Getting K-12 accommodations for neurodivergent kids is hard.

When my kids were first diagnosed with neurodivergences (just like me, their mom), so began my ride on the endless carousel of testing, meetings, and follow-ups to make sure that my kids were getting the support they needed.

In K-12 public school, the process of getting accommodations requires a school meeting to create an “Individualized Education Plan,” or IEP, under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act.

IEP meetings, I can attest, are the worst.

First, you must prove that your kid is disabled. For neurodivergent kids, this proof is expensive testing.

At the meeting, the law requires the attendance of one of the child’s teachers, one EC (“exceptional children”) teacher, an administrator who can implement the IEP, and a psychologist or similar who can “interpret the instructional implications of evaluation results”— often a school psychologist. And the parents.

At one particularly awful meeting in which I could barely get a word in, the administrators, teachers, and the rest spoke about my child as though he were a stranger to me.

I felt like there was nothing I could do.

As a result, my kids did not get the accommodations they needed. My kids’ teachers didn’t educate them, but rather isolated them, humiliated them, and ignored their reports of bullying and other suffering.

Part of the problem, as I explain in my book A Light in the Tower: A New Reckoning with Mental Health in Higher Education, is the structure of accommodations themselves.

I........

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