How to Get the Education & Help at School Your Child Needs

Episode Transcript

Dr. Nicole Beurkens

Hi, everyone, welcome to the show. I’m Dr. Nicole, and today we’re going to be talking about all things school, and the issues that can arise with kids of all ages, especially when a child has extra challenges that impact their learning or behavior in the school environment. School is by far one of the topics that you all ask me about most, whether it’s how to best deal with schools and teachers, getting supports for your child who’s struggling, or choosing the right educational setting. These can be really tough things to navigate, and parents often feel at a major disadvantage with not understanding how these systems work, and what might even be available to help their child. So, to unpack all of this with us today, I’ve invited a very special guest on the show. Dr. Courtney Kowalczyk has been a therapist at Horizons, my clinic, for over 15 years. I have known Courtney since our time together back in the public schools, which feels like a lifetime ago, back when she was starting her student teaching, and we’ve been working together in various ways since then. She has a wealth of both personal and professional experience working with a wide variety of school environments. She is a Limited Licensed Psychologist and Certified Special Education teacher. She began her career within the public school environment as a special education teacher and teacher consultant. She’s worked with students of all ages with a variety of disabilities including cognitive impairment, Autism Spectrum Disorder, learning disabilities, executive function disabilities, physical impairments, health conditions, and speech and language impairments. She’s worked in private practice for over 15 years, where her day-to-day work has focused on psychological evaluation and treatment of mental health and neurodevelopmental conditions. Dr. Courtney continues to be actively involved in the realm of education, and provides ongoing consultation services to several schools within and outside of Michigan. She’s also a co-author of Learning as We Grow, a text written to support individuals with disabilities in the educational environment along with their teachers and caregivers. Welcome to the show, Courtney, thank you so much for being here.

Dr. Courtney Kowalczyk

Thank you for having me. I’m so glad to be here today.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens

We have been talking about doing this forever, and it’s so funny because you and I work together every day. We see each other, and finally, I was like, we have got to do this podcast episode because I can’t believe we haven’t done this yet. And when we were thinking about topics, because there’s so many things you and I can chat about, and you have so much expertise, we both sort of decided that school issues were a great topic to cover because it’s something so many parents are dealing with, and particularly we’re about halfway through the school year, which tends to be a time when things can really come to a head for kids and families when they’re struggling. So I think the timing for this is perfect. Let’s start by having you share with our listeners a little bit of your journey and how you came to be doing the work that you’re doing. Did you always know you were going to work with kids? How did that path go for you?

Dr. Courtney Kowalczyk

I knew as an early adolescent myself that my career path would always be working with kids. I started out teaching swim lessons when I was about 12, just to friends, neighbors, those sorts of things. And it just kind of continued to snowball from there. Certainly, by the end of high school, I knew I really wanted to work in a guiding role with kids. At that time, I really felt like becoming a teacher was going to be the right career path for me. And so I went on to school to do that. And honestly, I loved teaching. Being in the classroom was a fantastic place. I had a wonderful teaching experience, a great group of students to work with, but what I began to notice over time was that being in that environment, there was more I wanted to do; I wanted to be able to work with families. I wanted to be able to give support outside of the educational environment. And so I felt like in a lot of ways some of those things that I was interested in were a little bit limited by the position I had. And so after doing some soul searching, I decided to go back to school. I already had an earlier degree in psychology and thought, “Well, that makes the most sense”, because it gives me the benefit of not only being able to work with kids and families in a private practice environment, but then also still being able to have some contact with schools. The work that I do now is predominantly pediatric driven. I do see a few adults here and there, but I love working with kids, and love being able to work with the bigger support network around them, whether it’s teachers, whether it’s parents, aunts, uncles, whomever it may be, I really enjoy being able to kind of take an approach where we get to work with everybody and support across environments, because I think kids make better progress that way.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens

For sure, I mean, you and I both share that passion, not only around working with kids, but working around with kids in their systems, in their family system and their school system, that as you said, that’s how they make progress. This idea that kids make progress in isolation by going to see any type of therapist, or tutor, or whatever, where they just go in a room with a professional, the professional does something with them for 45 minutes, and then that’s going to make change. That’s just not how you and I think about this, and also not supported by the research literature in terms of what is really needed for kids to progress.

