5 Tips to Prep for a Successful IEP Meeting

Today we are continuing to discuss all things IEP related. If you’d like to read Frequently Asked Questions about IEPs, check out the article here. Starting with this article will give you some background knowledge for our discussion today.

Today’s topic focuses on tips for preparing for an IEP meeting so you can feel calm and confident walking in the door, and prepared to work with your child’s school-age team to develop a plan and advocate for your child. These tips will be helpful whether you are an IEP newbie or are experienced in the world of IEPs.

1 | Share Your Child’s Strengths

Towards the start of the IEP, the team usually goes around and states the student’s strengths and what has gone well over the year. Be ready to share what your child is interested in and what they do well. Also, be prepared for the team to brag on your child, too! If the team forgets this part, it’s totally OK to mention that you are hearing a lot of weaknesses and you’d like to start by going around the table and hearing your child’s strengths and what is going well. This helps the team learn more about your child. Most teams really, really care about the children they serve. Once in awhile, things may get busy and this part may be forgotten. I think it’s one of the most important parts!

2 | Share Your Concerns

After strengths, you will be asked your concerns. Feel free to be as specific or general as possible. It’s sometimes helpful to think of these ahead of time so you can share. If you have questions, feel free to mention them now. They may be answered through the sharing of the IEP, at the end of the IEP, or right away.

3 | Consider Bringing a Note Taker or Support Person

Remember, you can bring someone! I recommend bringing someone who can take notes for you and who knows what types of questions you have ahead of time. Make sure to let the team know ahead of time who will be attending the meeting with you, so staff can update the paperwork. Have a conversation ahead of time of what you need from your support person.

4 | Review the Previous IEP

If you have an IEP from the previous year, take a look. Bring notes about which areas (such as behavior, speech and language, math) your child has goals, and what the service time is (how often they get services). This will help you prep and be ready for new goals.

5 | Reflect and Follow Up

Once the meeting is over, take some time to reflect. What went well? What didn’t go so well? Typically, you sign the IEP at the meeting if you are in agreement with the IEP. However, after you’ve had time to process, you may realize that you have a specific question for the Resource Teacher or the Occupational Therapist that you forgot to ask. If so, you can reach you child’s case manager (typically, whoever was facilitating the meeting, their name is also usually on the IEP cover page), and get information about how to contact that person. If you have a concern which would require a revision to the IEP, discuss this with your child’s case manager. It is within your rights to call a meeting when you have concerns about changes that need to be made to the plan. Also, you can consult your Parent Rights Handbook (sometimes called Procedural Safeguards) for more information about your rights.

I hope this article was helpful as you prepare for your next IEP meeting. Here is to a positive and successful meeting to come!

Decoding Individualized Education Program (IEP) Meetings

Today’s post focuses on commonly asked questions about Individualized Education Program (IEP) meetings. If your child receives speech therapy at school, he or she is most likely on an IEP. If your child is on an IEP, you will know because you will attend yearly IEP meetings at your child’s school to discuss their service.

If you have attended several IEPs, you likely have a good idea of what is usually covered in those meetings. If your child is just getting started on the process of receiving speech therapy at school, you may have specific questions about what an IEP is or what the IEP meeting might look like.

This article reviews the most common questions and answers I get about IEPs. This article is targeted towards parents of school-age children who currently receive speech therapy services at school. This article doesn’t cover specifics about preschool age services. This article also doesn’t cover specifics on the qualification process to get onto an IEP at school. If you are interested in those topics, feel free to email me and I can address that in a future blog post.

Next blog post, I’ll share more specific tips for a successful IEP meeting.

Let’s get started! Below are my most Frequently Asked Questions about Individualized Education Programs.

What is an IEP?

An IEP is a written plan for children who qualify for special education at the school level. It’s important to mention that eligibility guidelines for speech and language services provided at school are often more stringent than those of private practice clinics. You child may receive speech therapy at a private clinic but still not qualify for school services.

What is an IEP meeting?

In order to be on an IEP in a school system, a child has to have a qualifying eligibility (such as in Speech and Language) and that eligibility has to lead to educational impacts (such as difficulty communicating at school).

IEPs are conducted yearly, from the date of their last IEP meeting.

If you go to a speech clinic for speech therapy, you may want to ask your Speech Language Pathologist if he/she can attend your child’s IEP meeting with you. You would typically be charged the Speech Language Pathologist’s going rate in order to attend these meetings.

When do IEP meetings take place?

Meetings are held before school, after school, or during the school day.

How long do they last?

A typical IEP meeting lasts just under an hour, but may take more or less time depending on your child’s needs.

Who attends the IEP?

