Fricative IEP meeting

I don't know what in the world I'm doing blogging. We have a major meeting tomorrow with our IEP committee members regarding my younger daughter's speech program. We had our official IEP about 2 weeks back, in which I got completely blown away. They wanted to give us the bare minimum services, much less than what their own assessor recommended. That caught me so off guard that I was a blithering fool the rest of the meeting. I managed to disagree a few times but so weakly that anyone could see I was a rug. Just about the only thing I did right was not signing the thing, so we're going to have another go at it tomorrow.

This time, I'm bringing the stern-faced hubby. I've also armed myself with loads of research. Like I could go out tomorrow and do a study on the normative rate of disfluency. Or I could talk your ear off about fricatives, which by the way makes an excellent substitute for a certain other word.

I'm just realizing what a total sap I am. I'm running over the possible conversations in my head and thinking, I need to sound way more assertive. And stop apologizing, for heaven's sake. Perhaps this is why God gave me 4 kids. Nothing develops assertiveness better than having to yell at 4 kids all day long.

The husband thinks I'm a little obsessed with this meeting. He said,"if you spent this amount of time on working with our daughter on her actual speech, then she wouldn't have these issues." What can I say except that he is after all a man. But I did tell him to harness all that lovely criticism for the meeting. All right, he does have a point (tiny though it is), but still, they insulted me so personally, so deeply by making a fool out of me that I just have to go back and kick their butts. And hey, if my daughter happens to benefit from it, is that so wrong?

I must go back to poring over my daughter's file. I will tell all tomorrow after the meeting if I am not brain-dead. By the way, I highly recommend anyone who is going through the Special Education program to first read this book. I found out about it late but hopefully not too late. It's written by a lawyer and thus has this entire attitude of be ready to sue them, which is why it's so handy.

Meanwhile, the quote of the week is: if I can go through childbirth labor 4 times with no epidural, by golly, I can do anything!