Here is one of our most popular posts. Relax and make an individualized ENJOYMENT program for your best holiday ever.
Mary
Mom’s I.E.P. for the Holidays: Individualized Enjoyment Program
Want to enjoy the holidays?
Of Course.
Easy as I.E.P.
Don’t laugh. I.E.P.’s were developed because they are good planning tools. Some people are intimidated or challenged by the I.E.P. in Special Education. One way to demystify the I.E.P. process is to use it in our everyday lives. So, stick with me for a minute while we look at how this can work in real life.
Let’s use the Individualized Education Program to create a holiday planning guide.
The first part is to create your Dream Program of what you want. Then we plug in the basic parts of the I.E.P.: Evaluation, Annual Goals, Short term objectives, Related Services, Placement, and circle back to the Evaluation for the next I.E.P. for next year.
Dreaming of YOUR perfect holiday
Everyone’s perfect holiday looks different: Grandma’s turkey feast, or make that a roast goose, or Uncle Bob’s ham and sweet potatoes, or a vegetarian, or Kosher, or vegan, or gluten-free …
Everyone has different expectations, traditions, time and money constraints. So forget the Women’s magazines, forget what your Mother-in-law wants, forget what happens on the Food Channel and Martha Stewart show.
We don’t care about “Everybody.”
The beauty of the I.E.P. is it is individualized. It is for You. Not your mother, your children, your boss…YOU! This is YOUR moment, your freedom, just YOU–what do you want?
Action Step 1: Visualize a Dream Holiday
Take a deep breath and picture a smiling yourself surrounded by your favorite people, doing what you really want to do. Ahhhhh.
Are you skiing down a mountain? Are you sitting by the fireplace listening to Bing Crosby? or Lady Antebellum?…
What would make this a joyous holiday for you–with just the right balance of work and relaxation?
What were the strengths and weaknesses of previous holidays?
Do you want to start any new “You” traditions, new family traditions?
Define your dream program (see related post)
Feel empowered to do it YOUR WAY. This is your holiday gift to yourself. You deserve it!
Don’t you feel better already? This holiday is going to be the best.
Dream Plan:
1. Take a sheet of paper and fold it into four squares: Wants, Needs, Likes, and Dislikes.
2. Fill in the boxes based on YOUR Individualized choices.
If you are feeling pressure because others are trying to get you to do something you don’t want to do, be polite but tell them to make their own IEP. 🙂 Empower yourself! I know this is hard for me and most Moms.
3. Circle your five top priorities and they will become your goals.
For example: Want live tree. Need family to be together for dinner. Loved shopping with Aunt Ruth. Hated the last minute rush….
One Priority goal: Need family to be together for dinner.
Making a decision is the first step. What do YOU want? What would bring YOU joy?
EVALUATION:
Since there is no standardized tool to measure the
holidays–no HFA (Holiday Fun Assessment) or HQ (Happiness Quotient)–we will create an informal evaluation tool based on ecological assessments.
GOALS:
LONG TERM GOAL I: To have a traditional, homemade turkey dinner with family members on Christmas Day.
Do we want to raise the turkey and grow the corn for the stuffing? Serve the strawberry preserves from your summer garden? Do we want to skip the preparation and order in? Or go out to eat? So many choices?
If we decide to keep this as one of our goals, then we must break down our long-term goal into measurable, observable steps.
Mom decides she wants to cook the Christmas dinner and eat at home.
SHORT TERM OBJECTIVES:
“Short-term objectives are merely small steps that enable us to get from where we are now to where we want to be by a certain date.”
A. Mom will finalize the menu by December 10.
B. Mom will make the list and complete the shopping by December 15.
C. Mom will prepare the dinner by December 25.
Each of these short-term objectives can be “task analyzed” and broken down into smaller parts.
We know these are important steps to reaching our goal so they must be completed with 100% accuracy. (75% completion of the meal may leave some family members hungry.)
Goal Two:
LONG TERM GOAL II: To have the gifts wrapped and under the tree by December 24.
SHORT TERM OBJECTIVES:
A. Mom will purchase all supplies by December 10.
B. Mom will supervise the gift-wrapping by December 15.Task Analysis example:
Mom will supervise:
1. Billy will cut the paper.
2. Dad will wrap and tape the gifts.
3. Susie will add the bow.
4. Tommy will place the presents under the tree.
Notice in the Task Analysis, family members with different skill levels can all partially participate.
RELATED SERVICES:
—“Developmental, corrective, and other supportive services to enable you to reach your goals.”
To achieve Goal IC –“Mom will prepare the food by December 25”—Mom will need the following supportive services:
Consultant: Grandma has the expertise to bake and bring perfect pumpkin pies.
