{"id":3647,"date":"2010-08-12T09:12:06","date_gmt":"2010-08-12T13:12:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.wrightslaw.com\/blog\/?p=3647"},"modified":"2010-08-12T09:12:06","modified_gmt":"2010-08-12T13:12:06","slug":"parentschool-relationship-marriage-without-the-possibility-of-divorce","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.wrightslaw.com\/blog\/parentschool-relationship-marriage-without-the-possibility-of-divorce\/","title":{"rendered":"Parent\/School Relationship: Marriage Without the Possibility of Divorce"},"content":{"rendered":"<div style=\"padding-bottom:20px; padding-top:10px;\" class=\"hupso-share-buttons\"><!-- Hupso Share Buttons - https:\/\/www.hupso.com\/share\/ --><a class=\"hupso_pop\" href=\"https:\/\/www.hupso.com\/share\/\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/static.hupso.com\/share\/buttons\/gallery\/share-button-gray.png\" style=\"border:0px\" alt=\"Share\" \/><\/a><script type=\"text\/javascript\">var hupso_services=new Array(\"Twitter\",\"Facebook\",\"Google Plus\",\"Pinterest\",\"Linkedin\",\"StumbleUpon\",\"Digg\",\"Reddit\",\"Bebo\",\"Delicious\");var hupso_icon_type = \"labels\";var hupso_background=\"#FFFFFF\";var hupso_border=\"#FFFFFF\";var hupso_image_folder_url = \"\";var hupso_twitter_via=\"wrightslaw\";var hupso_url=\"\";var hupso_title=\"Parent%2FSchool%20Relationship%3A%20Marriage%20Without%20the%20Possibility%20of%20Divorce\";<\/script><script type=\"text\/javascript\" src=\"https:\/\/static.hupso.com\/share\/js\/share.js\"><\/script><!-- Hupso Share Buttons --><\/div><p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft\" style=\"border: 1px solid black; margin: 5px;float:left\" src=\"https:\/\/www.wrightslaw.com\/images\/blog\/teacher.parent.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"200\" height=\"132\" \/>In our training programs, we tell parents, &#8220;Unless you are prepared to remove your child from public school forever, you need to view your relationship with the school as a marriage without the possibility of divorce.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>As a parent, it&#8217;s important to understand that you will be negotiating for special education services with the school on your child&#8217;s behalf for many years.\u00a0 If your relationship with the school is polarized, you need to work on restructuring your relationship with school personnel.<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000080;\"><strong>Focus on Problem Solving<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<p>How do you react when another person &#8211; someone you do not know well &#8211; makes demands of you?<!--more--> Does this make you rethink your position? If you are like most people, you will defend yourself. Making demands is not effective.<\/p>\n<p><strong>As a parent, your goal is to make the school want to help your child and your family.<\/strong> You will not succeed by writing demanding letters or waving law at school personnel.<\/p>\n<p>We urge parents to focus on solving problems while protecting the parent &#8211; school relationship.<\/p>\n<p>A teacher emails:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>I am a Special Education teacher. I am concerned that many web sites such as yours treat the relationship of teacher and parent as an adversarial one.\u00a0 The focus in my classroom is not just to educate students, but to keep the lines of communication open with parents and advocates.\u00a0 I work hard for my students and\u00a0 I am very outspoken as their advocate.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000080;\"><strong>Advocates for Children<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000080;\"><span style=\"color: #000000;\">The outcomes for children with disabilities who receive special education services are dismal. We do not &#8220;instruct parents on how to be against teachers and school administrators.&#8221; Because <strong>we are advocates for children<\/strong>, we provide parents and teachers with strategies to get better services for children.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p><strong>We agree that many teachers are staunch advocates for their students. <\/strong>We have never encouraged adversarial relationships between parents and teachers. In fact, we receive many emails from teachers who are trying to advocate for their students and are in danger of\u00a0 losing their jobs &#8212; or have been fired.<\/p>\n<p>Most issues parents and teachers have that lead to these problems can be traced to administrators.<\/p>\n<p>These articles may give you a different perspective about us:<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.wrightslaw.com\/info\/advo.probs.protect.htm\"><span style=\"color: #000080;\">How to Solve Problems and Protect Parent-School Relationships<\/span><\/a> at <a href=\"https:\/\/www.wrightslaw.com\/info\/advo.probs.protect.htm\"><span style=\"color: #000080;\">https:\/\/www.wrightslaw.com\/info\/advo.probs.protect.htm<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.wrightslaw.com\/info\/teach.support.htm\"><span style=\"color: #000080;\">Why Do You Instruct Parents to be Against Special Ed Teachers?<\/span><\/a> at <a href=\"https:\/\/www.wrightslaw.com\/info\/teach.support.htm\"><span style=\"color: #000080;\">https:\/\/www.wrightslaw.com\/info\/teach.support.htm<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In our training programs, we tell parents, &#8220;Unless you are prepared to remove your child from public school forever, you need to view your relationship with the school as a <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.wrightslaw.com\/blog\/parentschool-relationship-marriage-without-the-possibility-of-divorce\/\">Continue Reading \u2192<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,529,136,161],"tags":[566,635,634,1323],"class_list":["post-3647","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-advocacy","category-parent-rights-responsibilities","category-strategies","category-teachers","tag-advocacy-strategies","tag-negotiation","tag-parent-school-relationship","tag-teachers"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wrightslaw.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3647","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wrightslaw.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wrightslaw.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wrightslaw.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wrightslaw.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3647"}],"version-history":[{"count":17,"href":"https:\/\/www.wrightslaw.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3647\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3733,"href":"https:\/\/www.wrightslaw.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3647\/revisions\/3733"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wrightslaw.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3647"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wrightslaw.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3647"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wrightslaw.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3647"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}