasing sensitivity to sound and it has increased in severity over the school year. I did chalk it up to maybe this is just a new autism symptom she was developing- bc our kids can change over time.

A month or so ago, we decided to try to add a stimulant to see if it would help with her attending and focus. She’s on methylphenidate IR.

It has helped with attending and focus, but it also seems to be increasing her anxiety, making her emotional, and just incredibly irritable.

At this point, I’m feeling like keeping her on these meds would be for our comfort and not hers. She doesn’t seem happy. She doesn’t seem like she is thriving. She doesn’t want to go to school. The noise sensitivity has made her incredibly introverted at school.

I guess I’m wondering if anyone else experienced similar things when trying to medicate ADHD symptoms in their AuDHD child?

Also, did anyone do psychotropic genetic testing and find it helpful for zeroing in on what meds might be better options?

Our 4 yo is starting kindergarten in the fall. She is diagnosed AuDHD. She is likely low level 2, but severe ADHD. She has done 2 years of special education preschool on an IEP. She’s been in self-contained the entire time, as that was the program that also gave her enough time in school to receive her related therapies.

The district is attempting to place her on the alternate assessment track for next year, mostly due to the level of support she needs from a classroom management. They’ve tried to present other excuses, like that she can’t verbally communicate (but she does) and is cognitively impaired (but every single report and evaluation she has ever had says otherwise).

This is all coming down to classroom management. She gets sensory overwhelmed and anxious fairly easily and has trouble attending and focusing due to severe ADHD. We are currently trying to find the right combo of meds to help with the ADHD stuff. When she gets overwhelmed, she has a tendency to shut down and retreat to someplace quiet. She is not aggressive or destructive in these moments.. yet at least… and we are trying everything to give her the tools to help herself regulate in these moments, but she is incredibly stubborn/non compliant and her favorite form of protest is melting into the floor.

In our state, the only way a child can be placed on the alternate assessment track is if they have a severe cognitive impairment. She does not.

However, in our district at least, the only programs that have small class sizes (which she does need) are the ones that are fully self contained and on the alternate assessment track.

We feel that 5 years old is incredibly premature to make a decision that will follow her for life and determine what future opportunities she may have. As her parents, we feel like the goal should be that we should be working on skills, strategies, and supports to address her sensory overwhelm and attention/focus so she can access the curriculum that aligns with her documented, by medical professions, former therapists, preschool teachers, etc.) cognitive abilities the best in an environment that works for her.

Currently, this is a hill we are willing to die on. I know people say it doesn’t matter until grade 3, but the district, when we asked what percentage of students who start in this track successfully move onto the diploma track happily told us that they had a high success rate and at least 30% of kids who start in this program manage to move into a less restrictive class eventually. And so- for us- we do feel like winning this battle now is quite critical to her future.

FWIW we are in a really well funded district. I know budget is a thing for every district, but they would be able to deliver what we needed but will just make us fight for it. We do have a paid advocate we are working with- but I’m undecided about their performance just yet.

Has anyone gone through something similar? What was the ultimate outcome and did you regret it?

I have posted a few times about my personal saga regarding my child’s transition from a preschool IEP to kindergarten IEP. I feel like I am doing my best to provide what data and factors I am using to determine my parent concerns, what goals we would like to see worked on and what we feel would be the most appropriate placement.

However, despite requesting in writing copies of what data and reports the district it using to make their recommendations, references to data and reports that I’ve never been provided with repeatedly come up in phone conversations, which means- they are not providing us with all the information being used. Additionally, statements/assumptions they’ve made about my child’s abilities are completely contradicted in her progress reports from her preschool IEP.

Where we are, preschool special education is provided by an outside agency. That agency sends reports and evaluations to the district. However, it doesn’t feel like the individuals at the district that we are working with on her kindergarten IEP have even read any of those reports, which are very thorough. And the people from the district who are developing our kindergarten IEP don’t even know our child outside of a 30 minute observation visit they did at her preschool.

I am trying to come into this with the mindset that that we’re all on the same team and want what’s best for my child, but when they’re repeatedly not transparent and very obviously haven’t been bothered to read the reports from preschool- it is tough to feel like they’re acting in good faith. We’ve already obtained the services of an advocate, but I’m starting to feel like it’s in our best interest to just escalate to hiring an attorney.

So all week I’ve been gearing up for an IEP battle over my kiddo. Basically, she’s going into kindergarten and the district wants to place her in a non-academic life skills class next year.

And that’s not happening. I won’t go into all of the reasons. Their argument is mostly her lack of attention and how much redirection she needs to stay on task. However, with that redirection she can do the work.

Well, so this week has been lining up my ducks to combat that. And then yesterday happens and I just had the loveliest of times with my kiddo.

We had to stop by the grocery store after school. For the first time, I did not have her ride in the cart. I told her she had to stay close to me and listen, or she would need to hold my hand. AND SHE DID. And she didn’t touch a bunch of stuff or knock anything over. And when she’d get a bit too far ahead, she’d come right back when I called for her…. And it felt like I could breathe a bit, worry a bit less, that I didn’t need to be quite as vigilant.

And then last night we went for Hibachi to celebrate my spouse and a close family friend’s birthday. Now- we don’t do restaurants with our kid very often. And hibachi is stimulating and loud… and well, I was so sure it was going to derail at some point. But it didn’t. I had brought ear defenders for her. She watched the chef cook. She seemed a little overwhelmed at times but I calmly spoke to her to ease her stress during these moments. And she did so, so good and even said she wants to go back.

The entire day just made me realize who and what I am fighting for and how much she is worth it. She deserves proper supports in the LRE and I am going to get that for her.

Child is almost 5. Diagnoses of autism and ADHD. Had had IEP since 3 and no question that she will still have one and a program placement for kindergarten in the fall. Very bright, but significant enough social delays and attention issues that it leads to the evaluations/assessments the school performs to show very low scores.

I am contemplating paying for a private psychoeducational eval if it would give us a more clear picture of her cognitive abilities and provide more information on what exact skills we should be focusing everyone’s efforts on.

So far, it seems like traditional modifications and strategies aren’t really helping improve her ability to attend or make gains in social skills. As parents, we are doing all the things- private OT/speech, addressing ADHD meds with neurologist, reading books on social skills with her, practicing following instructions at home, we’ve got her in an adaptive swim class on the weeks, we do play dates with other families, etc.

And I don’t really think the slow/lack of progress in some areas is the fault of her teachers by any means, because I’ve witnessed some of her classmates in her self contained preschool classes make significant progress over the last two years. They seem to be thriving.

And my kid? She seems to be struggling to be there and participate more as time goes on. We’ve observed significant progress at home over the last year, but she still seems to be floundering at school. Last year, she didn’t achieve any of her social/classroom goals and this year I think she’s on track to maybe achieve one of them? Which makes me feel like we’re not setting the right goals or focusing on the right skill with the what the goals have been so far.

I guess my hope is that a private eval would maybe help us identify what’s most important to focus on with her IEP. But they are quite expensive and I also don’t want to waste money if such a thorough eval isn’t really useful at this age.