Welcome to Ed Chapman's Special Laughs Page

Location: https://edchapman.tripod.com/SpecialLaughs.html Jan 27, 2012
These come from various sources such as mailing lists - the original author's name will be included if I have it
Please email me below if you think there is an accidental copyright violation

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"...Your child might have an IEP."

• If you have ever attended a meeting at school with 25 professionals... your child might have an IEP.
• If you are the only one wearing jeans.... your child might have an IEP.
• If these professionals speak a different language.... your child might have an IEP.
• If the meeting room was the size of a closet... your child might have an IEP.
• If you have ever been asked, "do you think your child is the only one in the district?"...your child might have an IEP.
• If you have ever heard, "we do not have money for that!"... your child might have an IEP.
• If you have ever been called an "overprotective, hysterical parent" or an "uninvolved parent"... your child might have an IEP.
• If you have ever been told your child "will just grow out of it", "is lazy", "slow", irresponsible", "immature and/or sensitive" etc...etc... your child might have an IEP.
• If you feel you have walked into "Assertiveness Training 101" by accident...your child might have an IEP.
• If you have ever been screamed at by a school official...your child might have an IEP.
• If you have ever been told your child will be lucky to grow up and dig ditches...your child might have an IEP.
• If it has ever been suggested to move to another District...your child might have an IEP.
• If you have ever been invited to home school your child... your child might have an IEP.
• If you have ever called the school and asked for your child and were told "we do not have anyone here by that name..." your child might have an IEP.
• If your family is ever discussed in the teachers lounge... your child might have an IEP.
• If every time you call the school board office, the person you need to talk to is in a meeting...you might have an IEP.
• If a meeting with the school has ever been rescheduled more than twice to the time you definitely can not come...your child might have an IEP.
• If you have ever been patted on the shoulder and called "honey" by the principal...your child might have an IEP.
• If it has ever been suggested all your child needs is a "good spanking to straighten him/her up..." your child might have an IEP.
• If you have been asked by a teacher to "just sign it!"... your child definitely has an IEP...
• If you have ever been called Ms Whitesomething... your child might have an IEP.
• If you know your advocate's phone and fax number by heart...your child might have an IEP.
• If you have ever been forced into due process, state court, the district court of appeals, federal court, or the federal circuit court on a fast track to the US Supreme Court... your child might have an IEP.
• If you are known as a due process queen... your child might have an IEP.
• If you can quote federal statutes in your sleep...your child might have an IEP.
• If you have ever requested your child's records and it took two years to receive them...your child might have an IEP.
• If you have ever been told, the district doesn't care if you sign the IEP or not, services have ceased...your child might have an IEP.
• If you have crossed out the words "Procedural Safeguards" on your copy and written in "Procedural Land Mines"... I know I have...then your child definitely has an IEP...for what it's worth.
• If a new teacher went to pull your child's cumulative records and had to make two trips to get it; your child might have an IEP/ You've been through a Due Process.
• Your child might have an IEP/ you've been through a Due Process if [enter state DOE legal head here] knows you.
• Your child might have an IEP/you've been through a Due Process if you sign all your letters, " I look forward to your written response on or before ten (10) business days."
• You ask for "Assistive technology" and the team comes up with pencil grippies and a number line ...your child might have an IEP

"Ten Ways That Confirm You Are a Parent Of a Child With Sensory Issues"

• 1. Instead of lists to organize your schedule, you start doodling Mayor Johnson pictures.
• 2. A statement like "Our OT ordered AIT, ASAP, to help with SI" makes perfect sense to you.
• 3. You order at a restaurant not necessarily what you have a taste for, but according to food color and texture.
• 4. You go new clothes shopping at second-hand shops (no breaking in necessary!).
• 5. The barber tools required for your child's haircut includes sedatives, a flashlight or night vision goggles, and a scissors silencer.
• 6. You break into hysterical fits of laughter when the doctor sends in only one nurse to give your child his immunization, and she exclaims "It will only take a second!"
• 7. Seven different meals need to be prepared for your family of four.
• 8. The thought of your child's upcoming dental visit gives you anxiety attacks that require medications and therapy.
• 9. You do a dance of victory after dry-kissing your daughter and she doesn't wipe her mouth afterwards.
• 10. You start wearing your socks and underwear inside-out because it really does feel more comfortable that way.

