I am the mom of a special needs child. I am a teacher. I thought collaborating with my son’s school district to create an appropriate education plan for him would be a relatively stress-free process. I thought wrong. Here are some of the things I learned that help me better advocate for my son.
Tag: special education
This mom’s frustration with her local school district just bowled me over completely. This is my client population: parents who are tired of being dismissed by their children’s educators as crazy, money-hungry, or power tripping. Parents of kids who burst into tears because a 30-minute homework assignment takes three hours. Parents who are ready to
This week, we opened a new office in Manchester. And by we, I mean my employer, who until a year and a half ago was a solo attorney. When I joined him at that time, he became a ‘we’. And we are expanding. He wanted me to update our website and compose an email announcing
This is the time of year that you tend to see lots of posts on parenting blogs about summer vacation, summer fun, what to do with the kids during the summer, day camps, sleep-away camps, being done with school, family trips, etc. Things are significantly different for my household, because summers look much like
The girl’s violence struck the library like a bolt of lightning, drawing a gasp from the teacher and the librarian alike. Awkwardness soon followed the initial shock, and then the two adults exchanged a glance for a shrug. It was over. The teacher continued shuttling the children out into the hallway, back to the kindergarten
It’s been a while since I’ve written anything directly pertaining to the work I do with families of children with disabilities. I am a special education attorney who represents parents trying to obtain an appropriate educational program, known as an IEP which is short for Individualized Education Program, for their children with disabilities. This past
School letting out for the summer is magical for a spell. For a week or so, we don’t care about their 20 minutes of reading. We survived, they survived. For a bit, we don’t have to wake at the crack-of-dawn, we can wait until the crack-of-dawn-thirty. No lunches (until camp and summer school begins), no
So I’m about two months into the solo law practice, work-at-home mom gig. I have some billable work as well as a couple upcoming seminars (one of which is tomorrow – eek!), and things are actually happening for me, which is really great. And at the same time, a bit challenging. Everything is sort of
As I sit here, typing this blog post, I am suffering from some serious writer’s block. It’s not for lack of topics to blog about, as I am chock full of those. The block is being caused by my apparent inability to focus on any one topic long enough to put together a coherent post.
One aspect of my job is to represent impoverished people in Social Security Disability hearings. Representing the children is what I love most. Many people wonder why a child would seek disability benefits. Particularly for kids with mental health issues, some think that being found disabled by the federal government means that the child is
