The Most Important Thing My Son’s Teachers Ever Read Wasn’t His IEP

Every August felt the same.

The backpacks were packed. The school supplies had been bought. Families filled social media with first-day pictures, excited smiles, and fresh starts.

While everyone else seemed excited about the beginning of another school year, I sat at my computer wondering something entirely different.

Who will my son get this year? Will his teachers take the time to know him? Will they understand that he isn’t lazy? Will they see his intelligence before they see his struggles? Or will I spend another year trying to convince people that the little boy I knew at home was not the child they thought they knew in the classroom?

For thirteen years, those questions followed me into every new school year.

The letter I eventually wrote for Gabe’s teachers only existed for the last four of those years. Before that, every August was filled with the same uncertainty, the same worry, and the same hope that maybe this year would be different. Sometimes it was. Sometimes it wasn’t.

If you’re reading this because you’re preparing to send your own child back to school, I want you to know something before we go any further.

I know what it feels like.

I know what it feels like to sit in meetings where people discuss your child as though they aren’t sitting right beside you, what it feels like to explain the same disability over and over again to people who have never met your child before, what it feels like to celebrate the teachers who truly see your child and quietly grieve the ones who never will. Most of all, I know what it feels like to carry the weight of advocating for someone you love more than anything in the world.

This isn’t the story of a letter, it’s the story of why I realized my son needed one.

Before You Meet My Child

Before I tell you about the meetings, the accommodations, the evaluations, or the years we spent advocating, I want you to meet my son, Gabe.

Gabe is brilliant.

He’s the kind of kid who loves figuring out how things work. Give him something mechanical and he’ll take it apart just to understand it (hello every Nerf gun he has ever owned). Once he becomes interested in something, he dives in completely.

Music became one of those passions.

Over the years, Gabe has learned to play acoustic guitar, electric guitar, bass guitar, drums, keyboard, alto saxophone, tenor saxophone, baritone saxophone, trumpet, and trombone. The only formal lessons he ever had were for guitar and saxophone. Everything else he taught himself because he wanted to learn.

That’s Gabe. Curious, creative, passionate, determined.

If you met him today, those are probably the first things you’d notice. You wouldn’t immediately see executive functioning challenges or accommodations – you’d see a bright young man with endless curiosity and a passion for learning about things that interest him. 

He’s also neurodivergent. Like so many neurodivergent kids, Gabe didn’t struggle because he wasn’t capable. He struggled because the way he learned didn’t always match the way school expected him to learn. 

Unfortunately, not everyone took the time to understand the difference.

The Day Someone Called My Son Stupid

There are moments from thirteen years of advocating that have faded with time. This one never will. Gabe was in sixth grade, sitting in his honors math class to meet with his teacher. We had been struggling, and I knew something wasn’t working. I expected the meeting to be about finding solutions.

Instead, I sat across from his teacher while she looked at my son and told us that he wasn’t capable of doing math above a fourth-grade level and that he was too stupid to be in her honors class.

She said it in front of him.

As a parent, there are moments when your heart breaks so quickly you don’t even know how to respond. That was one of mine. The hardest part wasn’t that she believed it. The hardest part was that Gabe heard it.

Those words didn’t stay in that classroom. They followed him home. They became another voice in the back of his mind questioning whether he really was capable.

The truth was, she wasn’t seeing Gabe, she was seeing the outcome. She saw unfinished work. She saw mistakes. She saw someone who wasn’t learning the way she expected him to. What she didn’t see was everything happening before those mistakes.

She wasn’t teaching to him. She was teaching at him.

She would explain the lesson and expect every student to understand it the same way, rarely stopping to find out whether he actually understood, and didn’t stop to help him work through where his thinking had broken down.

When he made mistakes, there wasn’t curiosity about why he had made them. There was simply an expectation that he should already know. When he didn’t, she decided that meant he wasn’t capable.

That’s one of the hardest realities of raising a child with an invisible disability. People often judge the result without ever asking what happened before it.

Was the instruction clear? Did they understand the first step but lose the next three because their working memory was overloaded? Were they overwhelmed? Were they anxious?

Did they need someone to explain it differently? Or had they reached the point where they were too afraid to admit they didn’t understand?

Those are very different questions than, “Why didn’t you do the work?” Unfortunately, not everyone asks them.

That experience stayed with me for years – not because one teacher misunderstood my son, but because I realized how much damage assumptions can do when they’re made by someone a child is supposed to trust.