Dr. Courtney Kowalczyk

Absolutely, absolutely. So I think it’s great to look at all of those different systems, to be able to support all of those different systems. And I definitely feel that with research supporting that, that is the best way for intervention to happen and for kids to move forward, for sure. A little bit of other background information about me: Outside of wearing this professional hat, I also wear the mom hat, I have two adolescent boys, which is such a fun and unique, sometimes challenging time, as many people know. I do have one child with a chronic health condition as well. So when it comes to working with schools, not only have I been a staff member, a support system for staff in that environment, I’ve also worn the parent hats and sat in those meetings as the parent of the child. And so being able to understand multiple perspectives is really helpful for me in the work that I do, because I get what it’s like to be in both positions.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens

It’s one of the things that makes you really unique in this space, is that you have been a classroom teacher, you have been a consultant in the school environment on the school side of things, you’ve also been a consultant and a psychologist outside the school system. And you have been in that position as a parent. And I think that’s really unique and gives you a perspective on all the different parts of this process that really allows you to help families and the schools that you’re working with. I think that one of the reasons that you and I in our clinic in general have been so effective in navigating school based issues with the families we work with, is because everybody on those teams feels supported because of how we approach it. Because we know how it feels to be the teacher in the classroom, we know how it feels to be the administrator trying to make these things work within the constraints they have, we know how it feels to be the parent, we know how it feels to be a professional outside the system trying to get support. So I think all those perspectives are so valuable.

Dr. Courtney Kowalczyk

Absolutely. I agree

Dr. Nicole Beurkens

Yeah. You know, when it comes to the school based kinds of things, you see a wide range of kids, from little ones and all the way up through teens, and even some young adults with lots of different diagnoses and challenges, right? Like in the mental health realm, in the neurodevelopmental kind of realm, in the behavioral realm. I’m curious, do school based issues come up pretty regularly as part of your work across those ages and those disabilities? Is school and education a common thing that parents are saying, “Listen, we’ve got some struggles, we need some help.”?

Dr. Courtney Kowalczyk

Absolutely. And, and it’s really across all of those different areas of need. It’s not just one particular area that comes up more commonly than others. We have kids who struggle academically, we have those who are experiencing behavioral issues. We have kids with a variety of their own medical conditions and those sorts of things that sometimes that’s difficult for everyone on the school team to know or understand why perhaps some of the behavioral symptoms or academic challenges are happening. So it’s a very common theme we hear often, most definitely. And what’s interesting too, is that in some of the cases where we don’t hear a lot of concerns about school, what I just want to point out is that sometimes we also have this caveat of students or children who kind of keep it all inside all day, they don’t want anyone to know about some of the struggles or the hurt that’s happening on the inside. And we do have a group of clients where then as soon as they’re off the bus, it all blows up from there. And unfortunately, that’s a tough space to be because moms and dads are trying to deal with a lot of behavioral and emotional dysregulation. So I think that it can look different in a lot of ways. But school is a lot, it’s a lot for most kids nowadays, especially with everything that’s happened in the realm of education in recent years. It’s a lot for kids, in general. And I think with that certainly comes difficulty.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens

Yeah, whether kids have diagnosed needs or not, schools just become more challenging. Post pandemic, especially. And I think even with a lot of the changes that we’ve seen in education, at least in the US, over the last decade, or even more broadly, two decades, and that’s a whole other podcast that you and I could do about the developmental appropriateness of education and everything else here in the States. But yeah, it’s challenging even for kids who don’t have diagnosed needs. And I think you raise a really important point there that I know a lot of our parent listeners are nodding and going, “Yeah, we’ve been there.” It’s especially challenging when as a parent, you know that the way things are being handled, or what’s going on in school is creating challenges and stress and is not best supporting your child, but they’re not showing those issues in the school environment. You’re seeing the fallout at home with massively increased anxiety, or maybe school resistance, or just dysregulation in general, and trying to get support around that when the schools going, “We don’t know what you’re talking about, we’re not having behavior problems, or emotional problems, or learning problems with your child in school like that.” You’re right, that’s a really tricky place for parents to be.

Dr. Courtney Kowalczyk

Absolutely, it is.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens

And the flip side of that is kids who are maybe really struggling in the school environment, really dysregulated. Teachers, school staff are calling home like “This is not working, your child is having all these problems”, and parents are going “Wait, we’re not having those issues at home.” It can go that way too.

