Back to school season is upon us! A new school year is starting which means new people, a new round of settling in, learning new rules and expectations, and building a working relationship with your child’s teacher and school for the coming year. Getting a new teacher (or a whole host of them if your child is older) and stepping into a new year can be both exciting and a little nerve wracking. If you have a child who has struggled in the past, nerve wracking probably dominates. Here is a new person or team of people who are going to have a big impact on how the next 9 months go. This is an environment where your child will spend a huge percentage of their waking time. This is a system that can work to maximize your child’s year of learning and build them up, or a system that can break down and make this year a nightmare. That unknown is stressful!
I don’t have the magic combination of accommodations and behavior plans that will make your neurodiverse child’s year amazing. I do, however, have some ideas about creating a good working relationship with your child’s teacher and school so you are maximizing your chance for success. You are human. Teachers are human. Your child is human. So, what we have here are real, human (read complicated) relationships and making sure these are healthy relationships is a crucial task. I am not a legal or educational expert. What I am about to say comes from a combination of my experiences as a parent and from my professional knowledge of functional relationships and communication. Take what rings true or works for you.
First and foremost, enter your child’s school year with GRACE AND COMPASSION. Spread it all over the place. Lay it on thick. Many of us, especially those with neurodiverse kiddos, have had hard experiences in the past and we bring this baggage with us. We are often coming in armored up and thus set up for an adversarial relationship with a new teacher who has done nothing wrong. This is where the benefit of the doubt comes into play. By and large, people are in education because they care about kids and want the best for each of the students in their charge. Are there bad teachers? Yes. Are there burnt out teachers who would rather not have to deal with your kid? Absolutely. But chances are, the professional in front of you gets up in the morning and goes to work with the intention of having a positive impact. Chances are, they want your child to get the best education they can possibly get. The closer to your heart you can keep this assumption when you are interacting with this person, the better things are going to go.
The great thing about grace and compassion are that they work better when applied liberally. So, in addition to trying to give that new teacher or administrator the benefit of the doubt, you can give it to your kid as well. I used to start each school year terrified that this year would be as chaotic and hard as the last. I did not go in breathing deep and hoping for the best. I’m sure my son felt this energy and it can’t have helped. More pressure to do the right thing and be a “good kid” (God, I hate that phrase) is almost never the thing that sets up a child for long term success. So, let’s give them a clean slate too. It’s a new year! We can and should take into account what we learned last year, problem solve, try to head off old patterns before they start, etc. AND, it’s a fresh start and there is absolutely always reason for optimism and openness to positive experiences.
And last, but definitely not least, the person who is often the hardest, but most important to offer your grace and compassion is yourself! You are only one person and no matter what school has looked like to this point, you have done your best. You are the expert on your kid and you have a lot to offer the process. You are an indispensable part of your child’s team. You are also human and it’s going to be what it’s going to be. You’ll do your best. Your child will do their best. The school will do its best. Will it be perfect? No. Can it at least feel like everyone is pulling in the same direction for the benefit of your child? YES!
The second big piece of building a good working relationship with your child’s school is COMMUNICATION. The key here is honesty, transparency and being open to perspectives other than your own. Often, when we are feeling defensive, threatened, or scared (as we often are when it comes to our kids struggling), we fall short on this. Good communication requires vulnerability, and that’s not an easy thing when you feel like your back is against the wall. Grace and compassion make it easier. The good thing here is that if you lead the way and lean into vulnerable, clear communication, you pave the way for the other people in the situation to do the same. A red flag that you might be wandering astray is being invested in proving some right or proving someone wrong or believing there is a true good guy and bad guy to be found. Another would be blowing past assertively asking for what you think your child needs and landing on aggressively demanding it instead. These situations are by nature complex. There isn’t usually going to be a black and white cause or solution. We don’t want to go in trying to win an argument or subdue an opponent. The goal is to effectively communicate your ideas, requests and needs.
One good way to set yourself up for a year of effective communication is to be proactive. Your child’s teacher doesn’t know your child like you do and their attention is by definition divided. Demanding that they deal with your child exactly as you would like isn’t realistic. AND, if there are tips and tricks that tend to work with your child, or if they have tells/signals before a problem arises, PLEASE let the teacher know! It took me a couple years, but I eventually figured out that if I sent my son’s teacher an email right before school started explaining his triggers and the most effective way to head off a meltdown, we all got off on a better foot. I had been hesitant, as I didn’t want him to go in marked as a problem, but teachers talk, they all knew he was a tougher kid to have in class, and they universally appreciated the inside scoop. Did they always do exactly what I suggested? No, but it happened more than it would have if I hadn’t said anything. Plus, I could then be more understanding when they didn’t or couldn’t follow through because I knew they were aware and trying. Of course, even when they did exactly what I’d suggested, sometimes things still went south. Then, we all had more grace for each other because sometimes you do everything “right” and things still go “wrong.” Early communication helps set the expectation that you are all a team. I want to come in explicitly saying, “If there is a problem, let me know. If there is something you’re doing at school that I can reinforce at home, let me know. If I know something at home is impacting my kid at school, I’ll give you a heads up.” I went into the school year knowing that my kid was higher needs than a lot of the kids in class and I wanted the teacher to know I wasn’t going to just dump that on them. We were all going to roll up our sleeves together, and that led to some really beautiful collaboration and a collection of amazing adults who were all rooting hard for my son to succeed. We could commiserate when things were hard and celebrate together when they were great.
Which leads me to my final point in this long (thanks for sticking with me if you’ve gotten all the way here!) guide to setting your school year up for success. This is the importance of REALISTIC EXPECTATIONS. We all have a basic understanding of what schools are supposed to provide and what we think that should look like for our child. The reality is that there are legal requirements, there are ideal scenarios and there are also underfunded schools and overcrowded classrooms. I will never say that you should settle for less than what your child is legally entitled to receive. There were also times I recognized either that a particular legal requirement was actually not in my child’s best interest or that there was no way the school could make it happen. Advocacy for better funding and resources so schools can meet the requirements of every child is hugely important. Pushing on school boards, superintendents and elected officials needs to happen. If the school has the means to provide what’s required and simply isn’t, then fight that hard. AND, in instances where there simply isn’t a way to make the ideal thing happen, or in situations where all the options aren’t great and it just is what it is, we need to be realistic. Is your kid going to magically be a model student because a new school just started? Nope. Is that kid who drove them nuts last year still going to be on their nerves? Probably (another example of a good heads up to give a teacher – maybe don’t sit these two together). Are there going to be times when you asked that they not be put together and then they are? Yep. Is your kid more likely to get in trouble that day? Yep again. The teacher probably had their reasons and whether they did or not, that’s life. It’s not going to be smooth. It’s not the end of the world. More grace, more compassion, and a lot of good communication will help you right the ship after these upsets. Assuming things will sometimes be messy without fixating on the possibility or getting anxious or angry in advance just means you’ll be less blind-sided and reactive when bumps come along.
If you’re doing all of this, you’ve done what you can to set yourself, your child and their teacher up for the best year possible. You’ll all be on the same team, pulling in the same direction and that is invaluable.
Sincerely,
Natalie Whiteford, PhD
