ECSE 421

This week, I completed my application activity. I chose to interview a family that has a child with a disability. It was interesting seeing the different responses between the siblings as well as the parents. While some of the responses were the same for everyone, I found it interesting what some of the parents have felt as they have helped their son/sibling to progress.


In class this week we learned about the crisis cycle. I am unsure of what the difference is between the crisis cycle and time out and am unsure of if I will use it or not because of another philosophy put out by Alfie Kohn. His theory is that when we distance ourselves from our children when they are expressing a strong emotion, like crying or screaming, that we are actually sending the message to the child that we only want to be with them when they are happy. I would say that the crisis cycle would fall into that category, so I could adapt it to fit my belief system.


In class I also had the opportunity to create an ecomap which was beneficial because I will use them in the future as a Developmental Specialist. It was interesting to get to know one of my peers a little bit better as I saw which relationships were strong for her and things that were causing her stress in her life.


My quote from class is, "Get out of my office and don't come back." Sister Swenson said this to one of her clients' parents because he wasn't listening to her instructions. I relate it to the coaching model and if I am not getting the support from parents at home then anything I do for early intervention is really a dead end pursuit. 


This week for my HWD, I learned about a lot of different activities can help aid a child in learning to speak. Some of these include cause and effect, gestures, and imitation. When I learned this in one of my other classes, I decided to start implementing it with one of my toddlers who is struggling with language. He was able to imitate his peers as we pretended to ride a train during toddler lab. I can also apply this to the infant I will be working with in ECSE 340 because if I have him imitate his mom, he will pick up on the sign language she is trying to teach him.