Dr. Courtney Kowalczyk

Absolutely. It can go that way, too. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens

And that’s also challenging, because then parents are left going, okay, it’s sort of been put on us to tell you how to support our kid in school, or how to improve this, or there’s some assumption that as the parent, you should be doing something about this, but parents are going, “But we don’t have this dysregulation at home.” And so I think this brings up a really important central point around this topic, which is how critical it is to have good relationships and communication in school and home, right?

Dr. Courtney Kowalczyk

Absolutely. You know, communication is really what makes or breaks a situation in the end. And I think that trying to form some relationships with the staff in the school environment, whether if your child is in regular education, forming a relationship with that teacher is really important, and being able to have some good dialogue surrounding either what’s being observed in the classroom and/or at home, I think it’s important for everyone to be on the same page. And that communication piece is really important.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens

I think so too, that relationship building and that being willing, as a parent or as a professional in a situation to maintain a stance of curiosity and openness to the perspectives of the other people involved, right? You and I think have both, well I know we have both seen it from the school professional side of things, where there can be a tendency to go, “We’re the professionals, we know what’s going on; our interpretation and our perspective is the right one.” That is not helpful. We’ve also seen that from the parent perspective, where they go “Nope, my perspective is the right and only perspective here.” And when you get locked into that way of thinking about it, you get out of a mode of curiosity and ability to more objectively look at what’s going on, and to build and maintain that relationship that is needed in order to have good communication, and to keep the child as the central focus. To not get into this sort of, for lack of a better word, pissing match, over who’s right, the parent versus the teachers versus the administrators, but to really keep our focus on, there’s a child at the center of this.

Dr. Courtney Kowalczyk

Right. And I think that that is so critical, you can’t make any progress in a stalemate. Nothing is going to happen. And everyone does need to keep an open mind, to be able to display some flexibility. I think that that’s important for everybody. But also to be curious and wanting to get to the deeper root cause, perhaps, of whatever is going on if there are innate learning challenges, sometimes kids don’t fit into a box. And in fact, in the clinical work I’ve been doing, I’m finding more and more and more often nowadays, the boxes we have don’t always match what’s going on, and so we need to be flexible and creative in our thinking, and also trying new approaches, and also keeping at the forefront that behavior. For those children who are experiencing behavior symptoms, their behavior is communication, it’s letting us know that something isn’t right or their support system isn’t the way that it needs to be for them to be successful. And I find a lot of those more contentious situations happen around students with more significant behavioral dysregulation. And let’s face it, no one wants to have a kid who is misbehaving or making poor choices, but there’s a reason that those are happening. And one of the things I talk about a lot with staff is we do have to be curious, we have to investigate. Why is this happening? Is it a sensory need? Is it anxiety? Anxiety is rampant right now, significantly more since the pandemic. And I especially see that in our younger population of kids, where they were at home for a long time with moms and dads, and now being in the classroom environment with unfamiliar guides, anxiety is really high. And so I think we have to be creative and we have to be good investigators as to why the symptoms are happening and what can be done then to support that.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens

Yeah this brings to mind a situation, a case that you and I were talking about, just recently. And I would say at this point, we don’t run into this super often anymore, with the school being this rigid around it, certainly that was more common 10-15 years ago. I think there has been a shift on the part of at least many educators and schools to understand at least the basic premise you’re talking about, which is behavior is communication, and how we need to look at what’s going on. They may not be great at knowing how to do that, but there’s sort of a recognition that that’s important. But you and I were talking about this case the other day, where you have this patient where he’s been really struggling in school, and the school’s response has been, “Well, this is just a behavior problem. There’s nothing that we should be expected to do here. This is a child who you have diagnosed outside the school system as having a number of diagnosable challenges, and the school’s and the teachers approach has just been, “Nope, he’s just making bad choices. He’s just… it’s bad behavior. And therefore, we aren’t obligated to do anything.” And it’s so frustrating for us as professionals to run into that, but for those of you as parents who are dealing with that, this comes up, and it’s so tough for families, right?

