Dear Angry Parent - venting thread

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KimJ posted this letter on a different thread. I always think humour is a good way to vent frustrations. I suggest we post our own 'Dear Angry Mum' letters.

Dear Angry Mum,

I am writing to reassure you that I will continue to give meaningless reassurances to you, without actually providing any services to your 2 sons who have Asperger's.

Obviously the problems you are having at home are not due to the withdrawl of school services to your 9 year old son and your 7 year old son.

Your 9 year old son is having frequent meltdowns at home because his 7 year old son is having frequent meltdowns at home. Your 7 year old son is having frequent meltdowns at home because of his 9 year old son having frequent meltdowns at home.

I recommend you stop your 9 year old son from having meltdowns. This will stop your 7 year old son having meltdowns. I also recommend you stop your 7 year old from having meltdowns at home. This will stop your 9 year old son having meltdowns.

As previously stated, I have 30 years experience in Special Education. I am extremely experienced in not providing services for children with Asperger's, and giving meaningless reassurances to parents.

Yours sincereley
Mrs Special Ed Teacher

I am sitting here feeling just like you smelena at the moment,re the boys school.

Both your letter and kimj's letter have given me a good laugh, thank you.

I too would have written a letter but I think you both covered everything for now.

LOL! great thread, wish I had more to contribute to it!

Dear angry mum,

Thank you very much for yet another email.

We would like to reassure you that your son is in excellent hands. We feel that it is time you 'let go' and stop worrying. Your son is doing just fine. In fact, he's doing so well he doesn't really need an integration aide anymore, so we have deployed the aide to work in the library. God knows what we'd have done without your son's funding money, haha.

So remember, take it easy, relax and leave your son's education in our extremely capable hands.

Kind regards,

Insane Vice Principal

PS: That incident when I forgot to organise changeroom support for your son after swimming lessons, was my fault. I was busy organising the school fair. Sorry about that, but you know how it is - only two pairs of hands and not enough time in the day.!

The issues that I sarcastically discuss below are depressingly small exaggerations of actual arguments I've had with my son's school district.


Dear angry Dad,

Thank you very much for sending us the 5 page Word document that you said describes your son's strengths and weeknesses and that you said gives detailed information about how best to help him. Regretfuly, no one on your son's most excellent IEP team read any of it. Please understand that we are professional edukators and simply cannot be expected to read.

Rest assured, however, that your son's most excellent IEP team consists entirely of professional edukators that have many years of experience working with children with Aspergers. You can take comfort in the fact that these professionals understand that all children with Aspergers are identical so they know what is best for your son.

It has come to our attenshun that your son needs help with his academic skills more than he does social skills. You see, our most excellent professionals conducted a thorough evaluation of your son's academic skills. The reliability of the academic evaluation was ensured by doing it in a very noisy classroom with lots of flourescent lights, 15 neurotypical kids screaming, and the fire alarm going off. Oh yeah...during a thunderstorm. Our extensive experience with edukation indicates to us that this is the best possible testing environment for your son.
In contrast, your son's social needs were determined by asking him 3 or 4 questions in a closed room with no other children present.

We have determined that your son has numerous behavioral problems that are entirely your fault. For example, your son becomes distressed when 5 normal, typical, classmates sneak up behind him and suddenly yell "you're WEIRD" as loud as they can. Why you parents cannot teach your son to be like these classmates is beyond us but take comfort in the fact that our extensive, fair, objective expertise is at your disposal at all times to help you learn not to be such poor parents. We recommend that you emphasize to your son the importance of imitating these wonderful NT children. Remember -- your son is the one with something wrong with him not them. So it is your responsibility to ensure that he learns to manage this teasing with a smile on his face.

We have also determined that your son has no difficulty reading facial expressions at all. This most excellent evaluation was done by showing him a Wal Mart advertisement in our local newspaper. Good news! Your son knew that the Wal Mart smiley face was happy! The team has, therefore, concluded that he has no difficulties in reeding social cues.

We have determined that the best way to cover our asses....err....I mean help your son is to write IEP goals that are wildly below his current level of functioning. That way, we will all feel good at the end of the school year when we brag about how much progress your son made in our most eksellent school.

Thanks again for sending us that Word document. Communication between parents and our team of professionals is at the heart of what makes this school district so great.

Sincerely,
Ms Director of Special Education

Dear Angry Dad,

It has been brought to our attention that you're concerned with your son's lack of social skills. I would like to reassure you that social skills at that age are extremely over-rated. As a matter of fact, totally unnecessary to succed in life. I, myself, am socially awkward. I have very few friends. I am constantly made fun of. I don't like people very much. But, I am still in a position of authority making tons of money. So, rest assured, that your son will succeed whether he gets the proper intervention for social skills or not. Please feel free to call me if you have any questiosn.

Sincerely,

Your School Principal

Dear Angry Single Mom~ ( hysterical that they do this when they know i'm married !)

We have decided that we can educationally plan for your son this coming school year. We know that in the past he's been known to climb out the windows of the social workers office, but we know how to fix it now....we've nailed the window shut!
We'd like to set up a meeting with you to discuss your son's defiant behavior. It seems that he thinks that squatting on the floor and rocking back and forth on his heels is an effective way to get out of class. We find this unacceptable, and really wish that he could just tell us what's bothering him. After all, we've been quite effective at removing all the bullies from his class ( well, really, we're just telling you this to appease you...we haven't really changed anything....), so there shouldn't be any reason for him to be overly anxious. Oh, and by the way, we've decided to punish him every time he asks to go to his quiet space. We feel he's only really asking because he wants to get out of doing any work. Honestly, we just don't understand why he's not working up to his full potential.
Signed~
Incompetent Idiot Principal

Holy Cow! Are all school admins, psychs, and special ed teachers complete morons?

