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I am one of “those” parents and darn proud of it. No one will advocate for your children better than you. I sent my children to school clean, fed and well rested. They arrived on time and prepared for class. I expected them to behave and be respectful. In return I expected the school to provide them with a clean and safe learning environment.
My eldest is ADHD and also has several learning disabilities. When I had an issue it was addressed immediately. My daughter was an over achiever so I had very few issues with her in school. So I had a bit of a culture shock when addressing issues regarding my twins. But they learned, quickly, that even though I did not have the sword (which is what my eldest’s advocate called his IEP) with the twins, that did not mean I was going to roll over and accept what was happening in school either. When they pulled this stunt on the twins (keeping them from recess to complete work) I said if they were goofing off and did not complete their work, keeping them from recess, art, and gym was an acceptable form of punishment. If they were making an honest effort and did not complete the work, they were not to be punished. Which is what I view keeping them from that time they need to play and blow off steam. This agreement worked pretty well except the older of the twins would miss recess because he was “daydreaming” in math. It took a few years to discover that he is one of those people that does math completely in his head. It actually became a problem in Calculus because showing the work was a portion of his grade. In his head he always got the correct answer, but being forced to conform actually made him take longer to do the work. He would figure out the answer then have to try to translate it to paper. I do feel guilty now that he missed so many of the fun things in school because he does things differently.
My personal policy was first discuss it with the teacher. If that did not solve the issue, then I moved up the chain. I was usually polite, and concluded the meeting with “thank you for your time, who is your supervisor and I would like their number please.” You usually only have to move up the chain once before they realize you mean business. I also learned that if this is “policy” that you can call the Superintendent of Schools and be placed on the agenda for the Board meeting. (If you are not on the agenda they can limit your speaking time to 3 minutes here and are not really required to address the issue until you are on the agenda.) My problem was solved to my satisfaction within an hour of that request.
You have a lot more rights than you may realize.
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I've been married for 24 years and have four wonderful children.
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