Dr. Courtney Kowalczyk

Yes. And it’s tough for the student too, on so many levels, to be in a space where that support isn’t there. And if anything, there’s just a lot of pressure put on the student that this is kind of their problem, or a parent problem, however, you want to look at that. It’s really unfortunate, because in that type of a situation, there’s absolutely supports and services that are needed for that student in particular to be successful, and he can’t be; it’s just a hard space to be.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens

Let’s talk about some of the roadblocks that parents encounter because I think, as with everything with kids, there’s no owner’s manual that’s handed to us upon birth that says, “Oh, here’s the book that tells you how to handle everything you’re going to need to encounter.” And I’ve had a lot of parents share with me over the years: Where’s the instruction manual for dealing with the schools around this? Particularly when your child has a diagnosed need or is having challenges, you just feel thrust into this world that you don’t understand how it works. Things that feel like common sense like “Hey, my kids are struggling. What can we do?”, turn out not to be common sense. So one of the roadblocks here I think that we’re touching on in this particular case is what happens when a child has a clinical or medical diagnoses outside the school system. And so parents go, “Okay, great. This should be a way now that we can get our child help”, only to encounter an entirely different system within the schools and sometimes where schools will throw up roadblock and go, “No, we don’t have to take any of that into account. That’s not an educational diagnosis. That’s not something we need to deal with.” And parents go, “Wait, what? I don’t understand, like, what’s going on here?”

Dr. Courtney Kowalczyk

Great points to be thinking about with that. When we’re dealing with the medical realm of things, whether your child’s had an evaluation from a medical physician or a psychologist, versus thinking about the educational environment, we have to keep in mind, and it’s really important to understand that those realms do work in different ways. And I think that that’s super important. In the realm of education, our hands in some ways are tied, because we only have a certain number of eligibility options if we’re going to perhaps qualify an individual for special education. There’s not very many. And so there are sometimes some roadblocks that can happen in that realm because it is more limited. There isn’t, for example, one specific eligibility for let’s say, ADHD and sensory, there are some options they can certainly consider. But that type of a diagnosis from a medical professional doesn’t always overlap with some of the eligibility requirements that happen in a school system or in a school environment.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens

Yeah, and I think that can be so surprising to parents discovering that, “What do you mean the diagnosis and this lengthy report detailing my child’s needs from a medical professional, a psychologist, a physician, whoever, what do you mean, that doesn’t apply?” And what people don’t understand is, regardless of what diagnostics or evaluations you’ve had done outside the school system, if you are seeking special education support and services within the school system, there is an entire educational evaluation that has to be done, and the school has to determine whether your child qualifies, according to, as you mentioned, their classification categories. They have to show that the child’s needs are impacting their learning, their ability to progress in the curriculum, their ability to form appropriate social relationships, there’s separate things that they’re looking at. And it can make parents want to tear their hair out going well, “What do you mean, we’ve already invested, we’ve figured all this out. And now there’s this whole other process we have to go through.” And it can feel so frustrating.

Dr. Courtney Kowalczyk

Absolutely. Absolutely. There are other few pieces that I would add to that caveat, not only do we have that whole special education evaluation process, we now also have a lot of these different tiers of intervention. And if your child has not been demonstrating academic difficulties, if they’re not getting some of those different tiered supports already, a lot of times, school’s hands in some ways are kind of tied, because they need to be able to indicate that yes, this area has been a struggle for this child for a long time, which gives them the momentum and the reason behind doing an educational evaluation. This is a really common theme that we often see, and some of our clients that perhaps have anxiety-based symptoms, have attention based issues or even sensory processing issues; if they are performing at a decent level in their academics, if there’s not this glaring difference, a lot of times it’s actually really hard to qualify, in the educational realm, those students for additional services, because even though they have a disability, it’s not impacting their education, or there’s not data to suggest that. We see that in the medical realm too, students with chronic health conditions like epilepsy, or diabetes, or those types of things. Sometimes we end up in a similar situation with those individuals too, because they do have this medical condition or chronic health condition and it can be a tightrope walk if you will, to sometimes find additional supports and services if they’re struggling academically or socially and emotionally in that environment.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens

And I think this goes back to the point about communication and relationships being key. Whether it feels fair or not, as parents, the burden is often on us to do the communicating, the educating of the educators around the needs and diagnoses of our kids, particularly as you’re mentioning kids with chronic health conditions, and we see quite a bit of that at our clinic, whether it’s type one or type two diabetes, whether it’s epilepsy, whether it’s traumatic brain injury, there could be lots of things. And the burden really does become on the parent to be communicating and educating and sitting down and being proactive and saying, “Let me give you information about and explain my child’s condition. This is how it impacts them. Here’s what we see at home, here’s the medical paperwork”, and really building those bridges of understanding. Because while our colleagues in the education realm have a lot of education and training around the work that they do, what they don’t get a lot of education and training around is things in the realm of these different kinds of medical needs, psychological needs. They may get a class or two, maybe some of them may have personal experience, or they may have more or less professional experience. But this idea of communicating and being proactive around really providing information, providing education, talking about it in relation to your specific child, that really goes a long way.

