I have dealt with multiple multiple different government departments through lots of different advocacy trails. Here is a list of dirty parlor tricks that they will use on you, to cut you off your path. These come from experience, case law examples, and stories from other parents. If you get any of these as a response, you know you have hit a sensitive nerve. You are onto something, keep going!

Their overarching goal is to have you lose your shit, so that they can then use your reaction as way to stop communicating with you and therefore stop your advocacy. They want to tire you out and focus not on the issue, but you.

NOTE: This is not how everyone in a position of power responds. However, if your situation exposes a lot of systemic issues, or a human rights issue, or is a hot topic, get ready. The more you know, the more you can be prepared and not respond in an emotional but in a strategic planned way.

1. They will use silence and just ignore your emails, or respond really really really late. Like months and months late. Time is on their side. They feel no urgency. They will use your urgency against you to heighten your anxiety.
2. They will request extensions for everything, or cancel meetings or just make dates for things that extend everything. The point is for this to constantly be out of reach and go on and on, hoping you give up.
3. They will tell you they have another meeting at a certain time, say 45 min or 1 hour after yours starts in order to cap the conversation and then again extend the unresolved issue. The point is to extend, limit and contain.
4. They will give you tasks or homework assignments to keep you busy and make you feel like something is happening, when in fact it is not. The homework assignments will be impossible to complete unless you know a lot of law, or are able to analyze a lawyers process. Not kidding. I had to analyze the process in which someone arrived at their decision, and why their process was incorrect. What they didn’t know was that I have a degree in human relations (human systems – how people function in groups) and currently at SFU for criminology, so I can absolutely do that. Which means, apparently you need to have almost 2 degrees in order to meet their criteria for intervention and support and this specific organization supports people who are need of help and are vulnerable in their situation. Not joking.
5. Anything connected to procedural fairness, and they will make it seem like you are demanding, unreasonable, or inappropriate. This can be connected to having specific advocates in the room, or making sure your voice is heard, or even understanding the process so you can be prepared.
6. They will use your emails, or your emotions as a way to try and embarrass you or shame you, and focus the attention on your behaviour.
7. They will start to mirror your communication if they are wanting you to comply. Look at how they address you, and how they sign off on emails. Look at the language they are using.
8. They will use similar subject headings in emails as a way to easily track communication. If you start seeing the same subject headings, it’s a flag. Other people are tracking your emails. It’s for a reason.
9. They will interpret your advocacy as a personal attack and attempt to make you feel like you are being aggressive. Focus on the process, and the ability to highlight the oppression you are experiencing. Look at Rule of Law, Procedural Fairness, and Charter of Rights.
10. They will change the rules as you move along, essentially creating a “moving target”. This is procedural unfairness that you can argue with case law.
11. They will state facts, and then say…. “Well it is our understanding that…..” and then make up whatever they want.
12. Some days you feel like you are having a sword fight with the English dictionary. Analyze everything. Counting aspects and turning your data into quantitative data, can be helpful. How many emails? How much time in meeting minutes? How much repetitive data? How many times did they use those power words or accuse you of…?
13. They will play within the rules, so if there is a page limit for a response for a certain written court process, they have used small font and widen the margins. They will use whatever advantage they can gather.
14. If they ask for an extension of pages, you need to also ask for the same extension of pages.
15. They will pretend they are innocent or unaware, and purposefully make mistakes with dates, or other information, hoping you will speak to them in a demeaning way or insult them. Then they know that they can stop you in the your tracks, and they will be supported by any system process. You need to communicate with them as if you are talking with your grandmother. It will piss them off. They are always looking for a hook.
16. If what you are saying is true, they will attack the process at what you arrived at those facts. For example, my child was assessed by this person, at this level. Then they will attack/undermine the person who assessed your child, and try and make them invalid.
17. They will tell you that you can email them your thoughts and feelings and that they will read everything, but they will not be able to respond to everything. DO NOT DO THIS. They are essentially not closing the door on you, and wanting to gather info on how you think and feel. They are collecting evidence to use against you.
18. They will want to have phone conversations with you, and not be willing to document or email any conclusions or actions that they are committing to.
19. They will want to limit the number of advocates in the room, or use “student confidentiality” as an excuse to take away other professional expertise or support persons that will benefit you or end meetings with joint parents.
20. They will keep sending you to different people to have meetings with over and over and over again.
21. They will try and make your arguments look weak and theirs are stronger in actual fake law – they will take a real concept and kind up…. smudge it up. Generally, they will bend the rules and smudge the lines. They can be very subtle by dropping “knowledge bombs” of information to heighten your anxiety.
22. They will do things in a way… that you start to question yourself. Am I really seeing this? Is this really happening? Am I overreacting? We always assume that everyone has the best intentions….maybe they aren’t aware…. That could be true. However. It’s a hard pill to swallow. Many good people hold up a sick system. It makes sense in their head, and they may not really understand why. It’s just the culture. It’s normalized.

I leave you with quotes that hit home this week.

1. “There are times when you must speak, not because you are going to change the other person, but because if you don’t speak, they have changed you.”—Mary Quinn, aka Maud http://www.shakesville.com/2011/08/for-maud.html
2. “You are what you tolerate.”

