Remember with me. You are a young child—in your elementary years—and you find yourself in an ice-cream shop. Let’s call it Baskin Robbins for the sake of nostalgia. You can barely see over the freezers but as you gaze up and down the line at all the different flavors to choose from, your excitement and childlike wonder is interrupted by… stress. You feel that flicker of overwhelm becoming increasingly more intrusive because you know you have to narrow it down and that you have to order and that people are waiting on you and that you want it ALL but that you can’t possibly have all 31 flavors and…

Phew. Still with me? Now, imagine that there were only ever just 3 flavors. How does this change the way you would feel peering over the freezers? How might your decision-making process feel different? Many parents in early intervention may empathize with this young child’s anxiety around making decisions from a multitude of possibilities.

So Many Important Decisions

While we, as service coordinators and providers, place parent engagement and empowerment at the forefront of our practices, it may be prudent to consider how this can be felt from the parent’s perspective. For example, the development of the IFSP (especially right after assessment for service planning) might evoke a sense of uncertainty from parents. How? Hearing the assessment report and being asked to participate in the child outcome summary process using may elicit a range of emotions on the grief spectrum. Denial, sadness, anger, rejection, guilt, shame, and hopelessness are a few of the emotions that parents may feel, especially when hearing their child be described by strangers in an unexpected way. By the same token, parents who received the news they were expecting (i.e. that their child qualifies for the program) may be trying to reconcile feelings of being validated and heard with guilt for being “right” about something they did not want to be “right” about. Nonetheless, grief counseling suggests that important decisions should be avoided while someone is experiencing grief.

Similarly, discussing a joint plan with a provider at the beginning or end of a session might do the same. Parents may question themselves: Who’s to say I’m the expert? Am I picking the right thing to work on? What if I tell her what I really want and it’s the wrong answer? What if I’m wasting the time I have with the provider by picking the “wrong” thing to work on? Surely, we all can empathize with this hesitancy when it comes to wanting to make the best decisions on behalf of those we love. Our task is to help parents feel confident in their own ability to make those decisions, eventually without our help.

Where Do We Start?

Use active listening at all times to capture the essence of the parent’s message. What things have they kept mentioning? What are they saying would make life easier for them? What stresses do they mention over and over? What are things that bring them joy? Think about some other ways to engage in and practice active listening with those in your personal circle.

Use cues from the parent during your interactions with them to guide conversations about what things would be helpful to address. Maybe you notice that the dad has repeatedly mentioned that he cuts his 33-month-old son’s food up into very small pieces when asked about meal-time. Perhaps the mom has intentionally turned the TV on and situated the baby in front of it before giving him the bottle. You may notice a parent look nervously towards the back of the house where her other children are during your meetings. Maybe the dad prefers to stand at the kitchen counter during sessions rather than in the same area as you or the child. What questions could you ask after noticing some of these cues from parents?  How can you tailor your questions to get more clarity about these behaviors’ driving forces?  

Make sure you understood them correctly. Use reflective and judgement-free language to flesh out concepts they’re sharing with which you may be unfamiliar. Use phrases such as “I’m hearing…; you mentioned…; I thought I heard something about…; it seems like ___ is very important to you…; can you tell me more about what _____means and/or looks like in your daily life…; would you like to share more about ____…, etc.” Active listening may involve jotting down notes, which can be referenced before the next meeting with the family.

Got It. Now what?

It is the responsibility of the service coordinators and providers to scaffold decision-making as warranting situations arise to help the family feel confident and at ease, not only with the decisions they are tasked to make in those moments, but also with the process of how to critically and confidently think them through.

Share your thoughts below in chat!

Be sure to check out the first post this series:

Get the Backstory: Validating and Valuing Family Input

The post Baskin Robbins: How Do I Decide? appeared first on Early Intervention Strategies for Success.

