Life Planning
Life Planning
Many of my clients have asked me to add this parental exercise to my web page. It is a “homework” assignment that I give to each and every family of a school aged child. It can be difficult and heart wrenching, but is also eye opening and fulfilling in the end. So, take a deep breath and here we go….
Firstly, get out a pen and some paper because you will be writing all of this down! I want you to imagine how you would like your child’s life to be at age 25. Remember to think about personal help skills, social skills, behaviors, etc. Be open to every possibility and DARE TO DREAM!!!
Now, once you have that written down, think about your child at age 21 – what skills need to be in place at that stage to enable your child to reach the dream you just wrote?
Now, at age 18, what needs to be in place? At age 16, 14, 12, etc. You have now created a goal and have put into place the objectives needed to reach that goal!
There are many reasons why I require all of my parents to perform this exercise: the first is because, as parents of kids with special needs – and I speak from experience, my first child being diagnosed with autism – from the day we get that devastating news all of the dreams we had for our beloved child disappear. Even the dreams we didn’t even realize we had. Poof!! They are all gone. And we are never encouraged to dream again. Instead. we are taught to only think as far as the next IEP.
And that is wrong. Our kids need us to hold dreams for them in our hearts because they rely on US to guide us to them until they have the skills in place to go after their own dreams.
Additionally, in the IEP meetings, WE (the parents) have to think on a scale that is far different from the teachers etc. We have to think of the lifetime of our child, not simply the next school year. No one else at that meeting can bring that long term vision, that DREAM!! To me, that is the major role that a parent plays at these very important meetings – the vision of the future.
Now, this vision will change over the years. But ALWAYS remember to give that gift to your child. Share it with the world, and be prepared to drag the rest of the world along with you – kicking and screaming if necessary! You can do it!
Writing Goals & Objectives for the IEP
Wow – even thinking about this topic makes my head spin. Everyone agrees that the goals need to be well written, based on clearly defined needs, and they need to be measurable, yet I find most of the IEP’s I read over to be nowhere near this. I can generally see the good intentions behind the goals, but unfortunately that is not enough to create a solid IEP let alone to help guide the team to where they need to go as they educate this special education student.
The general “rule of thumb” is to look at each goal as if you were reading an IEP for a brand new student who has just been admitted to your school. Based upon what you read and NOT on what you believe you’ve discussed etc. would you be able to confidently teach this child? Try to give yourself that distance in order to objectively study the IEP goals – it’s not easy, is it? And that’s another reason why people hire me. I’m an outsider and I can use that valuable perspective to evaluate the entire IEP. If any goals are unclear then they need to be rewritten.
And simply written goals are actually better for the IEP. Keep the language simple and straightforward.
Don’t write goals to measure “happiness” – instead focus on the observable behaviors and how to change them. You cannot measure someone’s level of happiness so don’t write a goal for it! But you can observe and take data on behaviors and how they change once a certain strategy is implemented.
I will be adding an article to my website to give more hands on advice on this topic. For now, focus on making sure that you are actually able to measure the result (not just have opinions given) and that there are sufficient social/emotional/behavioral goals. I usually aim for a ratio of 3:1 (goals specifically for autistic traits:academic goals). Yes, that is indeed how important I believe it is to have the social areas addressed. And I encourage everyone else to focus more on this often overlooked area of the IEP.