Dr. Courtney Kowalczyk

I’m going to share a case example of a client that I’ve worked with, a young man with epilepsy, a very bright young man. And what we really had to work at in that situation was helping the staff within the school environment to understand not only what epilepsy is, but also how we support a child who day to day, his brain is functioning vastly differently. And that was really a struggle at first, understanding: Okay, today, this individual is calm and regulated. The next day it could be they’re having a really rough day or the math that they’ve been acing, now they have a C or a D on. And so trying to build some understanding surrounding what is happening or why are these things happening, I think that that’s really helpful, because you’re exactly right, as an educator, I had one class in potential medical diagnoses or situations that could arise in my classroom, even as a special ed teacher. Half the training I received was on the job. I think being able to understand those types of pieces is really important.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens

Yeah, yeah. Especially if it’s something that maybe schools don’t see as much or even if you have a child with a diagnosis that they see a lot of in the schools, they don’t necessarily have an understanding of how that impacts your child. Autism is a great example. Schools are seeing more and more and more kids diagnosed on the autism spectrum, okay. But they also make a lot of assumptions about what that means, based on their individual experience with students or whatever. So for you as the parent to be communicative and proactive around, “Here’s what that looks like for my child, here’s my child’s strengths, here’s my child’s challenges, here’s what we deal with at home, here’s what we have found effective”, to help them understand how that diagnosis manifests and applies to your individual child, I think that can be really valuable, and also, again, can build those bridges of understanding. And to me, I think the sooner we can have parents start that type of communication and that dialogue, the better, because one of the things that can happen, whether it’s at the start of the school year, or maybe the child enters a new school or whatever, especially if they have behavioral dysregulation, early on, those kids can get branded by school staff as being a problem, being a behavior problem. And you want to try to circumvent that by giving them an understanding of who your kid is before they just start getting sort of put in the category of, “Oh, this kid is such a problem”, you want to be more proactive around that.

Dr. Courtney Kowalczyk

Absolutely. And I recommend to all of my families, where we’re potentially concerned about educational setting issues arising, get in there early. One of the pieces that I think is sometimes missed because we’re busy or because there’s so much going on, is that relational piece. Kids need to feel safe and secure, they need to feel connected, and especially some of our students who are more prone to behavioral and emotional dysregulation, they need to know who their people are, and they need to start forming relationships. And so for those families that fall into that realm, I highly recommend trying to set up a meeting ahead of time with the teacher. Open houses are nice, but for a lot of kids with challenges, it’s overwhelming, it’s too much. Doing a short one on one, saying hi to the teacher from the playground and trying to build some relational pieces that way between the child and the teacher, or the educational staff involved with them, I think is important. I also think it’s important for parents to be right on the ball with sharing that information, too. Because when you’re able to provide that information up front, I think it helps that with that transitional phase of moving into, especially going back to school in the fall, helping kids transition back to school, it gives the teacher some information to go with, and yes, they’ll form their own thoughts and opinions too. But I do think letting them know: These are some of the strengths, these are the weaknesses. And these are some of the strategies that work for us or have worked in previous years, is a great way to start building that collaboration piece.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens

And I love that you mentioned that parents need to be willing to disclose this information. Sometimes we run into situations where parents don’t want to tell the school what’s actually going on with their child because they’re afraid of stigma or they’ll be treated differently. And I don’t know about you, but I don’t think I’ve ever encountered a situation where that plan has worked out well.

Dr. Courtney Kowalczyk

Usually that leads to a lot of conflict and frustration. Absolutely.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens

Yeah, that’s right. So let’s talk about when parents are aware that their child is struggling, either they’re getting communication from the school on a pretty regular basis that there’s issues, or the child’s coming home really dysregulated and upset about what’s happening in school, when the parents are aware that their child’s having challenges, what do you recommend as a starting point, and sort of what’s the progression from there? Let’s give people sort of a way of thinking about it, like here’s a framework for how to approach this.

