"You're more intellectual than I am" -Sister Swenson

This week I learned about family subsystems and the relationship between each member of the family. We also discussed the difference between a medical and social view of disabilities and the place for each. I found it interesting that as we talked about our family backgrounds in class, we were able to make connections with the material found in our book and could understand some of our own tendency within our current family situations.

One thing I realized from our lecture time was how true it is that if one member of the family has something going on, all members of the family are affected in some way. I found this interesting because one of satans biggest lies is that no one will ever know what you have done or that our decisions only affect ourselves. When working with family in an early intervention setting (or even in the school system), not addressing the needs of the whole family will be a useless and unsuccessful pursuit. 

I felt that my peers and I learned well together as we discussed our different family subsystems. I could learn more if I am to class with an open mind. I am opinionated and tend to think that my way of thinking is the only perspective. While we were talking about medical versus the social view of disabilities, I was becoming irritated with some of my family members who hold a medical view of their child's disability. 

For my HWD this week, I began by looking at what is developmentally appropriate for the communication domain, beginning with infancy. In the book, Family-Centered Early Intervention, there is a section (p. 108) that talks about the stages of prelinguistic communication development. It says that between birth and two months, the baby communicates solely through crying, coughs, grunts, burps and sighs. Between the ages of two and four months, they communicate through cooing and laughter. Four and six month old babies communicate with vocal play. Ultimately between six months and their first word, babies reduplicate consonant vowel sounds such as dada. Around ten months old, we see the emergence of jargon, or sound combinations and intonations that make it sound like a real conversation. With this information, I plan on finding out where my toddler is at for his baseline of communication and will research more next week to see what is developmentally appropriate for a toddler and older.