It also taught me something I would carry for the rest of our journey. No piece of paperwork – not a 504 plan, not an IEP, not an evaluation – could make someone see Gabe if they had already decided who he was.

Paperwork Doesn’t Know Your Child

As Gabe got older, we reached another major transition. He was leaving middle school and preparing for high school.

I knew his 504 plan wasn’t going to be enough anymore. Middle school had been a challenge to get the teachers to recognize and utilize his accommodations. Yes it’s the law to give them to him, but that was the reality that we had faced for 3 years – fighting to get them implemented in certain classes with certain teachers.

I wanted stronger protections. I wanted a case manager. I wanted a team that understood executive functioning challenges and could support him beyond simply checking accommodation boxes.

That meant beginning the process of qualifying him for special education services. Anyone who has been through that process knows it isn’t simple.

First came the evaluations. People Gabe and I had never met came to the school to test Gabe. They spent a relatively short amount of time with him and then disappeared to write reports that would help determine the educational support he would receive.

Then came the ARD meeting. I remember sitting around that table while professionals discussed what accommodations Gabe should and shouldn’t have. One conversation in particular still stands out.

There was discussion about removing some of the self-regulation tools Gabe relied on – his fidgets and stuffies in particular. As they talked, I remember thinking the same thing over and over – You don’t know my child.

Finally, I said it out loud. I told them that none of the people in that room actually knew Gabe. They knew test scores. They knew observations from a few hours. They knew reports. But they didn’t know the boy who had spent years figuring out how to navigate a world that wasn’t built for the way his brain worked. They didn’t know what happened after school. They didn’t know what strategies had failed. They didn’t know which ones had quietly changed his life.

Eventually, we came to an agreement on his accommodations. The meeting ended. I went home emotionally exhausted, wondering if I had done enough. Then something unexpected happened.

A few days later, the diagnostician called me. She told me something I will never forget. She said, “You were right.” She admitted that they didn’t really know Gabe.

And then she made a suggestion that would change the way I approached every school year after that. She told me I should write a letter introducing Gabe to his teachers.

Not another evaluation. Not another formal document. A letter. Something that would help them meet the child before they met the paperwork.

At the time, I wasn’t sure one more piece of paper could possibly make a difference. Looking back now, I realize it wasn’t just another piece of paper – it was the first opportunity to introduce my son as a person instead of a diagnosis. And that changed everything.

The Letter Was Never the Solution

When I sat down to write that first letter, I honestly didn’t know if it would make any difference. After all, Gabe already had evaluations. He had an IEP. His teachers had access to accommodation plans. Why would one more document matter? I quickly realized I was asking the wrong question.

The purpose of the letter wasn’t to replace any of those things. It was to do something none of those documents could do. Before I talked about executive functioning, before I talked about accommodations, and before I talked about his diagnosis, I talked about Gabe.

I wrote about the young man who loved music and could spend hours teaching himself a new instrument simply because he was curious. I wrote about how mechanical his mind was and how, if something interested him, he would dive into it with everything he had. I wrote about the things that made him smile, the things that frustrated him, and the strategies that helped him succeed.

I wanted his teachers to know there was a real person behind the paperwork waiting on their desks. Because once someone knows your child, accommodations stop feeling like special treatment and they start making sense.

But something else happened after I wrote the letter. I stopped assuming that sending it was enough.

A Letter Opens the Door. It Doesn’t Build the Relationship.

Every year after that, I asked each of Gabe’s teachers if they would be willing to meet with me shortly after the school year began. Not because I wanted to tell them how to do their jobs. Not because I wanted to become “that parent.” I wanted to understand their classroom.

Every teacher teaches differently. Every classroom runs differently. And accommodations that make perfect sense in one class sometimes look completely different in another.

Those meetings became conversations. We talked about what accommodations would actually look like in their classroom.

What happened during tests? How were assignments turned in? What happened if Gabe got stuck? Would reminders be verbal? Written? Digital?

How would they prefer that I communicate if something wasn’t working? Would email be best?

Would they rather I reach out through the school’s messaging system? Was there another process they preferred?

These sound like small questions. They’re not.

Because when everyone understands the expectations before a problem happens, it’s much easier to solve the problem when it does happen.

Those meetings also did something I never expected. They helped me stop seeing teachers as obstacles. They became partners.

Not every teacher embraced that partnership., but many did. And those relationships changed Gabe’s educational experience far more than any accommodation document ever could.

Finding the People Who Saw My Son

I wish I could tell you that every teacher read the letter. I can’t.

