Parents of a special need child? I need your opinions.?

Question

I have a paper due for my Education course at my college. I need to write on a Parent that has a child with special needs and that family has to be a different cultural background than mine (I am hispanic). If it is not too much trouble.....please tell me:
1. Your feeling on how well the school your child attends has met the needs of you child.
2. The strengths and weaknesses that school has.
I greatly apprecatiate it. I am planning on being a special education teacher and any opinions a parent has on their childs education will be taken into perspective in my procees of becoming the best I can be in my field. Thanks!!

Answer 1

My son is 8 and has bi-polar a learning delay and a speech delay. He also has a mild hearing loss. He has a border line IQ so he didn't Qualify for full day Special Ed but because of his other problems and his behavior he qualified for a few hrs. a day. My son didn't respond well to the regular big class. he acted out daily. I believe going back and forth between two different types of classes didn't help either. So they sent him to a school for children with bad behavior. And he did well there. They had small class size and one on one help too! But it wasn't permanent. Once he started doing good they would just send him back to his home school and two weeks later we were back to doing the same thing again. I felt this wasn't healthy for my son all the switching and moving schools back and forth. I enrolled him in a school with children who have mental issues and other problems and they teach each child in they way they can learn and If he acts out he is pulled to the side and couseled then. So far the school year has been great. But the public schools so far has let me down just because my sons IQ was a few points above their criteria for thier program.

Answer 2

I have two special needs children. The last one my now 15 year old son attends middle school. He's issues are bipolar, add, and learning disable. I have gone through h*** and back to get the school to follow the BIP or IEP. His school puts on a good front, but behind closed doors he and other special needs students have been targeted and pushed out of school via DJJ or Mental Health placements because they do not do very well on state standardized test. Which in turn causes the school not to receiving different funding from the state for teachers raises. These children suspended and sometimes excelled for behavior which is related to their disabilities. They are punished more harshly than regular children for the some behaviors.
I have been foused to take a special education lawyer to school IEP meeting to stop the gang from teamimg up on my child and to comply with the BIP and IEP. After which my son was arrested at school, put in handcuffs and taken to the county detention center for distrubing class after yelling out an answer to a question the teacher asked. Charged again for distrubing class for shaking his leg (nervous enegry). Teacher stated that it got on his nerves so bad he could not teach class. After these two charges, he was sent to DJJ where he was beaten, his clothes were stolen, he received no meds or counseling, no visits for 30- days, and feed bolanga sandwiches for two weeks as punishment because he refused to admit to something he said he had nothing to do with that if he had he would have received another charge.

I am starting a support group for parent with children with special needs in my area to curtail some of this from happening to another child.
God bless you for your interest in the field!!!!!!!! But if at any time you feel burned out change your field for the sake of the children and please don't lose sight of why you choose this field.

Strenght at school--- they can't keep parents out of the classes; the older teachers are about to retire; they understand now that I will lay down and let them step on my child; he has a pretty good resource teacher that helps with the main stream class teachers communications.

Weaknesses---- they would rather get rid of these children instead of working with the parent and child; more concerned with PACT scores than child's education developement; do not have enough special education or resource classes or teachers for the amount of children with special needs.

Answer 3

Please go to www.schwablearning.org and post on their parent to parent message board. There are hundreds of parents there who will be glad to help you. I have been there 3 yrs and there have been only 2 people who have had good experiences with schools.

Most schools across the USA are CORRUPT with special ed.

Adminstrators threaten sped teachers and regular teachers and mandate them not to help the kids, and tell them not to tell the parents their child has problems.

In my own experience, I have FOUGHT to no end with 6 schools in 3 different districts, for 2 children and one grandchild, over a period of 8 years.

I dealt with about 40 people, only ONE was honest and decent, and when he come out in an IEP meeting and said my childs 'behaviors' were not the cause of her learning problems, he was fired within 2 weeks.

When I finally started homeschool, my dd's teacher said 'I am so sorry, the administrators just wouldn't let me help your child.'

THe district sped director was VERY HOSTILE toward me.

My grandson attends the only blind school in GA. When he first started they said he had to live there. 2 months later we learned the laws and they only had him live there to get MORE MONEY. No matter that they were killing his feelings and keeping him away from his parents.

We called the state and within 2 hours the school called and said he can live at home.

And this is a BLIND SCHOOL, mind you! We found out they are doing this to LOTS of other kids there.

I could go on and on about corruption in special ed in schools. If you would like, email me at [e-mail]

Answer 4

They have problems sticking to the IEP and are always complaining or looking at ways to get around making the needed accomodations. Some times things like a playground fight are seen as a special ed problem when actually it is a normal problem for all children. The special ed teacher that is assigned is great but the regular teachers have problems working with special needs children who are mainstreamed. They need to view them as children first and that they have special needs second.

Answer 5

I'm from Asia and has a special need child. She wouldn't be accepted in any special schools at where I am because she's so hyper-active that she would run around, grab things, bite, etc. She's a teen, but her mind is like of a 1-year-old.

I hope this helps you in your studies.