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5 Top Parental Special Education Advocacy Tips to Benefit Your Child!

My top 5 advocacy tips:

1. Trust your instincts. If you think, your child has disabilities in certain areas trust yourself. No one knows your child like you do, and you are the best judge of what will help your child learn. It is my experience that special education personnel may try and tell you that your instincts are wrong, but only accept this, if there is concrete evidence to back it up. You are the only advocate that your child has, and they are depending on you to advocate for needed related and special education services.

2. Important educational issues need to be handled by letters not telephone calls or e mails, so that you can begin developing a paper trail for documentation, you may need in the future, to help you in a dispute with special education personnel. As far as sending e-mails to special education personnel, I do not like to use e-mail, as e-mails are kept in an electronic record, and not in the child’s written educational record.

If you have a verbal conversation with school personnel and want to document the conversation, you can always write a short letter to the person that you had the conversations with. Try and keep the letter to one page, date it, and give a summary of the conversation. Also, keep a copy for yourself.

3. If special education personnel say something that does not sound right to you, ask them: “Please show me in writing where in Federal or State law it states you have the right to do what you want to do or not do what I asked you to do to benefit my child’s education.” In my opinion, this is one of the most important advocacy skills that parents need to learn, because of the amount of misinformation that is given to parents. If school personnel cannot show you in writing from Federal or State law where it states they have the right to do something or do not have to do something you asked them to do, you know that they are not being truthful.

Use the same procedure if school personnel state that they have to do something, or cannot do something because it is school policy-ask to see the policy in writing, and also ask for a transcript of the board meeting where the policy was passed.

4. If your school district evaluates your child for disabilities and states that your child does not have any disabilities (even though you believe they do), and is not eligible for special education services, you have the right to an Independent Educational Evaluation (IEE) at public expense (which means that the school district pays for it). You must disagree with the school’s evaluation, (could be over the actual testing, the areas tested, the interpretation of the testing, the findings and conclusion of the testing, etc) to be able to receive and obtain an IEE at public expense.

5. Educate yourself on all laws related to special education and disabilities and requirements so that when your school district tries to say things that are not truthful, you have the information to stand up to them, for the benefit of your child. Learn about State Complaints, Mediation and Due Process to help you resolve any disputes that you have with special education personnel.

By following my top five tips you will well be on your way to successfully advocating for needed services for your child!

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A Simple Product Creation and Product Launching Formula

If you tried to think of people involved in product creation, who would come to mind? You may think of Edison, Franklin, or maybe Henry Ford. Would you ever think of yourself as someone who can create a quality product? Product creation is actually relatively easy and product launching is not that tough either! If you follow a few easy to understand steps, you could be starting the product creation and product launching process sooner than you think.

The first step in creating your information product is to know and understand your market. This can be very time-consuming, especially if you are unsure of what to do or where to look to know your market. Studying your niche market and understanding the buzz words and buying patterns can ease the process dramatically. Personally, I would recommend networking with someone who has had success in the niche market you are considering and learn from their results. If they are into product creation and not very business savvy expect some hesitation. If they only sell products and have nothing to do with product launching or product creation you may your first affiliate (sales person)! Something else you can use to find hot trends is with the Google Trends tool.

The second step is the product creation process. Take your niche market and brainstorm ideas and topics relating to it. There are a lot of product launching contests going on recently relating to a newly created internet marketing tool. There are so many aspects to the mentioned niche that literally, and unfortunately, anything can be considered an Internet Marketing tool. The reason that anyone can basically create an Internet Marketing tool is because of something called Private Label Rights products.

What I use private label rights products for, and highly recommend them in this specific manner, is to cure writer’s block especially when it is lingering. Many people base their entire product creation and product launching on a private label rights product. This is where you can start to shine and build a strong brand for yourself. If you set goals for yourself, short-term goals to be exact, you can see your product creation come into being much faster and there is a good chance with less revision needed. If you keep hitting time restraint road blocks; however there is nothing wrong with a slow and steady approach, you can consider outsourcing portions of your project. Outsourcing can be an extremely huge benefit or just as great of a disaster.