Imagine: you are sharing your deepest wishes with a trusted friend. You are sharing a cup of coffee on the couch and you feel led to begin a conversation about your goals for the coming New Year. You share your regrets from the past year and your hopes and dreams about how you envision this New Year. You are deep in thought and passionate about articulating these ambitions out loud. Your friend’s response, much to your surprise, is superficially supportive. You sense judgement but you can’t put your finger on it. Why is she being short? Why does her smile look fake? Does she realize her eyebrows just did that? You begin to wonder what her thoughts are and to feel… Vulnerable. Embarrassed. Insecure.

A Parent’s Perspective

Now, imagine that instead of talking to a dear friend, you are talking to a complete stranger in an intake meeting, no coffee involved. Instead of freely sharing your priorities for the New Year, you are being asked to name priorities you have for your most precious hope in the world—your child.

Will I be judged for what’s important to my family and me? Was that the right thing to say? Is that the kind of answer they’re looking for? Geez, I have so many I can’t even put them in order. I need help sorting this out in my head and I am entirely overwhelmed but I don’t want the lady to think I don’t care if I am too vague. Is it okay to breastfeed in here?

These are just some of the thoughts that ran through my head as a parent as I began the early intervention process with my, then, 8 month old. Some deep reflection led me to the following conclusion: From my team, I needed my priorities validated and valued so that I could begin to trust them and their input into our lives.

Building Rapport, Being Curious, and Cultivating Relationships

As service coordinators and providers, it is our job to give up control for the sake of building rapport and trust so that deeper and more meaningful impacts can be achieved during the entire early intervention journey. You might be thinking, But, I don’t control interactions! I help the family with guiding questions to get them to a point where both the clinical/developmental priorities and family priorities are aligned. We have all been there. It can be challenging to reconcile the priorities that are indicated through family and formal assessments with what the family is sharing as their priorities. However, a family’s priorities can and should be discussed informally, too, starting with the first contact you have with them.

To ponder: What barriers to active listening and getting the backstory have you experienced in your relationships and interactions with families?

How?

Be genuinely curious about families, their daily lives, and their backgrounds. Ask for the sake of truly learning, and not documenting. Repeat back what you hear them say often to check that you are understanding their meaning. Validate them when you sense uncertainty, stress, or when they share about topics that are clearly close to their hearts. Use your intuition. Ask open ended questions—not the kind that indicates you are checking off a list, but the kind you would ask when something someone has just said has genuinely sparked your interest. Once you have a truer understanding of where a person is coming from, you can begin to introduce how early intervention can help facilitate and highlight these priorities in the family’s life using the family’s everyday routines and priorities.

To ponder: How might these initial and ongoing interactions inform your practice as you continue to cultivate a relationship with the family throughout the EI process?

So, where does that leave us? For anyone, the first step to making changes is acknowledging that change would bring an added benefit to your quality of life. Seeking help, self-referring, taking a random number that the PCP handed them and calling, showing up to appointments, answering the phone to unknown numbers– these are all indications that a family is open to change. As providers and service coordinators, the most important part of our job is to cultivate relationships that are conducive to productive and meaningful change. We begin that cultivation that by simply listening— getting the backstory so that you can truly walk alongside the family as they continue developing the rest of their early intervention narrative.   

Share with us! What are your go-to questions/conversation-starters that you have in your toolbox to help you ease into this informal approach of getting the backstory?

Micaela is a former early intervention service coordinator and developmental services provider. She holds a master’s degree in Early Childhood and Family Development and her passion is helping families astound themselves with all they can achieve. She is, most importantly, the mother of a beautiful little boy. She and her family have been receiving the support and services of EI since her son was 7 months old. Micaela and her husband are excited to be welcoming a little girl into the world this spring. Through this blog series, Micaela hopes to merge the distinct perspectives of a parent, a service coordinator, and a provider into a unique cultivation of meaningful insight and conversation.

The post Get the Backstory: Validating and Valuing Family Input appeared first on Early Intervention Strategies for Success.