Danielle, a nurse, knew something more was going on with her son. “Nobody believed me,” she says. The school said to wait and see, so her family pushed for testing. For asking, some people in her district came to see them as aggressive parents. If that word has been aimed at you, you are not alone.
FROM THE VIDEO
Key moments from Every Voice Matters with Dr. Sherry and Danielle, a mom of four in rural South Dakota:
Common questions from parents
Am I an aggressive parent if I keep asking the school questions?
What do I do when the school says to wait and see?
Should my child be taught in his own learning style?
Is a free online screener the same as a diagnosis?
A mom pushed the school for answers about her son. Some called her aggressive. Her reply: "I am a parent who's being an advocate for my child."
Why Does Asking Questions Get a Parent Called Aggressive?
Danielle is a mom of four in rural South Dakota. She put it plainly on the podcast Every Voice Matters. “I’m not an aggressive parent. I am a parent who’s being an advocate for my child.”
The host, Dr. Sherry, named the bind. Parents hear they are not involved enough. Then they get involved, and they hear they are too much. To us, that is a system problem, not a parent problem. A school used to quiet parents hears a question as a complaint.
Both women went out of their way to praise good teachers. So do we. The trouble is the habit of the system, not the people in it. Nobody will ever advocate for your child as hard as you will. That’s not a weakness in the system. That’s true of every system, everywhere, always. It’s exactly why your involvement isn’t optional.
A school used to quiet parents hears a question as a complaint.
Laura Lurns · Learning Success expert
What Is Wrong With “Wait and See”?
The school noticed that Danielle’s son liked “heavy activities.” No one at school brought up testing. The family did. That is the pattern we hear again and again. The parent sees it first, and the system waits.
Waiting does not build a skill. Teaching does. Danielle tells of one professional in the room who argued against waiting. A behavior analyst pushed for an IEP right away, while his grades were fine. His point was simple. If we wait, we will be back here later. Then it will show up in his grades.
You do not need to wait for the school to start. In the US, you have the right to ask for an evaluation. Put the request in writing. The evaluation is free to your family.
Danielle knows the right people to call. Many parents do not. At testing, her family got “a packet” and no help reading it. “It makes me sad for some of the parents who might not know those connections,” she says. If no one has explained the process to you, that is not your fault.
Key takeaways
- Asking is advocating: Clear, steady questions to the school are your right, not aggression.
- Waiting builds nothing: In the US, you have the right to request a free evaluation in writing.
- Understand, do not sort: Reviews in 2008 and 2024 did not justify teaching to learning styles.
What Helps When You Talk to the School?
In our view, clear questions get a parent further than a loud voice. Danielle shows how. The school wanted to move her son into an extra math group. The reason given: he wasn’t counting past 29. She looked up the goal for that part of the year. It was 50, and that part of the year was one week old. “That is like me asking my students a question on an exam that we have not covered yet,” she said.
- Ask one clear question at a time, and ask it in writing.
- Ask which goal they are measuring, and when it is due.
- Keep every email and note in one folder.
- Start from a plain letter template if a blank page stops you.
- Remember your place on your child’s IEP team. You are a member, not a guest.
Danielle also says “everybody learns differently.” Her instinct is a good one: teach the child in front of you. One version of that idea has been checked, though. It says to match teaching to a child’s preferred style. A 2008 review (Pashler and colleagues) found virtually no evidence that matching helps. A 2024 review by Clinton-Lisell and Litzinger looked again. It judged any benefit too small and too rare to adopt. Yet nearly 9 in 10 educators still believe in it. That figure is from a 2020 review by Newton and Salvi. That’s not a science problem. That’s a systems problem. Here is what we ask instead.
What turned things around for Danielle’s son was a teacher who took the time “to understand how his little brain works.” To us, that means knowing what he needs next, and teaching it directly. It does not mean sorting him into a type. Showing every child a lesson in more than one way is good teaching too. Danielle says a good day used to mean “I didn’t go to the principal’s office.” With sensory breaks written into his IEP, it became “I played with my friends, we did this in math.”
Your quiet part at home counts as well. One large review looked at parent involvement (Barger and colleagues, 2019). It found a small, steady link with how children do in school. Higgins and Katsipataki (2015) point to the quiet kind as the useful kind. That means what you expect of your child, and how well you two talk. That is a direction, not a settled answer.
Waiting does not build a skill. Teaching does.
Laura Lurns · Learning Success expert
You want a school that sees your child the way you do. The wait-and-see system works against that and leaves you alone. You saw it first, so trust that. Our free analysis asks what you see at home, and it does not diagnose. Only a professional evaluation gets an IEP or 504 plan, or checks medical causes. Start with the free Learning Difficulties Analysis.
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Why we use AI, plainly: it writes from a knowledge base our team maintains and audits. We work through it line by line and pull anything the evidence stops supporting. The roadmap you get on Tuesday reflects what we corrected on Monday, and a human still reads it before you do.
Your school district must evaluate your child free of charge if you ask in writing, whatever your income and whatever the outcome (US, 34 CFR 300.111 and 300.301(b)). That route takes time and answers a different question than you do. This one starts today, from what you already know.
Your answers stay yours. We do not sell your personal information, and we do not hand identifiable assessment data to outside AI companies to train their models.
A screener is a starting point, not a diagnosis. If your child might need formal accommodations (an IEP or 504 plan), or you suspect a vision, hearing or medical cause, pursue a professional evaluation too. That is the only route to those supports.
