Special Education Law Blog

Overcoming My Difference By Isabelle Fiona Fox

The following is the heartfelt wisdom and pathos from my own daughter. She is a beautiful, wonderful person who has had to face the challenges of being a sibling to a brother with special needs and the internal identity struggles of being adopted from China. We are all a work in progress, but her essay below captures in poignant terms her thoughts about her "difference."

Well, if you had to ask, a difference that I have had to overcome was my family. Being adopted kind of bothered me, and my brother has spastic cerebral palsy and epilepsy. I know being unique and different is good, but this to me was VERY unusual. I mean how many people do you know have a family of an adopted daughter from China, and a son with a disability? Just as I thought, I may be the first. As you continue to read you may find yourself asking question about your own family. Just know your family is something you should appreciate and enhance.

The Harsh Reality of Incarcerated Youth

The use of seclusion and restraint for children with special needs in our nation’s schools has received national attention.  These practices have been deemed as cruel and dangerous, and various pieces of legislation have been proposed to eliminate their use.  Yet, these practices are being used on an ongoing basis on our nation’s incarcerated youth.  Up to 81,000 teens are incarcerated in juvenile facilities on any given night, and an additional 10,000 teens are in adult prisons. According to the ACLU, which released a report on solitary confinement in October, a significant number of these facilities isolate youth for days, weeks, months, or even years.  The use of solitary confinement, according to the ACLU, causes “anguish, provokes serious mental and physical health problems, and works against rehabilitation for teenagers.”

One of the most tragic outcomes for incarcerated youth is suicide, and half of teen suicides occur while youth are placed in solitary isolation.   A position paper published by the National Commission on Correctional Health Care, which expresses concern about the high rate and potential underreporting of teen suicides in jails, states that further research is needed to delineate better the relationship between suicide and isolation.  Yet, according to the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry (5), the research is in already.  The potential psychiatric consequences of prolonged use of solitary confinement on these “developmentally vulnerable” adolescents are “well recognized” and include depression, anxiety, and psychosis. 

The Real Harm of Bullying

October was National Bullying Prevention month. Throughout our nation’s schools, students attended pep rallies, signed petitions, wore t-shirts with anti-bully messages, and participated in anti-bully marches. Anti-bullying Facebook pages, some with extraordinary amounts of helpful resources and information, were created. It was all a wonderful display of anti-bully sentiment which ensured that everyone was thinking about bullying behavior and its consequence, at least for awhile. So what happens in November? Now that anti-bullying month has ended, what is occurring today in your child’s lunchroom or on the playground? Were the October messages enough to reduce bullying? What really works to help reduce bullying? There is a huge amount of literature on the best methods and curriculums to defeat bullying. Yet some of it is contradictory. One strategy from one anti-bullying expert is deemed misguided by another. To add clarity to this discussion, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has defined 10 best practices for bullying prevention. Those 10 strategies are:

1. Focus on the social environment of the school

2. Assess bullying at your school

3. Garner staff and parent support for bullying prevention

4. Form a group to coordinate the school’s bullying prevention activities

5. Train your staff in bullying prevention

6. Establish and enforce school rules and policies related to bullying

7. Increase adult supervision in hot spots where bullying occurs

8. Intervene consistently and appropriately in bullying situations

9. Focus some class time on bullying prevention.

10. Continue these efforts over time.

Dental Care for Children with Special Needs

Taking a child with special needs to the dentist can be stressful for both the child and the parent.  Parents know that their child doesn’t want to see the dentist, but does the parent know if the dentist will want to see the child?  It’s important for parents to find out, because results of surveys of dental students and practicing dentists indicate that not every dentist feels prepared for or is comfortable with treating children with special needs. 

Whether or not a dentist is comfortable with treating patients with special needs appears dependent on their dental school training.  According to a 2010 study, most dental programs are providing only limited training on treating patients with disabilities.  Data collected from 22 dental schools in the United States and Canada showed that only 64% of programs offered a specific course on treating the patient with special needs, although 91% of programs addressed the topic in the clinical education.  Additionally, only 37% of schools offered a special clinical area for treating patients with disabilities.  Fortunately, the majority of schools indicated their intentions to increase the clinical and extramural training of dentists with regards to special needs patients, which is good given that both dental students and practicing dentists indicate that they feel unprepared and that their training was inadequate to treat patients with disabilities.

Teaching Critical Skills to Become a Learner Not Just a Student

That standardized test scores can accurately predict whether a student will attend college, be gainfully employed, and be successful in life have become the bulwark of educational policy in this country.  How kids “measure up” on tests are linked not only to teacher performance evaluations, but also to determinations of whether or not a school is considered successful or a failure under No Child Left Behind. But standardized tests don’t tell the whole story about a student.   In fact, some researchers now argue that a student’s grades are better predictors of overall success in life than standardized scores.  Those seemingly intangible factors which keep a student in school and persevering—resilience, self-control, and grit--may be far more important in the long run than short-term mastery of course content.  

Travel Training a Key Missing Piece in Transition Plans for Students with Disabilities

Young adults with moderate to severe disabilities who age out of special education if at all possible must have the skills to navigate safely through their community using public transportation for the purposes of employment, post-secondary education or training, or recreation or leisure.  To lack these skills means that these young adults may effectively be trapped in their homes due to their constant dependence upon others for transportation.  “Travel training,” as this skill is called, can be taught, preferably well before the completion of high school.  (A different skill is taught to young adults who are blind or visually impaired.)  However, travel training is an often under-looked yet vitally important component of a child’s transition plan.  The Government Accountability Office cites limited access to reliable public transportation as a major obstacle for individuals with disabilities and may be one of the reasons for the high unemployment rate among young disabled adults compared to their peers (13.5% vs. 7.3%).  

Transition plans, which are the blueprint to assist the child in reaching his post-high school goals, are developed as part of an IEP usually when the child turns 14 but no later than 16.  A thoughtfully written transition plan will carefully delineate the steps needed to ensure the student can achieve those post-high school goals.  And for appropriately identified students, travel training can be a key related service in the transition plan.

Sleeping Difficulties Prevalent in Students with ASD

Many children have difficulty sleeping.  But a disproportionate number of children with special needs have sleep problems.  Anywhere from 49 to 89% of children with autism spectrum disorders, 25 to 50% of children with ADHD, and 34 to 86% of children with cognitive impairments are estimated to experience sleep difficulties.  Additionally children with other syndromes, such as Angelman or Down syndromes, are also reported to have sleep difficulties.  But what is not known is if the learning problems cause the sleep problems, or if the sleep problems cause the learning problems.  Dr. Bonuck and her associates from the Albert Einstein College of Medicine attempted to answer this question in a prospective study just published in Pediatrics by looking for an association between sleep difficulties in young children with a later need for special education services.

 Prospective studies follow a specific population (or cohort) over time, identify certain risk factors, and see how these factors affect outcomes over time. The Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children (also known as ‘the Children of the 90s’ study) is one such cohort that had enrolled approximately 85% of pregnant women in Avon, England in 1991-1992, allowing for a large population-based study.  The initial cohort in the study, which was used by Dr. Bonuck and her associates for their research, comprised more than 13,000 infants, but children with any known condition that might lead to a disability or was associated with a disability were excluded.