Meeting participants may include (but are not limited to): the service providers for your child, your child’s teacher, a representative from the district office, and the principal. A service provider can be anyone who helps implement your child’s IEP at school, such as: an occupational therapist, physical therapist, learning specialist, or speech language pathologist. Typically the participants are staff members who directly interact with your child. For example, if your child does not have occupational therapy on his or her IEP, the occupational therapist would not be likely to attend the IEP.

You should receive a meeting notice prior to the meeting listing the participants. This is typically mailed home, but each district may have different procedures.

What can I do to prepare for an IEP?

You don’t need to do anything to prepare, unless you are specifically asked for information from your child’s school team.

You really are the expert at the IEP. You know your child best and can give valuable feedback about how your child learns, your child’s interest areas, and your child’s strengths.

What is the difference between speech therapy provided at school versus at speech therapy clinics?

Many of my clients receive speech therapy at school and at my speech therapy clinic. Some of my clients do not qualify for services at school, but still receive speech therapy at my clinic.

Typically, school services are provided in a group setting and are shorter groups provided once or twice weekly. Typically, services at a speech therapy clinic are longer sessions provided weekly.

Parents have shared they seek private practice therapy because they want more individualized service, longer sessions, and they like that they can observe or be involved in their child’s speech therapy sessions. My speech therapy clinic in Ashland provides children a comfortable learning environment, targeted goals, and high quality service for children with speech and language challenges.

I hope this article helped you feel prepared for your next IEP meeting. Check back next blog post for part two, which will share tips for a successful IEP meeting.

Why I Love Quiet Toys

If you’ve been on the internet lately, you’ve probably seen or seen a reference to the JAMA Pediatrics article on talking toys. More information: here.

(This post contains Amazon affiliate links.)

The study examined what happened when young children (ages 10 months-16 months) played with a parent with toys that a) make noise (electronic toys), b) books, and c) non-noisy toys. The study suggested that electronic toys, games and apps – even those that state they build language – are not effective in building language, and in fact may be a detriment to exposing children to language models. Books and non-noisy toys were found to result in more words spoken by the parent (and therefore more language modeling).

The study indicates using books (best results) or non-talking toys like stacking blocks (second best results) result in more language modeling for young children. More research will be done on why and further information on what this means for childhood language development, but this study has gotten a lot of press because of its implications about how the kinds of toys we use to play with children impacts how much we model language. The more parents model language, the better for children.

Here are three alternatives that even my youngest clients enjoy playing with that don’t talk, have flashing lights or music, and can encourage language development (as long as the parent/play partner is interacting and modeling language):

1 | Books

In this study, books resulted in the highest amount of language modeled by the parent/play partner. Books my youngest clients enjoy include: Pat the Bunny, Goodnight Moon, The Very Hungry Caterpillar, Moo Baa La La La!, and Where’s Spot?. When you are playing with a book, consider it an interaction tool. Make noises with the animals, make a big deal of turning the page and getting help, ask your child to point to objects on the page (point together), ask your child questions (“what’s that?”) as you read. Remember, a book isn’t just the words on the page, a book is a vocabulary and interaction tool. What the book says isn’t as important as the language you use when you are interacting with the book.

2 | Shape Sorters

My favorite shape sorter is the Battat Sound Puzzle Box, the one I have is no longer available, but this one is similar. My version has a circle, triangle and square shape with a bear’s face on them. As the child puts the shape in the right compartment, he or she can watch it travel down the clear tube as it makes a soft “wah-wah-wah” noise. Some of my young clients call it the “quack toy,” because they say it sounds like a duck! Since we are specifically talking about toys that don’t make a lot of noise, I do want to mention this sound is a soft sound and holds children’s attention as you use exclamations “uh oh!” or “wow!” to talk about the sound and what is happening in the puzzle. I like that you can see the shape as it falls down the shape sorter, so you can talk about what you are seeing.

3 | Farm and Barn Toys

I’m not sure why there is such a fascination with farm toys with my youngest clients (the animals? the farm setting?), but they love them! I like farm sets with barns with upper and lower levels and doors that can open and close. Also (this may be more important to me than the typical user), the animals must look like real animals. The more stylized they are, the more difficulty my clients have identifying them.

These toys encourage learning animal names and sounds, following directions and concepts (next to, on top of, near), and learning how and farm works and what animals do.

I am still searching for the perfect barn set. I’m currently using the Djeco barn set, which my clients enjoy, and you can find here. I like that there are interchangeable parts and each child can build their own barn, but I wish the pieces had more details (like doors that could open and close), interlocking pieces, and that a few of the animals were less stylized (the sheep is really hard to identify). That said, this barn set gets a lot of play, and my clients love it!

Remember, the most important “toy” is the child’s communication partner. You don’t need fancy toys to build your child’s language skills.

