Transition: It’s Not Just for Kids – Parents Need A Transition Plan Too!

March 3, 2009Session #1

You Can’t Move Forward Until You Move Backwards

PaTTANHispanos Unidos para Ninos Excepcionales (HUNE); The Mentor Parent Project, Inc.; Parent Education and Advocacy Leadership Center (PEAL);Parent Education Network (PEN)

What is Transition?

Is focused on your child’s preferences and interests

Address your child’s individual needs

Is a coordinated set of activities, services and goals

Plans for a successful outcome for your child

Promotes the movement of your child from high school to adulthood

Steps to a Successful Transition

Step One

Your child will begin to explore their goals for life after high school and develop a plan to achieve these goals.

Step TwoDesign a program, at school and in the

community, beginning at age 14, to help your child gain the skills necessary to achieve his/her

goals.

This should include information on:

Step Three

Develop a team of people who will help

your child reach his/her goals. This

may be people in the family, in the school

and in the community.

Step Four

Your child will graduate with

skills and knowledge to help him/her:

Transition – What the Law Says……

Individual with Disabilities Education Act

(IDEA-2004)

“To ensure that all children with disabilities have available to them a free appropriate public

education and related services designed to meet their unique needs and prepare them for further education, employment and independent living.”

Age Requirement

Transition services must be addressed in the IEP of the student in the year in which the student turns 14 years of age.

The IEP team does not have to wait until the students’ approaching 14th birthday year to consider the students’ transition needs.

Open your head to new ways of thinking!

Work backwards

• Start now to build for the future!• Parents make the difference• Your child’s self-perception as a capable

person is influenced by you and their experiences

• Expectations make a difference• Develop a transition plan for yourself to

move from primary care taker to secondary support person

Universal Truths!

• Learned Helplessness or Independence come from you

• There is true dignity in risk

• The development of self-determination is a learned behavior, based on experiences, attitudes and opportunities

Why Let Go?

• Self-determined students twice as likely to be employed after high school

(Wehmeyer & Schwartz, 1997)

• Greater post secondary enrollment (Mason, McGahee, Kovac, Johnson & Stillerman, 2002)

• You won’t be there forever

What the research says…

• “Students who are more involved in setting educational goals are more likely to reach their goals.”

• Wehmeyer found that “students with disabilities who are more self-determined are more likely to be employed and living independently in the community after completing high school than students who are less self-determined.”

How to begin

• Timeline: When to begin

• Sky is limit

• Regardless of the extent of your son’s or daughter’s disabilities you can still begin the process of letting go

Self Determination Theory

Intrinsic motivation (doing something because it is inherently interesting or enjoyable), and thus higher quality learning, flourishes in contexts that satisfy human needs for competence, autonomy, and relatedness.

Ryan and Deci, 1999

Develop Self Determination by fostering COMPETENCE• Students experience competence when

challenged and given prompt feedback.

• Provide opportunities and lots of them!

• Beware of Learned Helplessness!

• Starts when they begin to develop skills

• If you do it for them or demand that they ask your permission for everything they will learn to be helpless!

Dignity of Risk

Opportunities to develop competence involve risk taking

•Look at the handout

•Ask yourself those questions

•Which of these questions would you want your child to ask?

. . . the fine line of overprotection versus putting her in risky situations is hard to find and continually moving, we often go too far in each direction.

Some times, we knowingly overdid, . . . but it was a trade we felt was worth the experience she had . . .

As a parent, our goal is to encourage our children to be as independent and self reliant as possible. We will not always be there to make the decisions and take care of things. Permitting them to do age-appropriate activities and make age appropriate decisions is difficult but necessary.

Joan Badger

Develop Self Determination by fostering AUTONOMY

• Students experience autonomy when they feel supported to explore, take initiative and develop and implement solutions to their problems.

Parents and autonomy

• Autonomy and dependence on others are not opposites.

• A parent can support autonomy while still caring for his child, or an adolescent can develop a secure relationship with his parents without feeling controlled in one’s actions.