Dr. Courtney Kowalczyk

Sure. So, oftentimes, when a child is starting to struggle, and parents are beginning to build in some of these concerns, one of the first lines of intervention really should be some good dialogue with the child’s teacher or teachers. If we’re dealing with a middle school student, you’re going to have more staff involved, but there’s some good open communication, “I’m noticing that my son is struggling in these classes/he’s coming home and complaining a lot about these types of issues. I just want to understand what you’re observing in the classroom? Can we brainstorm some ideas on how to support that individual?” So really, your best first line of defense is looking at connecting with that teacher, having some good ongoing dialogue, trying perhaps some different interventional types of accommodations and little strategies here and there. And you start there and you see how that goes. Now, if the problems persist, and I want to kind of break it down, because there’s a couple of different pathways here: If your child is a general education student, meaning they haven’t been identified as someone who needs, or has an IEP, or is in special education, a lot of times there is something called either a child study or a teacher study. There’s a group of professionals. So the school social worker, the school counselor, the psychologist, a lot of these staff sit down for regular meetings to talk about kids who are struggling, to try to increase some of those interventions before we end up moving towards a special education evaluation. So if you’ve met with the teacher, if those changes you’re making just don’t seem like they’re enough, or if you both continue to have concerns, you certainly could ask that your child be brought up at child study to get some additional information and support from everyone else around the table in that situation. Parents are welcome to be a part of that, in fact, I would highly encourage that, so you can share your own perspective and share information based on what you’re observing at home. So usually, after you’ve had this type of meeting, there’s another round of interventions, or there’s usually something put in place to try to provide some additional support.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens

I’m glad you raised that avenue of things because I think that it’s something that a lot of parents don’t realize is an option, and that actually, if you put it in writing to the school that you want your child to be discussed at one of those meetings, that is something that the school needs to move forward with, and as you said, to be a part of that. A lot of times parents don’t know the various tiers of things that happen, because how would you, right? You and I know it because we come from that world and we worked in it. But a typical parent doesn’t know that this is how it works. And so I think you’re making an important point, starting with the teacher. But if the teacher is not amenable, or open to working with you around it, or you are trying things and it’s just not improving, that there is a next level then to bring that to. You don’t just have to throw your hands up and go, “Well, I guess we just have to put up with this.”

Dr. Courtney Kowalczyk

Absolutely. Absolutely. So depending on the district, some districts, I mentioned this tier concept before, there are different tiers, depending on the type of intervention that’s being provided. If you’re finding as a parent that the interventions, we’ve gone through meetings with the teacher, we’ve gone through this child study process, and those interventions are not enough, typically the next step would be, and I’m glad you mentioned putting things in writing, because that is important. You certainly can request a special education evaluation. And you would do that in writing and deliver it. It does not need to be a long letter, but it can be short and to the point. “My name is so and so, I’m requesting a special education evaluation for my child, named _____.” And sign it. You do need to put that in writing. It is important to do that. And if you choose to go that route, or if you’ve worked through the earlier processes and are not making any headway, you would deliver that letter to, usually the building principal, and then give a copy to the classroom teacher too, so that way, everybody’s been informed. With a special education evaluation, there is a series of processes that need to be followed. And what I will say is it’s not a quick process. And part of it’s because there’s a lot of people that need to come together. There’s a lot of observation and investigation that needs to be done. So it’s not quick, but typically after a parent delivers that letter, there will be a meeting that will be held, and they’ll talk about what types of evaluations are going to be completed. What are the issues? What’s been tried already? And they’ll work on an evaluation plan with you, as the parent, that will be completed. They then get a certain amount of time to be able to do their evaluation. And then from there, there’s usually a feedback or a meeting held to discuss the results and recommendations. And if the child does qualify for special ed, then an IEP will be written at that time.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens

Yeah. And obviously, we only have time here to give a brief overview of that. You’ve done a really nice job of walking through that. One of the things I want to point out, again, for all the parents listening, and I’m not justifying it, I’m not saying it’s fair, but one of the things that you need to really be conscientious about is communication and timelines. And Courtney, you and I have run into this personally, as well as professionally, where there are times that schools and school personnel really dropped the ball on keeping track of timelines and when evaluations need to be completed by, or when revaluations or when paperwork needs to be done. And there can be lots of reasons for that. I have empathy for how overworked lots of people in the school are and all of that. But whether it’s fair or not, the reality is, as parents, you need to stay on top of those things, and sometimes even need to initiate and move the ball forward with some of this stuff. At least that’s what I found.