If you are looking for a speech therapy clinic in Ashland Oregon, visit my contact page for more information. My speech therapy clinic serves clients in the Ashland, Talent, Phoenix, Medford Oregon and the surrounding areas. I have years of experience working with children, and I enjoy working on speech and language skills through play.

Life Lessons Learned Mentoring

Over the past years of my career, I’ve mentored first-year Speech Language Pathologists, current undergraduate students studying Speech Language Pathology, and high school students interested in seeing if Speech Language Pathology might be a good career fit.

For me, mentoring has been an overwhelmingly positive experience. I enjoy mentoring and teaching because I have been in the field long enough to have knowledge to share, but for a short enough time that I clearly remember what it’s like to be fresh in the field. I’m also aware that (like my students already know) there is always more to learn.

Over the past year, I’ve been mentoring a Clinical Fellow, Alice. Alice works in Medford providing speech therapy. Alice has been everything I’d hoped for in a student: open to feedback, a lifelong learner, and a thoughtful and reflective clinician.

I’d like to share three pieces of advice I would give to anyone new in this field or anyone I have mentored.

1  |  Give it Time

It takes time. Time to get used to new clients. Time for new clients to get used to you. Time to improve your skills. Time to set goals, and then time to make progress on them.

Give yourself permission to take time learning new things. Give yourself the grace and time you need to make progress on your goals.

2  |  Be You

Let yourself do your work the way you do your work. There may be many people in your profession, and their work may not look like your work. For example, there are many Speech Language Pathologists, and many of them have a similar educational background. However, each person has a unique personal background composed of experiences and skills unique to them. Because of this, your work may look a bit different from the work of others; remember this could be your strength, and not your weakness.

Keep learning. Keep observing what others do who you respect in the profession. Integrate what you learn from others into your practice, but don’t feel like you have to imitate others in order to be good at what you do. Take what you’ve learned, try it out, and adjust it to your taste.

There may be others out there doing the same job as you, but no one else will do your job just like you. Be open to learning new information and watching how others work, but find how that integrates into what you uniquely offer.

3  |  Be Flexible
In the world of Speech Language Pathology a running joke is to make a plan and then throw your plan out the window. This is because you may have the World’s Best Lesson Plan (if that exists, which I think it doesn’t), but a client may not be ready for the lesson you wanted to teach, and you sometimes have to just wing it.

In life, that means constant adjustment. Making a plan can be a good idea, but adjusting or abandoning that plan when needed can be an even better idea. In fact, your in-the-moment plan (or wing it plan) often turns out to be better than the plan you made beforehand!

Being prepared means having a plan, being flexible means being willing to change that plan based on the situation as it is (not the situation as you’d imagined it would be).

I’m so thankful for all the lessons I’ve learned from mentoring. Congratulations to Alice, who is finishing up her year as a Clinical Fellow. Welcome to the profession!

Drooling in Toddlers

Drooling is a normal phase of infancy and toddlerhood. If you notice your child is drooling more than usual, you have probably also noticed this frequently coincides with teething.

Past the teething stage, some children persist in drooling. If your child is drooling, you may notice an open mouthed resting posture, or drool pooling on the chin or the play space where your child is sitting. In some cases, you may notice a rash or irritation on their chin due to due to the drool. If you notice these signs, and wonder if your child should still be drooling, you may want to discuss this with your Primary Care Provider and a Speech Language Pathologist. As Speech and Language Pathologists, we are specifically trained to treat children in feeding and swallowing issues, and can provide treatment, resources, and support on drooling.

Here are some things to look for if you notice excessive drooling in your child:

– Is your child aware saliva is coming out of his/her mouth? Does modeling wet/dry and prompts to “wipe chin” seem to help?
– Do reminders to swallow more often seem to help?
– How is your child’s posture? Is his/her head down, encouraging the saliva to fall out of his/her mouth?
– Does your child breathe with an open mouth? Take note of your child’s mouth during resting posture. This means noticing the tongue, cheeks and lips when your child is “at rest” (in other words, not talking), such as when playing quietly.

As you gather information, remember many babies and young toddlers drool. After all, drool serves important functions (such as with eating), and is produced in the mouth 24/7. The process of changing this pattern will take time, reinforcement, and lots of positive support. Support professionals (like Speech Language Pathologists) can be an important part of this process.

If you’d like more information on this topic, I highly recommend the book How to Stop Drooling by Pam Marshalla. This book is a short and easy read, and contains a wealth of information on this topic.

You can find the book here (Amazon affiliate link):
How to Stop Drooling by Pam Marshalla

If you live in the Rogue Valley and are interested in consultation on this topic, please visit my contact page. My speech therapy clinic is located in in Ashland, Oregon and serves children with a variety of speech and language needs.