Here's mine: Although it's not fully related since it's about my 5 y/o with mental retardation and a LOT of autistic-type stims and behaviors who we're assured is not on the spectrum cuz he's social. LOL!

Dear incompetent parent,

We did not realize that you wanted services for your son when you informed us of his diagnosis of mental retardation and provided an 8 page psychological evaluation detailing his problems, strengths, and weaknesses. You may have expressed to a school administrator that you wanted services, but since you didn't put anything in writing, we thought it would still be appropriate to educate your child with mental retardation in a regular classroom setting where he is way behind and getting bored and frustrated and now having behavioral problems because of that, when he was perfectly well-behaved earlier on in the year. We are often provided with evaluations from outside sources to put in our students' files just for informative purposes and that is what we thought you were doing. Therefore it is completely your fault for not knowing the special education laws.

We find the evaluation from one of the leading institutions in research and treatment of Autism and developmental disorders in the US to be lacking and do not trust their diagnosis of mental retardation. Your son appears to be doing well in school despite the fact that his teacher has recommended him for retention and she herself does not question the diagnosis of mental retardation. I was not made aware of his prenatal drug exposure and adverse parental background which led to his adoption by your family despite the fact that it was spelled out in plain English in the Psychological evaluation that you provided the school and in his previous IEP where he qualified for Speech services back in September. I now feel we have cause to consider that he may have some learning problems, but I still do not support the diagnosis of mental retardation. I feel qualified to make this observation of your son since I have never even met him or spoken with him or you in the past.

We will begin conducting our own evaluations on your son and have 60 days to do so, despite the fact taht we've been sitting on your request for services(which you CLAIM to have made) for 3 months now.


sincerely,
self-admitted overly qualified school psychologist who "specializes" in Autism



Then, here's what followed a few weeks later...

-Dear not-quite-so incompetent parent,

We apologize for not realizing that your son had special needs earlier, despite your numerous attempts to inform us. From the evaluations that we have conducted, it does appear that he has some developmental delays. However, we are not allowed to IQ test black students per CA law, so we can not confirm the diagnosis of mental retardation. We will have to subject your son to a whole bunch of other tests to qualify him for services because he is black.

sincerely,
as confused by the CA law as you are, school psychologist


We are still awaiting services and the conclusion of evaluations. We submitted the psychological evaluation by the UC Davis MIND Institute on November 10th and requested services then. BTW, if a parent expresses a desire for special Ed svcs and further evaluations are necessary, state law requires that the school help the parent put it in writing so it is all official.

Dear School Principal,

Please be assured that I have continued to give meaningless reassurances to Mrs Smelena.

Her 7 year old son has been having frequent meltdowns in class and has become quite disruptive in the class over the last 2 weeks.

Mrs Smelena has spoken to me a number of times in the last couple of weeks, telling me her 7 year old son is struggling at home.

I handled her brilliantly. I told her that her 7 year old son is doing really well in class and that his meltdowns at home are attributable to her 9 year old son's meltdowns.

I have managed to give her false reassurances and thus continue to avoid having to provide services for her son.

Also, I had a sore throat the day I told her 7 year old son to take the bus when he was supposed to go to after school care. My sore throat relinquishes any responsibility for the fact that he was alone at a bus stop and had a meltdown.

Yours sincerely
Mrs Classroom Teacher

Oh, guys, you're really tempting me here.

Dear Ex- I am an angry parent,
you seem to not give a damn about how our child feels or what he really needs, you only care about what you want,
In my care he gets full attention and help in and with his development and education, I am not stuck
like you are on one relationship after another with 5 other children whom you ignore just so you can go out and do your own thing,
you try and take him and while in your care he has tantrums all the time and disruptive behavior's and alls you can do is take him to the doctors and ask them how to cure this problem when his only issue is I RAISED HIM SINCE BIRTH while you just did not seem to give a crap about spending time with him and now he misses me.
you stupid dumb phuck.

Dear Angry Parent

Having decided to join forces after the event to talk about how parental attitudes may prevent treatment, both of us (the young and smiley polished looking speech therapist and myself the old-school one), wish that you had persisted a little longer in paying us for our expert services.

We believe that the 4 sessions that your son had looking at my venerable and delightful picture cards of objects and animals no longer very common in society, and the further 5 sessions that your son spent looking at my colleague's more recent set of cards depicting objects and domestic scenes which your son lamentably showed no interest in whatsoever, were not enough for us to arrive at any kind of professional opinion.

His almost total silence prevented us from making a diagnosis.

I think that it was really most generous and understanding of my colleague to allow your son to talk non-stop about dinosaurs at his first session with her. But as she explained to you she could not assess him on the basis of things not in her card system.

If you should wish to recommence the sessions at any time in the future, he would be very welcome to look some more at our pictures.

yours

two speech therapists ( Associated Members of the State Education Industry)

Ouinon, your letter had me laughing so hard, but I am SO very sorry to hear you had that experience.

We never encountered anything similar, I promise. I'd totally be an angry parent if we had!