I am sure many of you have heard that it takes a village to raise a child, well that is even more prevalent when you have a child that has a disability. Whether the child has Autism, Down Syndrome or some other Developmental Delay, if the entire team is not doing what they are suppose to do e.g. parents, teachers, family, friends, caretakers, then the child will not achieve to their ability.
I have seen both sides of the coin, where you have one family who doesn't really care about the IEP goals or helping the student outside of school. Now the parents still love their child, but they are not reinforcing what is happening at school. These parents will provide no help to the student with homework or projects, thus putting everything on the school and the school trying to play catch up, because nothing is being done at home.
Then you have the parents that do everything they can to help their child succeed. These parents know what they are working on in their speech sessions, they know what subject they are having the most trouble in. This child continues to grow and become more intelligent because they have an entire team with one objective for the child and that objective is to improve.
I say team a lot in this post because it takes a team to help a child with a disability to become successful, with out that team the child will not reach very high academic achievement. Everyone must be on the same page.
As an early childhood educator and a parent with a child on the spectrum I see and live this daily. I have a child in my class on the spectrum. He is raised by his father and he does a great job however he relies on the one therappy day a week that he goes to for an hour to help do the trick. He never really has sat with us to tell us what works best even after asking. I use my knowledge and info to make my own plan for this child.
ReplyDeleteI have become very involved with the Autism community out here and do what I can to be an advocate. My son has therapy 3 times a week and days we are not in therapy we reinforce for at least an hour a day at home. He is only 2 1/2 so everything in moderation.
We will hopefully be in the PPCD (special needs) head start program in the fall. However there are times I feel doing all this extra work is a blessing and a curse. I know he needs a smaller environment, more help with social, emotional and self help skill. However I feel we have hit this limbo where the school dist might see it as too much of an improvement and say he can't be in the program.
I make sure the preschool my son is at follows his IEP and hold them to it. I make sure ECI reminds them of this also. We have a list of goals but we can't accomplish them when the teachers aren't going to help. That is what I have seen to the flip side of the parents who don't want to be involved is the teachers who feel the need to not follow IEP's etc.
Just my thoughts.