Parent-Led Therapy & Leading with Skill Development

Like they have for so many others, Lego sets have been a big deal with a few of my kids over the years. Those little building blocks have made some pretty incredible tree houses, Barbie cruise ships, and mini shopping malls.

Start small, and brick by brick, you can make something pretty cool.

When you buy a Lego set, the legos are hand-selected to build something specific; a race car, a spaceship, a death star, a beauty salon, even the Eiffel Tower.

Forget a brick, or use the wrong one, and your end result might not look quite right, or worse, it might not be stable enough to maintain structure and stand strong beyond the day it’s built.

The same goes for developmental skills.

Think of developmental skills as little blocks. They build on one another, layer by layer, to create something truly greater than the sum of its parts.

Add small skill after small skill in order to build even bigger and more functional skills, like this example:

While the first skill, “Peek-A-Boo” may not seem very impressive, you can see how it provides the foundation for the next skill, and then that skill provides the foundation for the next skill, until we see a much more impressive skill at the end.

But, how do we know where to start?

Assessments Show Us the Way

When professionals assess a child with developmental needs they use one or a combination of developmental assessment tools. They usually use these to tell us what developmental stage or age a child is currently at. That’s important to know because it often influences the level and type of specialized services a child might receive, such as speech, ABA, and school placements. 

As a clinician, I was not as interested in a child’s developmental level, as much as which skills they had, and which skills they needed next.

I wanted to know where my job began in building the child’s skill development. 

The younger the child, the easier they were to assess. Toddlers aren’t supposed to do as much by virtue of their age. They haven’t been alive very long. 🙂

Assessing them was usually pretty quick, and made filling in the missing blocks easier. We were then working forward from a stronger foundation. Hence, the case for early intervention.

Splinter Skills

Kids with developmental needs, such as often is the case with autism, can also have splinter skills, meaning they kind of randomly place on the board. They might be stronger in, say play skills, but weaker in communication, or vice versa. They might have some skills in the 12-18 month range for communication, but be missing many in the 0-6 month range.

In this case, it’s best to go back to the first missing skills and fill those in before moving ahead. This serves to make future development that much stronger.

One cause of Splinter Skills is overlooking early milestones, like following someone’s point or a gaze, or non-verbal imitation (like how infants repeat movements, say bouncing in their seat, to get an adult to sing a silly song again and again).

If these skills are not addressed through a child’s therapy, it could be harder for them to learn related, but more complex skills later.

Think of those Legos again.

Start Where They’re At

Oftentimes, it can be hard to go all the way back to a much younger skill. It can feel defeating and sad, but it’s still important.

Typically, if we start where a child is at, they usually learn at a good rate; the easier the task for them, the quicker they are successful, and that success creates momentum. In a parent-led model, like Happy Ladders, that momentum is important for the child as well as the teachers (aka parents).

Plus, once that earlier Lego is placed, it can make room for even more Legos and weight on top : )

Within Happy Ladders, we created a series of developmental skill assessments to determine what skills a child needs so parents can work on those skills through our play-based lessons or within other naturally occurring times within their days. 

For a parent of a child with developmental needs, that doesn’t always mean a lot.

What’s most important is not to start where they should be but where they are.

We have to know where we are on the map before we can know how we can reach our destination.

But once we do, the path is clear. Start where they’re at, and everything else will follow.