Your manifestation determination meeting may be the most important school meeting you have ever attended.
In a few days time you will enter a room, and you will figuratively stand in front of your child and defend your child against all comers.
Because somebody in that room wants to remove your child from school. And nobody is going to stop them – unless you do.
Are you ready?
The key to winning your manifestation determination and keeping your child in school is proper preparation.
You don’t have to be a legal scholar. You don’t have to be a great debater. But you do have to be prepared.
And that does take some work. There are things for you to do.
There are things you you should be doing
This article will provide an overview of what you can do to prepare for your manifestation determination meeting, and why these activities are important.
With proper preparation, you can walk into that room confident and ready to fight for your child.
If you don’t know what a manifestation determination is yet, you should read this first – What is a manifestation determination?
The basic steps in getting ready for a manifestation determination meeting
Before delving into the activities that will help you prepare for your meeting, I should address an important decision you need to make first. That decision is whether you want to be represented by an attorney or special education advocate at the manifestation determination meeting.
You should resolve that issue first. Because if you want representation it may take some time to find someone. And they need to get involved as early as possible because they need to prepare too. For more on whether to hire professional help and where to find it, read this article about hiring attorneys and advocates for a manifestation determination.
Assuming you’ve dealt with that issue, let’s move on.
Here is a list of the basic things you should be doing to get ready for your manifestation determination meeting. If you are pressed for time and have to prioritize, focus on #2 and #4. Those are the activities that usually make the biggest difference later when sitting in the meeting.
- Get your mindset right
- Find out what really happened, in detail
- Make sure you fully understand your child’s disabilities, and find proof of each relevant aspect of it
- Figure out the causal connection between the disability and the misbehavior
- Write up your talking points
- Find allies
#1 Get your mindset right – trust yourself, not the school
This part of the preparation is about getting in touch with certain realities of the situation. It’s about seeing through illusions so you can deal with the truth and the actual facts.
To start with, you have to break free from the illusion that the school is run by professionals who know what they’re doing and do everything right.
The truth is that school personnel are overworked, underfunded, understaffed, and are forced to cut corners. This results in mistakes.
In fact, schools make LOTS of mistakes in manifestation determination cases. Take anything the school tells you with a grain of salt until you check it out yourself and draw your own conclusions. Figure things out for yourself. Don’t assume they know what they are doing. Don’t assume they have their facts straight.
Understand that what they state as “facts” may be mere suspicions, assumptions or conclusions which could be wrong. Disciplinary notices, and even witness statements, are notoriously one-sided, inaccurate, or incomplete.
If your child “confessed”, take that with a grain of salt too. Confessions in manifestation determination situations are sometimes coerced or otherwise inaccurate and unreliable.
Also understand that you, and only you, are your child’s defender at the manifestation determination meeting. Don’t expect anyone else to do it. Some sympathetic individuals might help you here and there, but you will need to lead the charge and do the job with or without their help. You not only have the right and responsibility to do that, it is the very reason you are there.
So shift gears mentally right now – resolve to be proactive and take the initiative. You need to make things happen. If you just “go with the flow” you will probably not like where you and your child end up. Remember, “the flow” wants to kick your child out of school.
Next, be aware that it isn’t really “the school” that wants to kick your child out. It’s specific individuals. Usually, it’s the specific individuals in the administration who initiated the disciplinary action.
Those general education administrators are probably the ones pushing for the suspension or expulsion. Many general ed administrators have a limited understanding of the special needs students they serve. And they probably don’t understand much about your child’s disabilities. They may well have misunderstandings based on labels and stereotypes.
If so, you will have to educate them at the meeting. Their desire to kick your child out of school is probably at least partly fueled by their ignorance of your child’s disabilities. You will need to enlighten them.
And don’t be intimidated by the school staff’s degrees and credentials. When it comes to the issues being discussed at the manifestation determination meeting, you can and should be the smartest person in the room.
That’s partly because the focus of discussion is your child, and you already know your child better than anyone.
And it’s partly because if you prepare well, you should come to know exactly what happened and why better than anyone.