Consultant: Aunt Jane will come early to help in the kitchen.
Community Resource: We will purchase the local bakery’s famous dinner rolls.
PLACEMENT:
Now that we have written our IEP we must determine the least restrictive environment for accomplishing our goals.
We could cook and wrap the presents at Aunt Sara’s and bring
everything home, but to meet Mom’s goals on this particular IEP, her own home is the least restrictive environment.
Remember any IEP can be revised or modified at any time. For instance, if Paula Deen wants to invite my family for a holiday dinner, I would change these goals in one butterfat minute.
Happy Holidays
I hope using the I.E.P. process not only makes it easier to understand but hope it can be a tool for you to have a magical holiday season.
Well, what do you think?
1. Do you better understand the IEP process?
2. Would this process be useful for everyone?
3. Does anyone raise turkeys?
Keep Climbing: Onward and Upward
All my best,
Mary
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I think that this makes learning the IEP process much more easy because it is applied to a real-life scenario that everyone can relate to. I actually think that this is a good idea for the holidays because sometimes things can get hectic and this makes it much organized.
I’m glad you think this explains the IEP process. Thanks Jade.
This is such a great post, Mary – thanks for sharing it! You are so great at sharing these ideas. Now I will send it out to everyone I know 🙂 I look forward to more in 2012. Have an amazing holiday season. Aaron
Thanks Aaron. The good news is that we all get to start fresh in 2012. Best Wishes to you and your family and thanks for being part of our community.
I loved this post first time around and again it is a great reminder. I have purchased two second-hand Christmas book from our local library – a mystery and some humor and I plan to put down my current’heavy’ tome and start reading them on Friday and not stop until I am done. On Friday I also plan to turn off my computer and stop work so that I can fully enjoy the time with my family. Thanks for giving me the opportunity to crystallize these thoughts. What are you planning to enjoy?
Alison, sounds like everything is falling in place for your holiday celebration. Enjoy, take lots of pictures and enjoy that plum pudding.
Ho Ho HO! Only a week to go.
I’m giving myself the pleasure of reading R.R. Martin’s Fire and Ice series. I’m on book 3 and find it wonderfully refreshing to get lost in another world.
We’re gradually (like in months) moving stuff to our new ranch condo and praying we can sell our condo soon. “There’s no place like a new home for the holidays, right?”
Of course I enjoyed this post! What a marvelous way to teach how to develop an effective IEP through a personal experience that is transferable. Love it….With emotion and tension often at the IEP table, by taking a breath and re-reading your wise advise, and moving forward with confidence. Plans can be revised, enhanced or implemented as is…but without a course of action, a planned destination our children and youth are suspended in the waiting game, wait until later, wait until next year or worse never gonna happen. I look back at those meetings where the vision and aspirations for my son were rarely endorsed. As a teacher in the early 90s, my middle school students would present their IEPs to the educational team, amazing the professionally trained adults who had been thinking in terms of limitations and now were watching abilities and skills when taught and supported.
Yes Mary, this post while helpful for those in the December mania also is a wonderful reminder for us to declare, what is it that we want, how to plan in steps to get there and how do we know when we do or when to alter the plan/program. For families currently in the joys of educational planning, do what you can to recharge your vision, use laughter to teach others when you can, make it personal while teachable to move and support vision and services…..
Hey I wonder if education majors get to write IEPs for themselves to make the practice and learning real?
Hey Patti,
You did so many wonderful things with both Glenn and your students. I always started my classes with the university students making their circles, MAPS, writing their own dream plans and then IEP goals. You are absolutely right that we need to “declare what it is we want, how to plan in steps to get there and how do we know when we do or whent to alter the plan/’program.” and certainly we need leaders like yourself with vision and laughter.
Much love, Mary
Hope it helped make more sense out of the IEP process. Thanks Farouk.
that was an interesting post
thank you MAry 🙂
P.S. Who is Paula Deen?
She’s the southern cook on the Food Channel who uses a pound of butter in everything. But I’ll bet her Thanksgiving/holiday feast is amazing.
Isn’t it amazing what we can learn from IEP’s? I am lucky in that I don’t have family traditions to keep up with, so I’ve made up my own – that suit me. I also have no nostalgia about Thanksgiving, therefore don’t feel the need to keep up with anything there either. I have done the wrapping at 1am and then not enjoyed the unwrapping because I’ve only had a few hours sleep,. I also know that I don’t like cooking, giant balloons in New York, and spending too long at relatives houses. So we don’t do any of those things. Or at least I don’t. Last year while everyone else watched the Macy’s Day Parade, I lay on my bed in the sun and read a book.
Sounds like you know how to take care of your needs and the family’s needs. Good for you Alison.