This weekend, flags are flying, fireworks are planned, and independence is being celebrated everywhere you look.

And if you're the parent of a child with an IEP, that word, independence, probably follows you into places that have nothing to do with July 4th.

It follows you into IEP meetings.

It follows you into conversations with teachers.

It might even follow you into quiet moments where you wonder, is my child really making progress?

Because somewhere along the way, a belief got quietly planted:

If your child needs the people around them to grow, that means they aren't really progressing.

And I want to gently, but directly, tell you, that belief is costing you something.

It's costing your child something too.

Here's the truth nobody says out loud in that IEP meeting:

None of us grow alone. Not one of us.

Archbishop Desmond Tutu said it this way: "The fundamental law of human beings is interdependence. A person is a person through other people."

In southern Africa this is called ubuntu, I am who I am because of what we all are. I am not because I think. I am because I belong, I participate, I share, I work with others.

That's not a description of a child who isn't making progress.

That's a description of every human being who has ever grown into who they were meant to be.

When your child moves through their school day and a genuine connection forms naturally, a classmate who naturally gravitates toward them, a friendship that develops without anyone orchestrating it, that is not a sign that your child can't do it on their own.

That is your child doing exactly what humans have always done to become more fully themselves.

And here's what we lose when we don't see it that way.

When classrooms only celebrate what a child can do alone, we miss the gifts each child brings to everyone else. Your child carries a perspective, a way of seeing the world, a strength that nobody else in that room has. 

When they are separated from that community, or when their natural connections are seen as a weakness instead of a wonder, every child in that room loses something.
 

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. declared: "I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be. And you can never be what you ought to be until I am what I ought to be."

That's not just a civil rights statement.

That's a classroom statement. A community statement. A statement about your child.

When we build classrooms where every child belongs, participates and shares, where natural connections are celebrated instead of questioned, every child grows more than they ever could alone.

Including yours.

This July 4th, celebrate independence, and declare INTERdependence.

Because the goal was never to go it alone. The goal was always to become more fully human, together.

 Until each child belongs,

P.S. Progress doesn't always look like doing it alone. Sometimes it looks like your child who knows how to connect, belong, and grow alongside others. That's not a step backward, that's everything.