You also have an advantage because the school staff are simply too busy with other things to properly prepare for this meeting. With thorough preparation, you can become the resident expert on every major issue discussed at the manifestation determination meeting.
Embracing these realities will help you understand and implement the rest of the preparation activities described below.
#2 Find out what actually happened and why, in detail
The information the school initially gave you about the behavioral incident is almost certainly inadequate. It may be one-sided, incomplete, or just plain wrong. And it probably lacks the level of detail necessary to really make sense of what happened.
You need to do your own investigation. You want all the information they did NOT give you initially. You want details, details, details.
Try to get what information you can from your child. They are usually a more reliable source of information than the disciplinary notice you received.
Get the full investigation report. Get the witness statements. Talk to the witnesses if possible. Are there photos? Is there a videotape of the incident? Try to view them.
Don’t just investigate what your child did, but also the surrounding circumstances. What happened just before the incident that your child might have been reacting too? Were there things in the environment that you know can trigger negative behavior with your child?
Think like a reporter or a cop. Ask who, what, when, where, how, and why. Ask follow-up questions and dig for more details.
Investigate until you have a very clear, detailed and accurate understanding of exactly what happened and why. If the school seems to have some of their facts wrong, let them know. It might just make this whole thing go away. That actually happens sometimes.
Why is it so important to get all the details about what happened? Because at the manifestation determination meeting you will be trying to show a causal connection between your child’s disabilities and their misbehavior. And that’s hard to do if you don’t have a very detailed and accurate understanding of exactly what the misbehavior was, why it occurred, and what the surrounding circumstances were.
RELATED: “Seth’s Very Bad Day” – A Manifestation Determination Example And Case Study
#3 Make sure you fully understand your child’s disabilities and prepare to explain them at the manifestation determination meeting
You probably already have a good understanding of your child’s disabilities. But if there are things about your child’s disabilities you don’t understand, you should try to get a better understanding of them now. Especially on issues that could be related to the behavioral incident that got your child in trouble.
Some common aspects of disabilities that can be relevant to misbehavior include problems with executive functioning, emotional regulation, impulse control, cognitive functioning, language impairments, and sensory overload.
This preparation step is not just about you understanding your child. You need to go beyond that and be ready to help others at the meeting understand your child.
One thing that will help with that is to find written proof of what you want those people to know and understand about your child and their disabilities.
For example, don’t expect everybody to just take your word for it when you tell them that your child has impulse control problems. Find a reference to that in the IEP, mark it with a highlighter pen, and be ready to read it aloud at the meeting.
Do likewise with information from evaluations, teacher observations, or even printed internet articles from reputable sources.
Your credibility is weak when you are just telling the school what YOU think about your child’s disabilities. They don’t consider parents to be experts about things like executive functioning. It’s much more persuasive to say things like “The IEP says on page 3 that…” and “This letter from our private speech therapist says…”
Understand your child’s disabilities and how they impact your child’s behavior, be prepared to have to teach it to others, and be ready to prove what you say with something in writing.
#4 Figure out the causal connection between the disability and the misbehavior
Most behavioral incidents are the culmination or endpoint of a series of events or circumstances.
Just think through what happened from your child’s perspective. What was that sequence of critical events – from your child’s perspective? How did they experience those things?
What were they thinking and feeling? What decisions were they making and why? What was their intent or motivation? What were they trying to do and why?
Sometimes behavior can be a form of communication, especially in children with impaired communication skills. Were they trying to communicate something? Were they unable to communicate something important?
Use logic and common sense. Try to figure out what role your child’s disabilities played in the sequence of events.
You may have to go beyond the obvious. Dig deep. Consider their level of understanding of the rules, instructions, or social norms of the situation they were in. Consider their ability to control their impulses.
You may find more than one answer, which is fine. There may be numerous ways your child’s disabilities contributed to their misbehavior.
But remember what you are looking for in all of this – a causal connection. A disability or impairment that caused or contributed to the misbehavior in some way.
Can’t find a causal connection? Try this weird little trick to jog your thinking. Think to yourself “Ok, I know there isn’t any connection between my child’s disabilities and their misbehavior, BUT IF THERE WAS A CONNECTION, what would it be?” Goofy, I know. But sometimes it works. Try it.