• Parents who are sensitive to their children’s needs and who are able to provide choices for their children facilitate feelings of autonomy and choicefulness.

Provide opportunities to practice

• Celebrate successful choice making

• Celebrate both big and little successes

• Support them in learning from poor choices

• Don’t stop providing opportunities because of past poor choices

• They need the practice of experiencing consequences of their choices

Develop Self Determination by fostering RELATEDNESS• Students experience relatedness when

they perceive others listening and responding to them.

• If no one is listening they will stop trying!• Our children have very important things to

say and we can learn a lot if we listen• “Not being able to speak is not the same

as not having anything to say.” We still need to LISTEN!

Independence ≠ doing everything for yourself

We all need a little help from

our friends.

Support vs. control

Don’t let helpers control your life

Families need to support sons and daughters as they set their course.

Practical applications

• Help students to identify their needs and develop strategies to meet those needs

• Help students acquire knowledge, skills, and beliefs that meet their needs for competence, autonomy and relatedness.

• It will only increase their quality of life now and when you are gone

Use Teachable Moments

• Use real life situations

• Making choices

• Reasonable level of risk

• Living with the consequences

Let’s Take a Look

Look at the handout:

What Parents Can Do for Self Determination

• Which is a strategy that you can begin to try out now?

What you can do now

• Increase self-awareness• Improve decision-making, goal setting and

goal attainment skills• Enhance communication and relationship

skills• Develop the ability to celebrate success

and learn from reflecting on experiences• Help them identify information they would

like to share with the educational team

More activities

• Reflect on daydreams to help them determine what is important to them

• Teach how to set goals and then, with the support of peers, family members, and teachers, taking steps to achieve those goals

• Provide contextual supports and opportunities such as coaching for problem solving and offer opportunities for choice

Transition Planning is a Partnership

Let’s look at

The Quality Indicators for Programs Promoting Self-Determination

• Who should be involved in each indicator?

•poet•author•scholar•feminist•political activist•advocate•lecturer•teacher

She was unaware of my limitations. ~Helen Keller

The Real World

• Everyone has a place in the real world.

• Everyone adds value to our community and makes us richer.

• Everyone has hopes and dreams and they need to come to fruition.

• Agencies and organizations should work to help fulfill families’ vision of living in the real world.

Seamless Transition

First day of adultlife should not look different from the

last day of services with the school district.

As you look forward at your adult life, look backwards and build on the skills

you have been practicing for a lifetime.

Letting Go goes hand in hand with

Self-Determination

The future belongs to those who

believe in the beauty of their

dreams.

Eleanor Roosevelt

Dan Wilkins, The Nth Degree

Steps to Getting the Best Transition Program for Your Child - Resources

ConsultlineInformation for families and advocates of children with disabilitiesToll free information line 1-800-879-2301  Community Parent Resource Centers

Mentoring Parent Project-rural northwestern counties of PA

888-447-1431

HUNE-Hispanics United for Exceptional Children- Philadelphia area

215-425-5112

Steps to Getting the Best Transition Program for Your Child - Resources

Parent Training and Information Centers

Parent Education and Advocacy Leadership Center (PEAL)-West and Central PA –

866-950-1040

Parent Education Network (PEN)-East PA 800-522-5827

Upcoming EventsMarch 24th - 12:00-1:00 & 7:00-8:00 pm 

Parent Webinar “It’s a Brave New World:  Introduction to Secondary Transition”

March 25th - 9:00 am - 3:00 pm

COP - Self Determination Videoconference

April 4, 2009 - 9:00 am-12:00 pm 

Parent VC  “The GPS of Secondary Transition”

April 5th - 7:00 pm - 8:00 pmPYLN Webinar

April 14th - 9:00 am - 3:00 pm COP - Self Determination PaTTAN Harrisburg

May 3rd -

7:00 pm - 8:00 pm

PYLN Webinar

July 22-24, 2009

Transition

Conference-

there will be NO pre-conference