Is Your Child’s IEP Helping Them G.R.O.W?

Your child’s IEP document should always be helping them to G.R.O.W.

G- Generalization. We need to make sure the skills being taught within the goals of the IEP are also being generalized. This means they need to be successful across various people, environments, and presented with multiple materials before we consider a goal mastered.

R- Resources. What is written in to your child’s IEP should be specific to your child’s unique needs and not just what the school has “always done”. We need to make sure the supports in place, resources being used, and training needed to adequately prepare support staff are happening even if they are “out of the box” ideas.

O- Original, unique, specific. Your child’s IEP document should not be a copy and paste document that looks similar to your neighbors. This document should be full of original, unique, and specific ideas, accommodations, modifications, goals based on what your child needs to access their education.

W- Wins. We don’t want to set goals that will be completely unattainable for your child. School is a child’s work place, we need to make sure we are setting them for opportunities to get wins. Goal mastery IS the goal, we have to stop being afraid of letting our kids succeed. Success does not mean losing support, it means moving on to new skills.

So as 2021 comes to a close I encourage you to pull out your child’s IEP and take a look from the growth mindset.