“Social and Emotional Development in Early Intervention: A Skills Gide for Working with Children”—Thoughts for Professionals

In my last blog I mentioned that I recently read “Social and Emotional Development in Early Intervention: A Skills Gide for Working with Children” by Mona Delahooke, PhD.

I found the book to be a good overview of social emotional development, with concrete suggestions on how to apply frameworks to individual families and within my practice as a Speech Language Pathologist.

As a provider, the parts of the book that stood out to me most involved stress levels in parent-child dyads and mindfulness, as well as clear information on avoiding “disorderism”. So provider to provider, here’s what I found most interesting.

Prior to working early intervention, I came from a hospital setting and before that a high school setting, and at both, I had very little contact with parents and families. In fact, working on a brain injury unit, I was unable to share details of my life for privacy reasons. So walking into someone’s home on my first day or early intervention was A TRIP. I realized that I needed to be more open, more engaging, and that I was there to help EVERYONE in the family, not just the child. What a change.

Chapter 2 of the above book discussed monitoring what we as professionals say and do in order to keep stress levels in caregivers low, so that in turn, the child's stress levels can remain low as well. Insert mind blown emoji here-because, wow. Of course I realize what I say and do has an effect on everyone, but this was such a clear explanation. If caregivers can remain hopeful and with low levels of stress, they can interact with their children more naturally, and in turn, their children will be happier, healthier, and more available to learn. BOOM. That’s what early intervention is all about.

Now how can we as professionals do that, to support you, the parents? Well, we can start by shifting to a “strengths based approach”. We can talk about what a child CAN do rather than what they can’t. Within the larger early intervention landscape of fixing and remediating, this can be a tall order. It takes a real mind shift, and one that I’m continuing to work on as a professional.

Curious, want some examples? Dr. Delahooke lists the following on page 30…

• If a child is memorizing books, note an “exceptional visual memory” instead of “hyper focus on topics”

• If a child controls everything, note they’re “trying to feel less stress” rather than “problematic behaviors”

• If a child is attached to certain toys/themes, note they’re “showing a passion for things at an early age” rather than “narrow/restricted interests”

I really appreciated how well laid out and clear this was, and it really got me thinking of other ways I can incorporate this into my practice. When we focus on strengths, we can harness them to improve areas of need and take the child’s uniqueness into account.

Now, Dr. Delahooke is quick to note that professionals should never water down or minimize deficits, and I think this is an important piece to the puzzle. Using a strengths based approach doesn’t mean no services are needed, it just is a different way of framing the child so that the family and team can take into account all the things that make them who they are.

And this all relates to keeping the child and parents (and honestly, the therapist) emotionally regulated. When everyone is calm, they can engage in meaningful ways to help push the child further and they are more in tune with what the child and family need. This creates time to be “in the moment” and for everyone to “enjoy the moment” with the child, which ultimately will boost social and emotional development.

So, I guess the book reinforced that even though I’m not a mental health professional, my everyday interactions with clients can help or hurt depending on how I frame situations for caregivers, and personally, I’m looking forward to growing my language to include strengths based assessments and positive interactions.

If you’re looking for information on Dr. Delahooke, you can find her website here.

And here is an Amazon link to the above mentioned book.