Dr. Courtney Kowalczyk

Absolutely, absolutely.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens

Yeah. And so parents feel like, “I have so much to deal with already. I’m raising this child, I’m dealing with all these challenges, it feels so unfair to then have to take on the burden of not only navigating, but sometimes really keeping track of the process of this,” and I don’t have an answer to that other than, yeah, that’s the reality, and it is unfair, and unfortunately, it is one of the additional burdens that very often parents of kids with extra challenges need to take on.

Dr. Courtney Kowalczyk

Absolutely. But as the parent, you are your child’s best advocate, and so I also think that’s something we have to do, even though there usually is a lot riding on our shoulders and our plates are overfilled, that doesn’t always feel fair, but you are going to be your child’s best advocate. And so you do want to try to keep that up.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens

Yeah, and I think it’s such a great point about being an advocate, what I say to parents is: No one is more invested in your child getting supports and making progress than you are. The current year’s teacher or teachers are not going to have to have anything to do with them after this year, even when your child is in special education, maybe a special center-based program or something, your child’s going to age out of that school setting, but that child is forever your child. And even when we have wonderful, loving conscientious educators and staff working with our children, the reality is no one’s ever going to be as invested as you are, because this is your child for life. And so I think to approach it in that way, and to realize, you’ve got to be advocating all the way along because you’re on the long marathon path with your child. You’re not just looking at this semester, or this year, you’re looking at the trajectory of your child’s life, and to approach these kinds of things with that perspective in mind. Let’s talk about for a minute, because I know we’ve got some listeners who have been in the situation or are currently in this situation: What do you do when you follow all the rules and the processes, let’s say, your child even has had an IEP, you’ve had all the meetings, all the supports and interventions, you’ve done the things, maybe you’ve had some degree of success with people implementing supports or whatever, but when it comes down to it, after all that, your child is just still really struggling. It doesn’t seem to matter what type of classroom you put them in or what’s happening, your child is just really struggling. And the school and the staff are feeling frustrated, you’re feeling frustrated, your child is feeling frustrated and not improving. What do you say to parents in a situation like that?

Dr. Courtney Kowalczyk

A lot of the time, we’ll have a conversation about a couple of different elements. One is prioritizing what’s important. Is the conflict worth it? And I have had that conversation with families from time to time. Is it worth it? What’s most important? Are there other options? There are some students where the traditional educational environment, no matter what is done, isn’t going to work. I am a very firm believer, not only as a professional but as a parent too, that you need to find the right environment, the right setup for your child and your child’s needs. And we’ve done that with our kids. Our kids have both had very different educational experiences, but it’s because it’s what they needed. And I feel the same is true for patients and families too, you need to find what works for you, whether that be looking at other environments. If you’ve tried really hard, if your child has had an IEP, if we’re doing all of the things and it’s still not working, then maybe a different environment should be considered. Children with neurodevelopmental difficulties do very well in more of a homeschool environment or a much smaller group instructional environment. I realize for some families, that may not always be an option. But I do believe it’s important to know your options, I believe it’s important to look at other options or to even consider other options.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens

I love that you’re raising that because I think that’s so important. So often parents get locked into this idea of what school is supposed to look like, or what it means for their child to be successful in school. And what you’re reframing for people is, look, what’s workable, and what allows your child to improve and thrive is the right environment for them. And that may not be a traditional public or private school, it may not look like a classroom at all. And to be open to the idea that what you need to prioritize is what actually helps your child grow and learn and improve, and not what type of situation they’re in. There’s no trophy for getting your kid through a traditional K-12 educational setting. There’s no trophy for that. If that works for your kid, and it allows them to move on and thrive in their lives after school, wonderful. But if it doesn’t, then what good did it do to fight all those battles, to have all that stress, to do all of that, when in the end it didn’t give your child what they needed. And so I love that you’re encouraging people to expand their thinking around what that can look like.

