By Taryn Ross, in collaboration with my mom.
I am not the best writer. My IEP says so, officially. But every April, during Month of the Military Child, I feel like I have to say something. The voices of kids like me don’t always make it into these conversations. And this year, as a senior about to graduate, I finally feel ready to use mine.
My name is Taryn. I’m the youngest of four in my military family. I have a learning disability, and I’ve spent my whole life learning how to start over.
A Different Kind of Military Kid
“People say military kids are like dandelions, that we just grow wherever we’re planted. I get it. But that’s never felt like me. I’m more like a lily. A lily doesn’t just grow anywhere. It needs the right conditions, the right care, and the right support to actually bloom.” That’s what military kids with learning disabilities need too. Not just to be dropped somewhere new and expected to figure it out, but to be taken care of. On purpose. Every single time we move.
There are about 1.4 million military children in the United States. Most of us move six to nine times before we finish high school. I am one of those kids. Multiple states. Multiple schools. And every single time, the same exhausting process of trying to prove what I need to people who don’t know me and have never seen my file, or sometimes don’t even know where it is.
The Gap Nobody Talks About
For families in the Exceptional Family Member Program, moving is more complicated than most people understand. EFMP is supposed to ensure that service members with family members who have special needs are assigned to locations where those needs can be met. That matters a lot. But being in EFMP doesn’t mean your child’s school services automatically come with you when you move. There is a real gap between what is supposed to happen and what actually happens when you walk into a new school building, and kids like me fall into that gap all the time.
An IEP, or Individualized Education Program, is a legal document that outlines exactly what support a school must provide me. It’s supposed to follow me when we move. But moving IEP services from one state to another takes time, and that time is not spent in a waiting room. It’s spent in a classroom, trying to keep up without the help I’m supposed to have. During one of our moves, I went six weeks at my new school without any of my accommodations. Six weeks of falling behind while papers were being processed somewhere I couldn’t see. Six weeks of just hoping my teacher would be patient with me, even though nobody had officially told her she needed to be.
Six weeks doesn’t sound like a lot. For a student with a learning disability, it really is.
Learning to Speak Up
For most of my life, I let other people do the talking for me. My mom was the one who fought for my diagnosis, fought to get my IEP, and fought for my services at every new school we showed up at. I was grateful. But I was also really quiet about my own needs. I didn’t think it was my place. I wasn’t sure anyone would take me seriously if I tried.
That started to change the more we moved. I got tired of waiting for things to be figured out for me and started paying attention to what my IEP actually said. I started asking questions in meetings instead of just sitting there. I started following up when things were taking too long, and speaking up when something wasn’t working, even when it felt uncomfortable.
It still feels uncomfortable sometimes. But I do it anyway. Because nobody knows my experience better than I do. Not the new teacher who just got my file. Not the counselor who mispronounced my name three times. Not the administrator who kept telling me things would kick in soon. I’m the one who knows what I need. I just had to learn that saying so out loud was allowed.
That is probably the most important thing my military childhood taught me, even though it was not easy to learn.
What Needs to Change
I’m telling this story because Partners in PROMISE believes stories like mine should actually change things. EFMP families already have a lot on their plates. Fighting to get a child’s school services set up from scratch every time they move should not be one more thing we have to figure out on our own.
To the EFMP Families Reading This
If you are a parent going through this, I want you to know that what your family deals with is real and it matters. The moves, the new schools, the phone calls, the meetings, and the waiting, all of it matters. And if your kid is old enough, I hope you’ll start letting them into that process. It was scary for me at first. Now it feels like the most important thing I know how to do.
I’m the youngest of four. We’ve all carried this life in different ways. What I know after all of it is that military kids aren’t just tough by nature. We’re tough because we had to be. And we do so much better when the people around us actually show up with the support and the systems to back us up.
We are still growing. We deserve to be seen. And we deserve systems that are built for us, not ones we have to fight through every time we move.
About the Author – Taryn Ross
Taryn Ross is a high school senior and the youngest of four children in her military family. She is a member of the Partners in PROMISE community and an advocate for EFMP families navigating special education transitions. In the fall, Taryn will attend Mississippi State University, where she will major in Special Education.
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