Mission, Goal, Obstacles in Special Ed

Warning: this email contains the idea of some foul language. But I’m a mom of a kid in special ed (Life Skills), so WHAT do you expect!!??

I’m on a new road and I'm going to hunt down—like a mad dog—a neuropshyologist if it’s the last thing I do today. HA! mad woman alert on the hunt for Red October (so to speak).

Mission: find a neurophysiologist who will actually help me w/o it costing me my shirt. This doctor must be willing to work and offer me "real" suggestions not “Well I don’t really know what programs are best for him, perhaps you could look around!!” Okay, OKAY! The last time I was "hunting" one doctor actually told me (full of sarcasm but dead serious) that if I were looking to change my career that this would be a good field to go into … “so I can’t help you but have a nice day!” Not good!

Goal: to find a school program or technical studies for Nick so that he has a future. My kid is falling through the cracks and I’m not gonna take it anymore!!

Obstacles: ass**** doctors who will tell me to pay and pay big out of pocket or no dice. Bast***s. The last time I tried this, I got an 800.00 bill for a 10-minute (yes, that’s 10 WHOLE MINUTES) interview, just an interview. Even the hospital administrator thought that it was an outrage, so he charged me 150.00 instead. WTF!!

Okay, yes, I’m angry. But my kid is not being taught at school. He has a new teacher this year and apparently--not very good. He is totally being "underworked" and underachieving, and to be honest--nobody really cares.

I need real answers and real resources so that I know that my son is on some kind of a track, any track, for a real future. Because when I’m sitting down tomorrow morning with his school (teachers, specialists, director of special ed) for his IEP meeting (gotta love those) I want to know why he came home from school with 2nd grade work under his belt. Bull****! Even Nick thought it was, um, a bit easy! "No Mom, don't say anything, I don't mind!!"

We all know too well that special education has its issues. If we, as parents (and as advocates) don’t stay on top of it (them), then nothing will ever be achieved for our kids.

I will give a very good example: One day last year Nick was supposed to have a field trip and his special ed teacher wrote a nice little note stating that since they really didn’t have the resources (meaning extra staff to attend the field trip with the kids) then they were not going to have our group of kids (meaning special ed) attend this field trip to Camp Wing (to learn great things). So if you just sign this permission slip stating that you agree with me that our kids will just stay at school and not attend (this wonderful program) but instead we will do something fun in lieu of not going. Okay, sorry and thank you very much. Signed, The Teacher.

Hahahahah (hysterical laugh, Mommy hysterically laughing here), who do (she, they) think they're f***ing with, anyway???

Well apparently I was the only parent who wrote a not so friendly email to the teacher, director, her director and superintendent (and would have sent one to the president of the United States if I had his email)--shaking mad that it took me 5 minutes just to type One. Clean. Sentence. My response went something like:

I am a very, very angry parent right now and that this is an outrage and violates my son’s civil rights, but you already know that—don’t you. There was obviously no planning that was involved in this field trip, thus, no plan to attend in the first place. I think we all know what needs to be done here to rectify this situation. If this is not addressed and rectified immediately, I will be contacting the Department Of Education and the Department of Civil Rights to officially complain. You have a chance to do the right thing. Again, I am a very, very angry parent.

So what happened, well you probably already know the a** kissing that went on … and the teacher was, um, thrown under the bus, of course. But, of course, my son went on the field trip and was just one out of two boys in special ed who went on that field trip with their typical peers--which ended up being wonderful for those boys and a lifetime memory.

Too bad for the other kids and too bad about their foolish, foolish parents! Now that’s sad!

I bring this up because there was a field trip to John Quincy Adams house for history class today, which Nick is very interested in visiting and learning about, hence all of his questions about John Adams and John Quincy Adams the other day.

Tour the house yourself here

... And you thought you would just get fearless bitching with this post!!