I remember back about 18 months ago, when we were thrown into deciding whether or not to file for a due process hearing against LuLu’s school system. My first emotion was just being overwhelmed. I was stunned, and completely appalled at what the IEP was proposing…no make that INSISTING upon. And I had the optimistic (albeit naïve) belief that was a concerted effort I could make them understand…or if not them, then the judge, that it’s not ok to further traumatize a traumatized child.

Well, Super Dad and I were thrilled that a well-respected attorney quickly took our case and had lots of great ideas. But we couldn’t help but wonder why every once in a while she’d say something that seemed to unbelievable that at first we thought she was almost paranoid. I remember being especially taken aback during the trial when I commented that if I could just get through my own day’s worth of testimony that I was “done with the hard part”.

“Testifying isn’t the hard part for most parents,” she wisely advised. I was confounded…what could be harder than sitting on the witness stand for hours and being cross examined by the school’s attorney?

“Watching the school employees, especially the ones who knew your daughter the best, and ones you trusted, lie,” she replied.

This poor jaded woman must be exaggerating, I thought. How could the teacher who had my daughter in her classroom for three years, bought her gifts, took her out to dinner…how could she lie? And what about all the other educators, the ones who had been so kind, the ones whose job it was to evaluate her and to accurately report the findings (because they are held to a code of ethics)…how could they not be truthful and full of integrity?

I wish I could say our wise attorney was wrong. I also wish I could say she was wrong when she repeatedly told me all the ways that the system…all the way up through the state, is skewed to be against the parents. Each time, I’ve thought…she must be exaggerating. And each time, sadly, I’ve been wrong.

The latest of this has been a motion (which has been granted) to seal the records concerning our daughter’s case. In other words, all the incredible things I’ve learned that were not exaggerations are now to be hidden away from the public. Why? Well supposedly it’s because of the level of effort it will take to redact the records (remove personally identifying information). But you have to wonder if the system realizes that perhaps if all the records were open to the public then others would know that we’re not exaggerating…and that things truly are that broken in our school system.

Much of what I could tell you about our case would sound like exaggeration. And perhaps someday soon I will bore you with the gory details. Each time I start to tell the details, I can see people look at me with suspicion.

“This is a school we’re talking about, right? A bunch of school teachers? People who supposedly LIKE children?”

“Yes, sadly it is,” I reply.

I wanted to hold firmly to my belief that schools were inherently good, because the teachers in them were hard-working, dedicated, ethical people whose life passion was to love and nurture children as they educated them. This was my world view of public school. And I held firm to the belief that if I worked closely with the people in the system, agreeing to every evaluation and approach they wanted to attempt, inputting all information I had from outside professionals and viewing LuLu’s education as a collaboration between me and the school, that I would not become one of “those” moms who sometimes looks totally over-the-top with rabid advocacy for their child’s rights.

I wish I didn’t know now what I do, about how things really work all the way up the ladder where our school system and state educational bureaucracy are concerned. I wish I didn’t know it, because now I know why those other moms looked as if they were rabid, when really they had just been pushed, ignored, lied to and abused so many times that they could no longer stomach the saccharine sweet posture that the bureaucrats took just before they kicked the parents in the teeth again!

I wish I didn’t know because now that I know it’s true, I feel obligated to confront the injustice and tell others.

So now I’m one of those people who others will assume must be exaggerating. I wish I were exaggerating, oh how I wish that I were.

It's Sucking the Life Out of You Mom!