One thing I didn’t anticipate with parenting special needs children was the amount of form-filling and meetings, meetings with professionals who will make big decisions around the children, based on a few bits of paper.
There are meetings around education (Statement Review meetings, IEP meetings – Individual Education Plan, SenCo – Special Educational Needs Co-ordination) and meetings which cross over (Occupational Therapy and CAMHS), meetings around their health and well-being (diagnosis paediatrician, clinic meetings) and then there are the meetings around future schooling (we are currently having to whittle down potential secondary school choices for T, our high-functioning autistic but wonderful son).
It all takes time and energy, energy which is sometimes in short supply, but there is the knowledge that if a meeting is postponed by ourselves, goodness knows when it would get re-scheduled. Time seems to be money.
Believe in yourself, you know your child best.
And that is how I feel in some of these meetings, our children are not regarded as individuals, but merely budget figures on a spreadsheet. It used to get to me but then I remembered attending school governors meetings where children are treated as just that, and – in this particular school – special needs children were seen as a negative percentage on the SATS outcome.
The best way I have found to prepare for these meetings, is to do just that:
Be prepared
Write everything down that you want to say, even things that you are sure you’ll remember, because chances are … you won’t. Discussing our SN children can be emotional, especially if the professional is not regarding them as an individual, but more a hindrance and a budget figure. When we sent in the papers to get T referred for a diagnosis, I wrote down everything I could think of and remember and it helped speed things along.
Take a bottle of water with you. It’s very rare to get offered a drink and if there is a lot of discussion, throats can get dry and that makes you more reluctant to speak up.
Similarly, tissues. Never forget tissues. I used to cry in successful and unsuccessful meetings, just because the subject was one of my children, who I happen to love very much.
And … if it helps, if it feels like the meeting is more geared to budgets than the child, call up a photo on your phone, put it on the table and say “this is who we’re discussing, not a figure on a piece of paper”.
Above all, believe in yourself, you know your child best.
This is my meeting “kit”, it makes me feel organised and professional and I hope gives the impression that I’m in control and know what I’m talking about (even if I’m crying inside).
How do you handle your meetings?
Jeanette AM
Sometimes I feel like a brand but I'm me, a commuting career woman in a previous "life", now a stay-at-home Mumma to two wonderful children, who just happen to have autism too. One at each end of the spectrum, one diagnosed at 4.5 years old and the other, very recently at 10.5 years. I blog to raise awareness and acceptance of autism for them and everyone connected with the autistic spectrum (there's an ever-growing number of us!) Very humbled to have been shortlisted in the Brilliance In Blogging awards for my website. That would be me, @AutismMumma aka Jeannette