I wish I could tell you every teacher wanted to know Gabe. I can’t.

I wish I could tell you that every educator understood executive functioning challenges or invisible disabilities. I can’t.

The reality is that some people had already decided who Gabe was before they ever met him. No letter was going to change that. That was one of the hardest lessons I had to learn.

For a long time, I thought my job was convincing every teacher to understand my son. Eventually, I realized that wasn’t possible. Instead, I started focusing on something much more important – finding the people who wanted to understand him. Every school has them.

The teachers who stay after class because they noticed something wasn’t quite right. The administrator who quietly checks in after a difficult week. The counselor who remembers the little details. The case manager who treats your child like a person instead of a file.

Those people become your champions. And sometimes one champion is enough to change everything.

The Email That Changed Everything

When Gabe started high school, our relationship with his case manager was just beginning. We hadn’t started our monthly meetings yet. In fact, we were still trying to figure out how we were all going to work together.

Early that year, Gabe had a class with a long-term substitute teacher. Almost immediately, problems started showing up. He wasn’t receiving his accommodations.

One evening, around nine o’clock, after another frustrating day, I sent his case manager an email explaining what was happening. I didn’t expect to hear back until the next day.

Honestly, I expected she would probably need another day or two to investigate before she could tell me anything useful.

About thirty minutes later, my phone buzzed. It was her. I remember staring at the screen in disbelief.

She explained that substitute teachers typically didn’t have access to students’ accommodation information. Since this teacher was going to be there long term, she agreed that it needed to be addressed immediately. She told me she would look into it first thing in the morning.

The next day, she followed up. Not just to tell me she had received my email. To tell me what she had done. It may not sound extraordinary.

But after years of wondering if emails had disappeared into a black hole, after years of waiting, after years of feeling like I had to fight just to get someone to listen, that response meant everything. It wasn’t just that she answered. It was that she cared enough to act.

Trust isn’t built in one big moment. It’s built through dozens of small ones. That email was the first brick.

The Meetings That Changed Everything

Not long after that, we started meeting every month. At first, they were simply a way for us to stay ahead of problems. Over time, they became one of the most valuable tools we had.

If you’ve ever had a neurodivergent teenager, you’ve probably had this conversation:

“Did you turn in your assignment?” “Yeah.”

“Then why is it showing as missing?” “I don’t know.”

Now multiply that conversation by every class. Every week. Every grading cycle.

The online gradebook became a constant source of confusion. Was the assignment actually missing? Had Gabe turned it in without putting his name on it? (Yes… that really happened…more than once!) Had the teacher simply not graded it yet? Nobody seemed to know.

Those monthly meetings helped us replace assumptions with answers. His case manager would reach out to teachers, and she would find out what had actually happened.

Sometimes the assignment really was missing. Sometimes it was sitting in a stack waiting to be graded. Sometimes it had been turned in but couldn’t be identified. Sometimes there was a misunderstanding that could be fixed before it became a failing grade.

As the end of each grading cycle approached, those conversations became even more important. Instead of scrambling after report cards came home, we had the opportunity to solve problems while there was still time.

But those meetings became about much more than missing assignments. She got to know Gabe.

She knew when he needed someone to advocate for him. She also knew when he needed someone to hold him accountable. Those are not the same thing, and understanding the difference takes a relationship.

For two years, Gabe and his sister, Soph, attended the same school. Even though Soph wasn’t on her caseload, his case manager would check in with her too. She wanted to know how she was doing. She wanted to make sure she had support if she needed it.

That’s when I realized something – she wasn’t just supporting Gabe. She was supporting our family. And she never made me feel like I was carrying this alone.

After years of fighting to make sure people understood my son, I had finally found someone who was willing to help carry the weight. Every parent deserves someone like that. Not because they’ll solve every problem, but because no parent should have to advocate alone.

The Weight No One Sees

People often tell parents of neurodivergent children to “keep fighting.” And they’re right. Our children need us to advocate for them. But almost no one talks about what that fight costs.

For thirteen years, every school year began with hope. “Maybe this year would be different.”

Maybe this would be the teacher who truly understood executive functioning. Maybe this would be the administrator who saw Gabe’s strengths before his struggles. Maybe this would be the year I wouldn’t have to explain my son all over again.

Sometimes it happened. Sometimes it didn’t.

Every meeting mattered because I knew the outcome could shape how Gabe saw himself.

Every email mattered because I knew small misunderstandings had a way of becoming much bigger problems if they weren’t addressed early.

