We can do better: Early Intervention

The last day of my son's first preschool year his teacher told me... Your son is doing better now. I was not sure what she meant by that comment. And it was delivered without any additional. information. That was a failed attempt at trying to say my son was...perhaps... differently wired.

Based on what I've seen and heard, many preschool teachers are not equipped or trained for this difficult conversation. (In my case, it was his teacher's first preschool job). Many preschools are afraid of misdiagnosing or of being perceived as diagnosing, so they circumvent the topic altogether. At the same time some parents are often not prepared for this hard conversation (especially if it is their first child) and therefore don't want to hear it. It can easily backfire on the preschool if not handled effectively. So sadly, these poor kids get passed up for early detection and early intervention...far too often.

As I understand it, these early years are the most formative for some kids like mine to expedite 'training' for their neural pathways. In other words the more support they get, and the earlier they get it...the more likely it will help them to develop skills to address future challenges. The good news is that there are early developmental and intervention support programs available, but a child has to first be evaluated, diagnosed, and then enrolled into that system to be eligible for that support, Presently, at least in Oregon, that is heavily reliant upon these aforementioned difficult conversations and parental acknowledgements in order to happen.

We are one of the lucky families graced with that hard conversation early on, and grateful for it. After that first year of preschool, we took our to son to a different Pre-k - and they recognized there was something different about him. They didn't try to diagnose him and they were unable to steer us with what to do next. We were left to figure it out on our own.....I'll save that story for the next post....

Meanwhile, I believe our community can do better. (I can hope!) I envision a doable communications based program that would cast a net to catch these kids. Perhaps other states do this already, but here's how I see it: We give preschools the tools to conduct a basic standardized checklist evaluation, with some minimal training. Not all that different in concept than the standardized reading or hearing tests. We communicate to all parents there is a required evaluation to uncover if a child may potentially need some extra support or evaluations. And, if muliple triggers are found -- they can opt to get their child further evaluated. Standardized information could be provided to guide them to that next step and inform them of the benefits of early support. This would create some basic awareness among all parents; some structure for the preschools to provide a critical service without diagnosing; and initialize next steps to support these kids. All kids deserve early support and we can do better to provide it.