Top Ten signs ... that you're going to have a bad IEP meeting

• 10. The IEP invitation lists "drive-thru" hours.
• 9. When you get to the meeting, the staff wants to know what you are doing there.
• 8. They give you complimentary white flags and tissues.
• 7. Your child's student ID # is 666.
• 6. They try to convince you that the attending speech therapist really is the janitor's identical twin.
• 5. You find yourself explaining that...the regs say they can use IU's for related services, not I-O-U's.
• 4. The special ed coordinator says "Have we got a place for your kid!"
• 3. They think "inclusion" is some type of venereal disease.
• 2. The staff is bumming because their label maker burned out.
• 1. You over hear the staff talking about the Least "resisted" environment.

AND Another ten signs that you are going to have a bad IEP meeting.

• 10. You are greeted outside the building.
• 9. No seat for you at the table.
• 8. Everyone is smiling.
• 7. The Supt. of Schools calls while you are there.
• 6. The Principal announces that she/he will attend the entire meeting.
• 5. Everyone tells you that they already know your child.
• 4. The Guidance Counselor asks you, again, for your phone number.
• 3. Guidance Counselor tells you that they know you don't need another copy of "Guidelines for Special Education."
• 2. They act disappointed that your child is not in attendance.
• 1. They announce Special Ed kids will now wear uniforms so that the staff can easily identify them and provide all necessary support.

AND YET Another six signs that you are going to have a bad IEP meeting.

• 6. when they start the IEP with a prayer
• 5. When they ask to update the social history with "There haven't been any more children ..........have there?"
• 4. when you have your own coffee mug in the conference room
• 3. when the chairman knows how you like your coffee, prepares your coffee ....Then sniffs it first!!
• 2. when they start the meeting by explaining that the teacher's union will absorb any costs that your homeowners will not cover regarding the therapy needed by the last classroom teacher
• 1. The REAL trouble occurs when the chairman goes to straighten his tie AND THERE IS NO REFLECTION IN THE MIRROR

One more sign you are going to have a bad IEP meeting

• Also I think you know you're going to have a bad IEP meeting when the principal arrives wearing so much power jewelry you mistake it for body armor.

Do You Like These IEP's by Dr. Suess

I do not like these IEP's
I do not like them Jeeze Louise
We test, we check
We plan, we meet
But nothing ever seems complete

Would you, could you
Like the form?

I do not like the form I see
Not page one, not two, not three
Another change
A brand new box
I think we all
Have lost our rocks

Could you all meet here or there?

We could not meet here or there?
We can not fit anywhere
Not in a room
Not in a hall
There seems to be no space at all

Would you, could you meet again?

I can not meet again next week
No lunch, no prep
Please hear me speak
No, not at dusk, no, not at dawn
AT 4 PM I should be gone

Could you hear while all speak out?
Would you write the words they spout?

I could not hear, I could not write
This does not need to be a fight
Sign here, date there
Mark this, check that
Beware the student's advocat (e)

You do not like them
So you say
Try again! Try again!
And you may

If you will let me be
I will try them
You will see

Say! I almost like these IEP's I think I'll write 103
And I will practice day and night
Until they say
You got it right.

10 Ways To Have More Fun at Your IEP Meeting

• 1. Wear costumes. On the meeting invitation, say, "Festive Dress Required."
• 2. As an equalizer, require all attendees to wear Groucho glasses.
• 3. Require all attendees to bring a musical instrument.
• 4. Provide refreshments: Jalapeno Cheetos, and red Kool-Aid.
• 5. Invite Hillary Rodham Clinton. List her name on the cover sheet
• 6. Try this introductory exercise: If you were a color, what color would you be and why?
• 7. Play background music-anything by Frank Zappa.
• 8. Give everyone a set of five flash cards to be used as the mood strikes:
  • Who invited him?
  • I love your hair! Where did you get it done?
  • I'm sure we can trust that this will get worked out.
  • Does the law have any bearing on this?
  • Excuse me for 10 minutes while I can call my lawyer.
• 9. Have the TV in the room tuned to the Court Channel.
• 10. Keep score. Give a really nice door prize to the IEP team member (parents excluded) who makes the most positive comments about your child. Award grand prize to the IEP team member who makes the most negative comments about your child-the winner gets to provide 36 hours of respite care, in their home, to your child.

One more Ways To Have More Fun at Your IEP Meeting

• add a little disco--maybe Stayin' Alive by the BG's ?