You can find someone to outsource work to at a freelance site such as Guru.com or eLance.com. When reviewing proposals it is almost mandatory you perform a background check on them as you are in essence hiring them. Doing a background check on freelancers is as easy as asking for samples of their work and reviewing feedback on the freelance site from previous customers. Depending on the size and requirements of your project this can add up to a decent sized investment, so caution is very important. One tip I always recommend to people looking to hire an individual is to ask them what they can provide you that no one else can. This simple question gives them a chance to “toot their own horn” and acknowledge where they feel most competent as far as their skill set.

The final portion of the product creation and product launching formula is the launch. This can literally make or break the effort, time, and maybe (if you invested) money you put in to your project. There are numerous aspects to product launching and although their relevance is debated in terms to their effect, experts agree all must be followed. The person in your field who you asked for product advice from can help you substantially if you have kept in touch. If not, the first thing you need to do is to create a visually appealing website with flawless design work.

I also mentioned outsourcing before, this is one aspect of product launching I have little strength in and I always outsource this portion. The website does not have to be large however the content (ad copy in Internet Marketing) must be stellar and as perfect as possible. This is where advertising knowledge or experience is beneficial. When the site is set up you now put a lead capture form on your website.

I put two lead capture pages on all products I create on the internet and is one of the best methods of getting a solid start when you are in the product launching stage. When you gain information from a prospect or someone looking to get paid for referring sales you are able to provide them updates or specials. Many people abuse their prospect or affiliate lists by in turn emailing them with a new product daily and I find the recommendations to be totally unrelated to their original need, problem, or interest.

Another stage in the product launching stage is creating a free report or demo version of your product to entice the product to sign up to your email list. Using proper follow up with this can help generate numerous sales for you. One thing you need to ensure is that your free product completely relates to your main product that you are looking to sell.

You are now ready to advertise your product launching to customers as well as the opportunity to sell for affiliates. This is the single aspect that many product creations and launches fail on. It is actually not entirely difficult. One thing you can do is write articles (and a good amount of them) on topics relating to your product. I am a huge advocate of giving a solution in forums. When you join a forum you are normally offered the opportunity to create a signature. In your signature, you should enter the link to your opt-in or lead capture page. When you respond to posts, you are advertising your opportunity.

It is not impossible to create a product and it does not have to take a long time. You need to setup a plan and stick to it. If you get stuck, look at similar and successful products to your own and try and see how they did it. When you sit down and brainstorm you will be surprised with what you can imagine.

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Why Thinking Backwards Helps Home Based Business Success

More and more people these days are looking for home based business success – and success generally includes making enough money. Money buys a greater sense of freedom and security. But how do you do it?

In his 1960 classic self-improvement book Psycho-Cybernetics, Dr Maxwell Maltz wrote about the BE – DO – GET three-step principle for achieving personal goals. In order to get the results you want, you need to do what it takes. In order to do what it takes you need to be the sort of person who thinks about taking appropriate actions.

So it’s a question of thinking backwards. If you want the end result, you need to work on becoming the sort of person who takes the right actions. ‘Begin with end in mind’, was the way Stephen Covey put it in The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People.

You can apply exactly the same principle to home based business success. If you want to achieve a certain money goal, it’s critical to know what action steps are needed. But it’s not possible to take these steps unless your thinking is in alignment with those steps.

For example, you can find a host of adverts promising inexpensive ways to ‘get rich quick for little or no effort’. These ideas most often don’t work. The initial thinking is wrong because it is based on jumping to the end result with no foundation work.

Then you get the other end of the spectrum where people say that any suggestion of making money from a home business has to be a scam. That can’t be right either. It defies logic. It’s a bit like saying that no-one can ever achieve any goal.

Building a successful small business is a creative act that needs the right vision. It also requires focus, hard work and persistence. These are the qualities that home entrepreneurs need to develop. Into that mix you can add ‘pick a good small business idea’, and improve your knowledge on general business principles such as marketing and time management.

It isn’t easy but it is possible – and thinking backwards is a great help.

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