2. Tell Stories of Your Child at the IEPT Meeting: Stories are incredibly important to the process of integrating the team’s understanding of the child. Bring a picture album, artwork, or anything that can help convey the essence of your child and share your child with the other members of the team.

3. Communicate on a Regular Basis With Your Child’s Teachers and Providers: Begin to relate to each other on a level of friendship and partnership. Build relationships so that when difficult issues arise they will hear you and you will have a foundation upon which to work cooperatively to problem-solve.

4. Don’t Bring Surprises to the IEPT Meeting: Surprises undermine the partnership and friendship that you are trying to achieve.

5. Practice and Refine Your Listening Skills: Try to understand the perspective of the other IEPT members. What are the issues that they are confronting? What are the pressures and constraints upon them? If you have successfully build relationships you will be better able to understand those different perspectives.

6. Celebrate Each Incremental Success and Share It with the School Team: Say, "You know what happened last week? Let me tell you what my child did…". Give team members some insight into your child’s abilities. As Jacque said, "I think that every IEP should begin with a discussion of the child’s successes."

7. It Is Your Obligation To Know What is Going On in the School: Unless you know what is going on in the school building and in the classroom, you cannot reinforce learning at home.

8. Identify Your Own Strengths and Share Them: There are many families who could benefit from your knowledge, experience, and insight. Share them. Nurture those strengths. Be a leader in a way that suits your own style.

9. Support Your Schools: Understand the problems facing public education today. Be a part of the problem solving community. Be honest in you criticism, but then roll up your sleeves and help solve the problems.

10. Be An Active Champion For Your Child: Champion your child by helping him or her to achieve independence. Letting go is often the hardest part for a parent. Learn all that you can do to support your child’s independence. That is how the future you envisioned can become a reality.