YTD

REDLANDS, CA--Nicholas and Beverly Serna's daughter Caitlin was only four years old, but they already knew there was a problem. Day after day, upon arriving home from preschool, Caitlin would retreat into a bizarre fantasy world. Sometimes, she would pretend to be people and things she was not. Other times, without warning, she would burst into nonsensical song. Some days she would run directionless through the backyard of the Sernas' comfortable Redlands home, laughing and shrieking as she chased imaginary objects. Some days she would pretend she would put on pirate costumes and pretend to raid ships by running down hills in the yard.

When months of sessions with a local psychologist failed to yield an answer, Nicholas and Beverly took Caitlin to a prominent Los Angeles pediatric neurologist for more exhaustive testing. Finally, on Sept. 11, the Sernas received the heartbreaking news: Caitlin was among a growing legion of U.S. children suffering from Youthful Tendency Disorder. "As horrible as the diagnosis was, it was a relief to finally know," said Beverly. "At least we knew we weren't bad parents. We simply had a child who was born with a medical disorder."

Youthful Tendency Disorder (YTD), a poorly understood neurological condition that afflicts an estimated 20 million U.S. children, is characterized by a variety of senseless, unproductive physical and mental exercises, often lasting hours at a time. In the thrall of YTD, sufferers run, jump, climb, twirl, shout, dance, do cartwheels, and enter unreal, unexplainable states of "make-believe."

"The Youthful child has a kind of love/hate relationship with reality," said Johns Hopkins University YTD expert Dr. Avi Gwertzman. "Unfit to join the adult world, they struggle to learn its mores and rules in a process that can take the entirety of their childhood. In the meantime, their emotional and perceptive problems cause them to act out in unpredictable and extremely juvenile ways. It's as though they can only take so much reality; they have to 'check out,' to go Youthful for a while."

On a beautiful autumn day in Asheville, NC, six-year-old Cameron Boudreaux is swinging on a park swingset--a monotonous, back-and-forth action that apparently gives him solace. Spotting his mother on a nearby bench, Cameron rushes eagerly to her and asks, "Guess what?" His mother responds with a friendly, "What?" With unbridled glee, Cameron shouts, "Chicken butt!"--cryptic words understood only by him--before laughing and dashing off again, leaving his mother distraught over yet another baffling non-conversation.

"I must admit, it's been a struggle," Mary Boudreaux said. "What can I say to him when he says something like that, something that makes no sense? Or when he runs through the house yelling while I'm trying to balance the checkbook? You can't just say, 'Please, Cameron, don't have a disorder for just a few minutes so I can concentrate.'"

Cameron's psychological problems run even deeper. He can name every one of his beloved, imaginary Pokemon characters, but the plain realities of the actual world he inhabits are an enigma: Ask Cameron the name of the real-life city councilman sponsoring the referendum to renovate the park just across the street from his house--a park he plays in daily--and he draws a blank.

According to Dr. Dinesh Agarwal, director of child psychiatry at NYU Medical Center, such disconnectedness from reality is a coping mechanism for YTD sufferers. "The Youthful child is born into a world he or she does not fully understand," Agarwal said. "Their brain pathways are still forming, and they need to repetitively relearn how to assimilate into society. These disassociative play-fantasies apparently help them accomplish that." But such fantasies come at a price, producing in Youthful children a disinterest in the everyday responsibilities of life bordering on contempt.

"Jesse knows when it's his turn to take out the trash. We've gone over the house rules a dozen times," said Richard Torres, a Davenport, IA, father of three whose nine-year-old son Jesse was recently diagnosed with YTD. "And still he neglects the job time and again." Slowly, methodically, through an elaborate system of rewards and punishments, Jesse has shown improvement. But the road ahead is long. "We get a lot of platitudes from the so-called experts," Torres said. "We hear a lot of, 'Oh, he'll grow out of it, just give it time.' That's easy for them to say--their kid's not running around the neighborhood claiming to be Superman."

Help for families struggling with YTD may soon be on the way. At last month's annual AMA Convention, Smithkline-Beecham unveiled Juvenol, a promising YTD drug which, pending FDA approval, could reach the U.S. market as early as next spring. Already available in France and Sweden, Juvenol, the Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet reported, resulted in a 60 percent decrease in running and jumping among users.

But until such help arrives, the parents of YTD sufferers can do little more than try to get through each day. "I love my child with all my heart," said Alexandra Torres, Jesse's mother. "But when he's in the throes of one of his skipping fits, it's hard not to feel a little envious of parents with normal, healthy children."

A web site for those poor NT (Neurologically Typical) people is at Click Me

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