What Is Special Instruction? Part 3

Providing families with information, skills, and support.

This is the third in a four-part series exploring “What is Special Instruction?”

The Division of Early Childhood has this to say in the position statement “The Role of Special Instruction in Early Intervention.” Special Instruction includes:

The designing of learning environments and activities that promote the child’s acquisition of skills in a variety of developmental areas, including cognitive processes and social interactions,

Curriculum planning, including the planned interaction of personnel, materials, and time and space, that leads to achieving outcomes in the child’s individualized family service plan,

Providing families with information, skills, and support related to enhancing the skill development of the child; and

Working with the child to enhance the child’s development

Special Instruction is an Early Intervention Service that provides families with information, skills, and support to help their child’s development

Let’s explore the part of special instruction that includes “providing families with information, skills, and support related to enhancing the skill development of the child.”

Each family I meet is different, but each is the same. These families may have different ways of going about it, but each family that has willingly entered our voluntary Early Intervention program has one thing in common. They all care very deeply about their children.

They want what is best. They want to do what they think is best.

Everyone (including each Early Intervention parent) is doing the best they can with what they’ve got in that moment.

Now, what we professionals think is best may not always be the same as what the family thinks. As therapists, what is important to us may not be in line 100% with what is important to them.

However, one of our jobs as Special Instructors is still to provide families with information, skills, and support. Notice it did not say manipulation and guilt. We are called to provide information, skills, and support to enhance their child’s skill development.

Special Instructors Provide Families with Information

This may be broad. Giving the mom information on how to apply for disability income indirectly serves to enhance the skill development of her child. If the mom has the money to pay for gas for doctor appointments, the child will have medical care, and his development will be enhanced. Supporting moms searching for quality childcare will enhance the child’s skill development. And so on and so forth.

Information I provide to my families sometimes comes in the form of handouts related to the developmental milestones we are working on. It might include handouts related to their child’s diagnosis too. It depends on the family’s “thirst” for knowledge about how much I give them.

Special Instructors Provide Families with Skills

So many little skills may come naturally to some parents but may not, such as how to increase tummy time while decreasing crying time. Other things include language-stimulating activities, how to use parentese, how to provide the right sensory stimulation, or how to read distress cues in their child.

Special Instructors Provide Families with Support

Support looks like being there to talk about stressors, offering encouragement, or maybe just listening to what is going on with their child. These families are often going through difficult experiences related to their child’s health, and they need someone to listen who understands what they are going through.

What are other ways that you provide information, skills, and support to your parents?