Every phone call mattered. Every grading cycle mattered. Every teacher mattered.

When you’re advocating for your child, your brain never really turns off. You replay conversations in your head, wondering if you explained something clearly enough.

You second-guess yourself after meetings. Should I have pushed harder? Did I push too hard? Did I forget to mention something important?

You celebrate the victories quietly because you’re already thinking about the next challenge waiting around the corner.

It becomes a weight you carry every day. Not because you resent your child – never that. You carry it because you love them. And because you know they shouldn’t have to fight those battles alone.

That’s the part I wish more people understood. Parents aren’t asking for special treatment. We’re asking for understanding. We’re asking for someone to see the child we’ve known and loved their entire life.

When History Started Repeating Itself

By the time Gabe was nearing the end of high school, our daughter “T” was preparing for middle school.

T’s journey has always looked different from Gabe’s.

As a young child, she was diagnosed with apraxia of speech. For years, she worked incredibly hard in speech therapy, and together we celebrated every milestone as she found her voice. While she overcame many of those early speech challenges, those years shaped her confidence in ways that stayed with her.

She struggled with dyslexia. Short-term memory was difficult for her. Anxiety often showed up during tests and in situations where she was expected to demonstrate what she knew. I watched test scores paint a picture that didn’t reflect the bright, capable young woman I saw every day at home.

As she got older, other challenges became more apparent.

The more I watched, the more I began noticing other traits and behaviors that made me stop and pay attention. I didn’t have all the answers, and I wasn’t interested in putting another label on my child before it was appropriate to do so.

But after thirteen years of advocating for Gabe, I had learned to look beneath the surface. Experience had changed the questions I asked.

I knew that learning challenges rarely exist in isolation. I knew that anxiety is often the visible symptom of a much deeper struggle. I knew that what looks like a lack of ability from the outside can actually be the result of a brain working incredibly hard just to keep up. Most importantly, I knew what it felt like to watch other people miss what I was seeing every day.

As we looked at middle school options, the reality in front of us became more complicated.

Her test scores weren’t high enough to qualify for the magnet programs we had hoped she could attend – not because she wasn’t capable, but because standardized testing had never captured what she actually knew. The neighborhood schools available to us were rough, and the schools with stronger academic reputations were highly competitive.

At the same time, I found myself recognizing patterns that felt painfully familiar. Not because T was Gabe – she isn’t. They are wonderfully different people with different strengths, different personalities, and different challenges.

But I had spent thirteen years learning how neurodivergence can present itself in ways that aren’t always obvious to the people around a child. I knew what it looked like when a bright child wasn’t able to show everything they were capable of.

I knew what it looked like when confidence slowly eroded because school measured only what was difficult instead of celebrating what came naturally. And I knew what years of advocating through those challenges could require from a family…from me.

Then one day, it hit me. If I was seeing what I thought I was seeing, we were about to begin another journey. Not Gabe’s journey. T’s.

Another season of asking questions. Another season of searching for answers. Another season of helping educators understand a child they had only just met.

I remember looking at my husband and realizing something I never imagined I would say out loud. I wasn’t sure I had another seven years of fighting left in me.

That sentence filled me with guilt. Not because I loved my daughter any less – I am a fierce mama bear and will fight for my children until my last breath. What I wasn’t sure I had left was the emotional energy to fight the same battles with a different child.

After thirteen years, I was simply tired. Not tired of advocating. Tired of having to convince people to see what had been right in front of them all along.

What I Learned After Thirteen Years

Looking back now, I realize something I wish someone had told me when Gabe was in kindergarten. The accommodations mattered. The IEP mattered. The evaluations mattered. The letter mattered. But none of those things mattered as much as the relationships.

The teachers who took the time to know Gabe changed his experience. The case manager who answered an email at nine-thirty at night changed our experience. The educators who asked questions instead of making assumptions changed his experience.

One person who truly sees your child can change everything.

I can’t promise every teacher will become that person. I wish I could. I can’t promise every administrator will understand. I can’t promise every accommodation will be implemented perfectly.

But I can promise this – never underestimate the impact of one champion. Find them. Support them. Partner with them. They are out there. And when you find them, your child won’t just feel supported. They’ll feel seen.

Why We Built NeuroLocker

Looking back now, I realize we had been building NeuroLocker long before we ever wrote a line of code.

We were building it every time we created another reminder system because telling Gabe to “just remember” clearly wasn’t working. We were building it every time we broke an assignment into smaller steps.

