10 Parenting Tips to Know Before Special Educators Evaluate Your Child for Eligibility!

Do you suspect that your child may have a disability such as Autism? Are you in the process of setting up a school evaluation for your child? This article is for you and will discuss 10 parenting tips that will help you before your child is evaluated.

1. Do not depend on special educators to diagnose your child's autism, or other types of disabilities. Many school administrators put pressure on school psychologists, not to find children eligible for special education under the category of autism (this could be related to the cost of the services, or other issues not known by the parents), as well as other types of disabilities such as specific learning disabilities (SLD).

2. If you suspect a disability of any type, you need to take your child for an independent educational evaluation (IEE), with a qualified evaluator, not in your school district. I would recommend a clinical psychologist or a neuropsychologist. By doing this you are increasing your child's chances of receiving an appropriate evaluation, and in determining specifically what services your child needs to receive an appropriate education!

3. Ask other parents of children with disabilities if they know any evaluators that are parent and child friendly, complete comprehensive testing, write whether a child is eligible for special education, and writes very specific recommendations for services that a child needs!

4. If you do decide to allow your district to evaluate your child, you do not have to "consent" to all testing that the school wants to do. Some school personnel will recommend testing in areas of strength and not of weakness; if you believe this is happening to your child, tell them that you will not "consent" to testing in that specific area.

5. If the school wants to do an autism rating scale, I would recommend the (CARS), which is the Childhood Autism Rating Scale. This scale is easy to fill out and very accurate. Be careful that you tell the school psychologist that you will be filling out the scale and not school personnel. I have seen many times where the rating scale states the child does not have Autism, and I find out that the scale was filled out by special educators-do not agree to this!

My Children My Own

As a mother of four and a grandmother of one, my heart aches for the parents of the two young men involved in the bombing in Boston on Monday. How do you reconcile this sort of horrendous action with the children you bore, loved and raised? It must be a surreal experience for them... almost like a bad dream they just can't wake up from no matter how hard they try. And now, besides having to deal with the violence perpetrated on the community by the two sons they thought they knew, these parents have had to bear the shooting death of one of the sons. While all this would be bad enough, they now have to watch and wait while the remaining son is part of an aggressive manhunt by law enforcement. How does a parent get through this shock and sadness? How do you look at the pictures you took of your boys on their first day of school so many years ago and not blame yourself for the men they became? I don't think it's possible to not feel guilt and regret... "perhaps if we had just been home more"... or... "maybe we were too indulgent"... or even... "maybe we shouldn't have let them have those video games."

There will be some blame pointed at the parents... "what kind of people are they that their boys did such violence without regard for human life?" Assigning blame makes it easier for us to make sense of a senseless situation. That's what we humans do when faced with such terror... we take our anger and frustration and categorize it under the right topic and assign it to a file labeled " Who's to Blame." Doing this makes us feel better, it gives us a direction in which to shove the anger and frustration when it comes spilling out of us like water over a too-full bathtub. We may try to stop the flow or even mop up the mess, but it becomes a futile task as we grow weary of the helplessness that's really at the root of our inability to understand why anyone would kill.