Things I Never Thought I'd Say, Non-Bush Edition

At my daughter's IEP (Individual Education Program) meeting, my wife PLAYED THE GOOD COP, and our lawyer played the bad cop.

I never figured that she'd play the GOOD cop in a meeting with school administrators.

My wife is a dear sweet lady. She is also a Special Ed consultant with a practice, SEDRA where she supplies Educational Evaluations, Classroom Observations, Advocacy, IEP Process Workshops, In-School Tutoring for Individuals with Special Needs, and Service Referral.

She spent half of her childhood in the Bronx, and one of her clients affectionately referred to her as a "Pit bull".

Both of our children are on IEPs, but did not need a lawyer for our eldest, a turning 10 years old in a week girl, Natalie, for the past 3 years. We found Mark Martin for her.

Natalie has a visual perception and motor planning disorder, that results in dyslexia and dysgraphia (her hand writing is worse than mine, which means that her handwriting is the worst ever).

Our lawyer for our son, 7 and a half year old Charlie, Wayne Steedman said that it would be best if we went with another lawyer for Natalie, because having to focus on more than one child at a time tends to diffuse the lawyer's effort.

Well, lawyers are sharks or piranhas. Wayne is more of a shark. Mark is more of a piranha.

Both are far more pleasant than one would imagine when they are YOUR carnivorous fish.

The shark glides, silently and unnoticed, until it strikes, while the piranha is a flurry of teeth, reducing a cow to bones in under a minute (why is it that they always use a cow as the unit of measure of ferocious appetites?)

While Natalie's school, Timber Grove Elementary is a good school, it has a profoundly negative attitude towards special ed kids.

I think that it's primarily a function of the Principal, who has been nicknamed "The Scorpion".

There are a disproportionate number of children, who are either at special schools run by the county, or in private placements paid for by the county who are in this school's zone.

This seems to be particularly noteworthy with regards to the male special ed students.

Considering all the costs involved in private placements, I wonder if the principal has a picture of the superintendent getting freaky with a goat.

At Natalie's meeting, the occupational therapist (kind of a misnomer, it's about things like writing, tying shoes, and other fine motor operations) had a report suggesting that Natalie's services be pulled. The first time any of our side saw it was at the meeting.

I was conferencing in via phone, but even I could tell that Mark Martin, esq., was not amused.

I think that the OT might end up with a diagnosis of post traumatic stress disorder after Mark was through with her.

It put the fear of god into the rest of IEP team, so while we do not have OT goals yet, we will be doing a follow-up meeting to take care of that, it looks like Natalie will get the services she needs.