How do I tell whether my child is actually meeting therapy goals?

If your child receives therapeutic services at school as part of their IEP, such as occupational therapy or physical therapy, the therapist is supposed to help your child work toward goals and send you regular reports of their progress. What do you do if the therapist says your child is achieving their goals at school, but you're not seeing that progress at home?

If you're worried about how this will affect your child's IEP services, you can ask for a note to be added to the IEP that the parent is not seeing these goals being generalized. You can also ask for information about goal progress throughout the school year and ask about adding generalizing goals to the IEP. You may want to ask if anyone else on the IEP team other than the therapist is seeing your child meet these goals.

If the therapist allows, you could come in and do an observation to see how your child is meeting the goals during therapy sessions. If in-session observation isn't appropriate, ask the therapist if they would be willing to send you a recording.

Sometimes, kids are very different at home than they are in school. Let the team know if you're not seeing what they’re reporting, and find out what the team’s thoughts are on that. If both the classroom teacher and therapist are seeing the skills/growth, that may mean that there is some generalization going on. You can ask for the therapist to train you in the strategies they are using at school so that you can also do it at home.

If your child speaks different languages at school and at home, that could also contribute to seeing different outcomes.

For more information on in-school therapies, see our article What Are Related Services in an IEP?.