Dr. Courtney Kowalczyk

Absolutely, absolutely. We have families who do a variety of different things. We have some clients who perhaps do better on a reduced day, that is an option for students with special needs that is often not considered, but in my opinion, should be. We have students who perhaps have a late start if they have a medical condition, that’s something that’s really important, making sure there’s good sufficient sleep. We have some students who utilize different environments, whether that’s looking at some of the other regional opportunities that are involved, either through your ISD, or through some of the other local districts, there are lots of ways to be creative. And I think a lot of times we get stuck in this tunnel vision that “This is my neighborhood school, this is where my kids should be going and attending and everything they need should be there.” And sometimes, even with the best of intentions in those environments, it just doesn’t work. You need to be creative to figure out where that space is where your child can grow and flourish, and what that looks like.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens

And it may not look like what you traditionally have thought of in terms of school, and that’s okay, too. Because, again, you as the parent are on the long-term path of life with your child. What you need to be invested in is what experiences, opportunities, learning environments, whatever are going to help your child move forward and become as independent, capable, regulated, well adjusted as they can be as they move into adulthood. Right? That’s the goal. Not are they sitting at the desk in their neighborhood school and graduating from the district that they started in? And you and I both have walked this, and actually, virtually any professional who has worked at our clinic has walked that path, even with kids who don’t have diagnosed issues, from one year to the next. I mean, we have discussions in the staff lunchroom about it, right? Like, “Hey, I’m thinking about this for her for next year because it just seems like a better fit right now.” I mean, you and I have both taken a very winding path with all of our children around what’s important at this moment in time for them, and not getting locked into this idea of: This is the district that we live in, they started kindergarten here, so they need to graduate from here”, like really opening your mind, especially if your kid is struggling, and especially if you’ve really done all the things that that you are capable of doing to increase supports for them and it’s not working, you’ve got to look outside the box.

Dr. Courtney Kowalczyk

Absolutely, and I think especially if we’re talking about students who are experiencing significant behavioral and emotional dysregulation in particular, this is usually where I’m having a lot of these discussions. I just want everyone to kind of keep in mind that a child’s ability to manage their feelings, to manage what they’re experiencing on the inside is a lower level concept. It’s below learning, it’s below all of those things that do happen in more of the traditional environment. And if your child is really struggling, even with aspects of emotional and behavioral regulation, to me, as the clinician, as the therapist, we have to work on building those skills because it’s going to be so hard for the academic stuff to stick. And so a lot of times when I’m specifically working with parents and families around kids who are struggling significantly with some of these emotional behavioral challenges, we have to be creative in how we help them maintain a more regulated state so that the learning process can happen. And a lot of times this is where we get creative? And how do we accomplish that, so the learning can take place?

Dr. Nicole Beurkens

Yeah. And it’s something you do such a beautiful job of helping families navigate that process of communicating with schools, and actually working with schools to help them understand this. It’s building those bridges that ultimately help not only the people that we’re working with right now, but the more that we can build those bridges and educate the educators around this, the more that has a ripple effect to kids that are going to come into their classrooms, in their school settings next year, and the year after that, and the year after that. So you and I could talk about this stuff for days, but I know we need to wrap up. And I want to make sure that people know where they can find you. I think there’s going to be a lot of people who are interested in potentially having some consultation around these issues, you do consultation, as well as direct therapy work. So let people know where they can find you.

Dr. Courtney Kowalczyk

Absolutely. So on our website, which is www.horizonsdrc.com, you’ll find my bio, more information about me, and there’s also a place to contact the clinic. For anyone who does need some additional support or some guidance or someone to help them problem solve, I’m very happy to do that. That would be the best way to reach out and to get that process started.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens

Awesome. And you work with families and kids with direct therapy, but also when it comes to all of these kinds of things, this is stuff that can be done via telehealth, through consultation and you work with schools and families and parents from all over the US and outside of the US. So I think it’s great that we’ve got so many different virtual platforms now that make it easier. I mean, you and I remember back in the day doing this consultation work on the telephone, right?

Dr. Courtney Kowalczyk

Good thing with COVID. At least now we all know how to use Zoom, and we have these platforms that work.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens

That’s right. So yeah, I hope that people will reach out, and thank you so much for all the important work that you do. It’s such a joy to work with you professionally, to know you personally, and thank you for sharing your time with us today. I know this was a really helpful conversation for people. So thank you.

Dr. Courtney Kowalczyk

Thank you so much for having me. I really enjoyed it.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens

And thanks as always, to all of you for being here and for listening. We’ll catch you back here next time.