Early Intervention

Spilling the R.B.Tea

By River- RBT Blogger

Episode 3

Hi! It’s me, your friendly neighborhood RBT. I’m reaching out to discuss early intervention and school readiness programs. I want to break down the value of early intervention programs in an easy to understand way. I won’t be covering the same detailed message a researcher or BCBA will, but I’ll share my understanding of the topic with you. I want to share the value Early Intervention brings to you and your family. 

When I first began this blog, I was ready to cite sources, studies, and graphs demonstrating the value of early intervention ABA. Instead, I decided to keep it simple, understandable, and human. When you have a headache, the faster you take medicine, the faster you feel better. Simple as that. With ABA, there’s a lot of complex science, development, and circumstances surrounding treatment. The principles however are the same: the earlier you can get a diagnosis, the more help you can get, the more resources for your child, and the better results that will come from treatment. 

As most understand, skills have to be built in a certain order. You have to be able to hold a ball before you can throw it. You need to be able to make certain sounds before you can form words. Likewise, the earlier we help your child build the necessary skills, the faster they can build new ones. There’s an ordered structure to ABA therapy. Those on the spectrum and others who benefit from ABA therapy often need more repetition to learn certain skills. The way growing brains develop is through use, repetition, and guided learning; to greatly simplify it, of course. 

To break it all down: have your kids assessed early, and this will help you get all the resources you need. Get them the therapies they need as early as you can, this will help them grow and succeed. ABA therapy, speech and language, occupational and physical therapy, you’ll find it easier to access any and all of those with a diagnosis.

Here are some resources we like to share to help you do all this:

For support for the early intervention side of things:

Developmental Pathways (for Aurora families)

Rocky Mountain Human Services (for Denver families)

For diagnosing:

 oliverbehavior.com

www.SunlightEvaluation.com.

For services:

BehaviorSpan (for Denver and Aurora families)

Seven Dimensions (for Evergreen families)

Willow Behavior Services (for Littleton families)

There are more, but these are the main ones we refer to! We look forward to meeting and working with you in the future. See you around!