Every time we created a checklist. Every time we tried a planner, a timer, a calendar, a visual cue, or a new routine. Every time a teacher meeting helped us understand where the system had broken down. Every time we found a strategy that helped Gabe carry a little less on his own.

At the time, none of those things felt like the beginning of a company. They felt like parenting. They felt like survival. They felt like doing whatever we could to help a brilliant child succeed in environments that often measured the very things that were hardest for him.

People often ask why my daughter and I decided to build NeuroLocker. They assume the answer begins with technology – it doesn’t. It begins with lived experience.

It begins with thirteen years of learning that executive functioning challenges don’t disappear because someone tells a student to “try harder.”

It begins with watching capable, intelligent kids start to believe they aren’t smart because the systems around them weren’t designed for the way they think.

And it begins with realizing that every accommodation, every planner, every reminder, every meeting, every strategy, every teacher letter, and every conversation had one thing in common.

They were all tools – helpful tools, important tools. But they were never the goal.

The goal was helping Gabe understand himself, carry less, and be understood by the people around him. Because when people understood him, they knew how to support him. When they understood him, they stopped confusing executive functioning challenges with laziness. When they understood him, they saw his strengths instead of only his struggles.

NeuroLocker was built from that same belief. Not because an app can replace relationships – it can’t. Not because technology can replace great teachers, thoughtful parents, or the people who become champions for a child – it shouldn’t.

We built NeuroLocker because we wanted to create another tool – one that helps neurodivergent people capture what matters, organize what feels overwhelming, and externalize some of what their brains have been trying to carry alone.

A tool that can support the person using it. A tool that can help others understand what support actually looks like. A tool built from the belief that people do better when they are given systems that work with their brains instead of constantly asking them to fight against them.

In many ways, NeuroLocker grew from the same lesson the diagnostician taught me all those years ago. Before you can truly support someone, you have to know them. You have to see the person before you see the struggle. NeuroLocker is another way of saying, “I see you.”

Before This School Year Begins…

If you’re reading this while preparing for another school year, I hope you’ll remember one thing – your child is so much more than the paperwork they’ll carry into the classroom. They’re more than a diagnosis. More than a test score. More than an accommodation plan. More than an IEP.

They’re the child who makes you laugh. The one who surprises you every day. The one who has worked harder than most people will ever realize just to navigate a world that wasn’t built for the way they think and learn.

You know that child better than anyone else ever will. Your child’s teachers don’t know those things yet. But they want to. Or at least, the very best ones do. Help them meet your child before they meet the paperwork.

Tell them what your child loves. Tell them what brings them joy. Tell them what success looks like. Tell them what overwhelm looks like. Tell them what you’ve learned over years of living life together.

Because when educators understand the child, the accommodations begin to make sense.

Will every teacher read your letter? Probably not. Will every teacher fully understand? Probably not. But some will. And sometimes, one person is all it takes to change a child’s entire school year. That’s why I still believe in the letter. Not because it’s the solution, but because it can be the beginning of one.

If our family’s journey helps make your family’s journey just a little easier, then every difficult meeting, every frustrating email, every tear shed in parking lots, and every August filled with uncertainty will have been worth it.

One Last Thing Before You Go…

Over the years, that teacher letter evolved.

Every August, I updated it based on what we had learned the year before. I refined it after conversations with teachers, after IEP meetings, after successes, and after mistakes. It became more than an introduction – it became a way to help educators see Gabe as a whole person before they ever saw his accommodations.

Eventually, I realized that if this letter had helped our family, it might help someone else’s too.

So I’ve taken everything I learned over thirteen years of advocating for Gabe, partnering with educators, and finding what actually helped, and turned it into a resource you can make your own.

Not so you can copy my words, but so you can tell your child’s story. My hope is that it helps you begin conversations, build relationships, and find the champions every child deserves.

→ Download the Free Guide to Introducing Your Child to Their Teachers 

A customizable template, writing prompts, and practical tips to help you introduce your 

child before the school year begins. 

Soon, the backpacks will be packed. The school supplies will be bought. Families will post their first-day pictures, excited smiles, and fresh starts.

And somewhere, another parent will sit quietly wondering: Who will my child get this year? Will their teachers take the time to know them? Will they see their intelligence before they see their struggles?

I can’t promise that every teacher will. But some will. And sometimes, one person who truly sees a child can change an entire school year. Because before the paperwork, before the accommodations, before the diagnosis, every child deserves the chance to be known.

Talk soon!

Jill