Rannveig
Member
When difficult child got the 504 plan I'd requested I gave in to the temptation to sit back and relax. Okay, maybe I didn't exactly relax, but I returned my attention to other challenges in the life of my family that had taken a back seat while I'd been working to get difficult child a neuropsychological exam and working to get his school to put accommodations in place based on his diagnosis (basically that he's highly intelligent but has disabling deficits in the area of processing/executive function).
Things seem to be going okay in most of difficult child's classes, but in history he had a big research paper due about a week ago, and he didn't turn it in. This won't make him fail the course but will garner him a low grade. I haven't been following his daily progress, in part because he lives with X most of the time while school is in session and in part because, well, my own executive functioning isn't so hot (or maybe I'm just lazy, just as difficult child may simply be lazy to some extent). So I only found out last night that this paper hadn't been turned in.
But note that difficult child's teacher hadn't contacted me or X to say the paper was missing. And note that in the past month, a school guidance counselor has only met with difficult child once to discuss how he's doing, even though the guidance counselors had said they would regularly coach him on executive skills.
I know what I have to do next is ask for a meeting with the 504 coordinator and the history teacher and demand better communication and try to figure out a workaround for difficult child. I'm discouraged because I feel the onus is on me to figure out what the accommodation should be in a situation like this, where difficult child doesn't do a major assignment because he procrastinates and then, at the 11th hour, realizes he's chosen a topic that won't work and that he doesn't really understand how to write a research paper. And I'm not a teacher or psychologist and really don't know what to ask for, and I feel like the school is going to take advantage of that to stonewall me.
My husband thinks I should insist now on an IEP, since the 504 plan obviously wasn't adequate, but I don't even know what I'd ask to put in the IEP. And I can't afford a private consultant and was never able to identify help from the city, county or state.
Thanks for listening; now that I've vented I guess I can get down to business. Best wishes to everyone here.
Things seem to be going okay in most of difficult child's classes, but in history he had a big research paper due about a week ago, and he didn't turn it in. This won't make him fail the course but will garner him a low grade. I haven't been following his daily progress, in part because he lives with X most of the time while school is in session and in part because, well, my own executive functioning isn't so hot (or maybe I'm just lazy, just as difficult child may simply be lazy to some extent). So I only found out last night that this paper hadn't been turned in.
But note that difficult child's teacher hadn't contacted me or X to say the paper was missing. And note that in the past month, a school guidance counselor has only met with difficult child once to discuss how he's doing, even though the guidance counselors had said they would regularly coach him on executive skills.
I know what I have to do next is ask for a meeting with the 504 coordinator and the history teacher and demand better communication and try to figure out a workaround for difficult child. I'm discouraged because I feel the onus is on me to figure out what the accommodation should be in a situation like this, where difficult child doesn't do a major assignment because he procrastinates and then, at the 11th hour, realizes he's chosen a topic that won't work and that he doesn't really understand how to write a research paper. And I'm not a teacher or psychologist and really don't know what to ask for, and I feel like the school is going to take advantage of that to stonewall me.
My husband thinks I should insist now on an IEP, since the 504 plan obviously wasn't adequate, but I don't even know what I'd ask to put in the IEP. And I can't afford a private consultant and was never able to identify help from the city, county or state.
Thanks for listening; now that I've vented I guess I can get down to business. Best wishes to everyone here.