#5 Prepare written talking points for the meeting
As you go through the above steps, take notes. Then, before the manifestation determination meeting, condense those notes into talking points.
It’s easy to get rattled when you are under pressure in a meeting. And when you get rattled it can interfere with your ability to think clearly or remember details. These talking points give you something in writing to refer to and guide you if that happens.
And the process of consolidating everything important you have figured out will help you digest and understand it even better, and see how it all fits together. This will probably give you a huge boost in confidence too.
#6 Find allies
Try to find others who can help you at the manifestation determination meeting. You may have to be the lone voice for your child, but it is better if you are not. Try to find at least one other person who can be on your side at the meeting.
This could be a family member or close family friend who could go with you to the meeting, for moral support if nothing else.
It could be a private service provider like a counselor or therapist that works with your child. If such people are supportive but can’t physically attend the meeting, ask them to write a letter on your child’s behalf stating their professional opinion in support of your child’s misbehavior being caused by their disability. You can present such letters at the meeting.
It could be someone on the school staff, too. Sometimes special education staff are very sympathetic and understanding about how disabilities can cause behavior problems. They usually don’t like to see special needs students kicked out of school. Some of them may actually be on your side or could be persuaded to be on your side with a little convincing. Talk to them before the meeting and see where they stand, and try to bring them around to your side if you can.
Can I really do all this?
Yes, you can. Parents win manifestation determinations all the time. You can too. This really is very doable.
This preparation takes some time and effort, but it does not take a Ph.D.
In terms of the time involved, the actual working time needed to do all of the above activities will vary depending on your circumstances. But 4-8 hours of actual working time would be pretty typical. Your case might require a little less or a little more. I know you’re busy, tired and stressed, and that the meeting is fast approaching. But this meeting is an incredibly important event in your child’s life. You need to make the time and find the energy.
Note that although the actual working time is measured in hours, expect that the real elapsed time to get it all done may take several days. That’s because some of these activities require others to respond to you, which might involve some delay. So don’t wait until the last minute. Get started right away.
Do I really need to do all this?
The manifestation determination meeting is a critical and pivotal event in your child’s life. It represents a fork in the road, and the outcome of the meeting will send your child down one path or the other.
One path is removal from school, which has negative social, academic and psychological consequences for your child.
The other path is staying in school where they should be. Where they need to be.
But that’s not all.
Often, winning a manifestation determination results in getting extra attention and help with behavior problems. The school finally realizes that this is a serious problem and they are not doing enough to help your child with it. They may provide more support. They may bring in a behavior expert. They may finally do things like collecting data or creating a formal behavior intervention plan that they should have done long ago. It can be the beginning of really addressing and solving a behavior problem.
Have you ever heard of the “school to prison pipeline”? Statistics show that kids who receive long-term suspensions or expulsions from school are much more likely to eventually drop out of school and end up in prison.
The school to prison pipeline is real. You need to do whatever you can to keep your child out of it.
So yes, you really do need to prepare for this meeting. If you can’t do it all, just do what you can. Some preparation is MUCH better than no preparation. Every little bit helps.
Additional resources
Here are some other resources that discuss manifestation determination meeting preparation which might also help.
“How to prepare for a manifestation determination review”
http://www.specialeducationadvisor.com/how-to-prepare-for-a-manifestation-determination-review/
“Manifestation Determination Hearing: What to expect and how to prepare for one” https://adayinourshoes.com/manifestation-determination-hearing-expect-prepare-one/
To see an example of someone preparing for a manifestation determination meeting. read the story of “Seth’s Very Bad Day”, A Manifestation Determination Example And Case Study.
And if you’re still not clear on what you need to prove at the manifestation determination meeting, read How To Win Your Manifestation Determination Hearing, which provides a detailed explanation of what you need to prove in order to win.
Conclusion
The manifestation determination meeting is coming soon and you need to prepare.
Proper preparation is the key to success at a manifestation determination meeting.
It will take some work, but you can be more prepared than all the other people at the meeting combined. You can know more about the subject matter of the meeting than anyone else in the room. That will give you confidence and greatly improve your ability to win and keep your child in school.
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