Vulnerable children are going to be pushed into more vulnerable circumstances with the new upcoming regulatory changes for school psychologists.

We need to sound the alarm!

New proposed bylaws by the College of Psychologist of BC will be impacting our school psychologists and therefore our children.

I have a child who was assessed by a psychologist connected to MCFD, who diagnosed the ADHD, but didn’t even test for the learning disability after I raised serious concerns regarding his written output.

It took a school psychologist with a practice on the side, to assess my son within 2 months, and his serious learning disability in written output was revealed. My son would not be getting the supports he has today without this assessment. The emotional harm would have continued. This was a private assessment, but she charged less than a community psychologist. Her assessment was also viewed by another professional who said this was the most comprehensive assessment she has ever seen. Without this lovely school psychologist offering her skills as her own practice, it would have been months and months of waiting, to hopefully get a fully correct diagnosis. Having a school psychologist was ideal and I am forever grateful.

For more information on their advocacy work, please see their informative website www.bcschoolpsychadvocacy.com

Here are some things that fluent people may not realize about stuttering…

1. There are certain words for people who stutter that will be more difficult to say than other information. For example, Our name, address, phone number. Things that we get asked a lot and we can’t replace it with other words.

Also things like, social language can be hard to say, like thank you.

When someone holds a door open for me, saying thank you for me, 90% of the time I stutter on that word and sometimes people just move too fast, I don’t have time to say the word. I am sure the world thinks I am very rude. What can I do?

2. For people who stutter, sometimes….depending on the person, they can be more fluent or stutter more on the phone. Some people find reading easier to speak and for others, they stutter more when reading. For me, *depending* on the person and the relationship I have with them, and the purpose of the call, phone can be very challenging and I prefer video as I use my body language to support my communication. We will all have our different *triggers*. However a common trigger that will increase stuttering is time pressure. We know what we need for different situations and we have rights for accommodations.

3. Many people who stutter will substitute words and spend a lot of mental energy navigating their stuttering through sentences. This can be very exhausting. So even if people seem to be very fluent and only stutter occasionally, you have no idea how much mental gymnastics they are encountering to communicate.

Some people can be covert stutterers and spend an incredible amount of time hiding their stuttering and substituting their words. They can feel very powerless in their life as they will eat food on menus they don’t want to eat, or say or agree to things they don’t really think, but it’s easier to say.

I myself and so many other people have experienced covert stuttering as a survival strategy in their life. Take my word for it, it’s EXHAUSTING and nauseating.

4. Some people who stutter find it easier to not stutter on swear words and so putting swear words in a sentence helps to “keep them a float” so to speak. Thanks Samuel L Jackson for explaining this so well. 😉

5. Stuttering is a neurological condition. It is not caused by nervousness or anxiety, but there are many environmental factors that can influence someone’s stuttering. As the brain is so complex and networked, emotions can influence stuttering but not cause it.

6. Stuttering can range in severity and presents differently for different people. So, what is helpful for one person, isn’t helpful for everyone. Please, we don’t need to hear…”You know my Uncle did _____ and now he doesn’t stutter anymore!” Really!?! You sure about that??

7. Just because someone can be fluent in one situation doesn’t mean they can be fluent in other situations.

For example, some people can experience high levels of fluency in speech therapists office. It’s like if someone was asking you to walk along a plank of wood on the floor of their office. It’s safe. Then when you go out in the world, it’s like that plank of wood is now balancing between two 30 floor buildings and now you need to walk across it. Very different. Every speaking experience depending on the context that plank of wood will move to different floors. Social event with your best friends, maybe you are just walking across the board one story up. Job interview, 30 stories up. Lunch with co-workers in an supportive environment, 5 stories up. Phone call with someone in a position of authority, 15 stories up.

8. Many people who stutter have other family members who stutter. For people who don’t know if they do or not, it is still possible. 2 and 3 generations ago, you can imagine how important it was for people to hide their stuttering. My grandmother didn’t even label her father as a stutterer, “that was just how he talked”. You never know!

9. Stuttering changes over a life time. How I stuttered as a kid, was different as a teenager, was different as a young adult, was different when I was pregnant with both of my kids, and my stuttering is different now. I hear from people who are in their senior years, that their stuttering has changed when they became older too.

When I was a kid I was covert, then I hit teenage years and I was assessed as severe and the covert again, and then moderate as a young adult… you get the idea. When I went to speech therapy I was fluent enough to be covert again. Told everyone I was cured and I didn’t stutter anymore. Not.

10. 1% of the international population stutter. In every country, city and town. It would be very weird if there was a country out there who didn’t have anyone who stuttered. If we exist everywhere, than one can conclude it’s normal. There is a lot of ableism and we are constantly being told by society that we need to be fixed. That we need to “work on ourselves” and if I just tried hard enough, we wouldn’t stutter anymore. That is fucking bullshit.

Happy International Stuttering Awareness Day everyone!!

Reach out and get support! There are lots of support groups and conferences to reach out and meet your fellow community members. 🙂

Canadian Stuttering Association
National Stuttering Association
International Stuttering Association
British Stammering Association
SAY: Stuttering Association for the Young
Friends Who Stutter
Beyond Imagination