Most Valuable Takeaways

Hi Everyone,

Don’t forget to come back to read your fellow participants post and to save your responses for each week. We find participants get more out of the training when the interact with each other. Saving your responses will be helpful when you’ve completed the training and no longer have access to the forum and also help in case there is a glitch and your submission does not post.

I look forward to reading your responses.

The most valuable takeaway for me was the reminder to be conscious of the environment. I need to keep this in mind while I am looking for a clinic space. When my kids were babies, I remember vacuuming all the time because they would find the tiniest piece of crumb or thread and stick it in their mouths. I also thought the information that not all parents are aware of what is developmentally appropriate was salient. It’s easy for me to forget that I definitely didn’t know much when my first child was born and I did not have time to read. I was so grateful for help and advice from my family and friends who had much more experience.

What is most valuable for me is the range of development and what we should expect in typical development. As I’ve said previously, being a new professional working with DD and neurodivergence, it is important to understand what is typical so we can target developmental milestones that are delayed. It is difficult with my population to stay grounded in the “typical” development, and as discussed, parents often don’t know what to expect and when development is delayed.

My biggest takeaway this week was that being cognizant of a child’s developmental stages will not only benefit one’s relationship with the child, but also how that child views and interacts with the world. If we understand that a 2 year old’s tantrum has a different developmental impact than a 4 year old’s outburst, we can create environments in which that child can safely express themselves and establish healthy relationships with others.

My most valuable takeaway from this week is how much development occurs in such a small period of time and that the development during early childhood sets the foundation for all further development. Looking at the overall life span, 5 years is such a short amount of time for such drastic physical, cognitive, emotional, language, motor, and sensory development to occur.

I think my biggest takeaway this week was the concept of just how many ways a child takes in his/her environment throughout development and the many perspective shifts they go through mentally and physically as they get older. Exploring using their mouths, hands, feet, eyes but also exploring by asking questions when they are able to verbalize, use hand gestures and see how objects interact with each other. I have talked to a lot of parents that are often concerned about the way their kiddos interact with certain objects or behave but a lot of the behaviors are often very developmentally appropriate for their age and are just them exploring and taking in information from their environment in the way they know how to and that makes most sense to them.

My biggest take away this week is the level of awareness that is happening in such a short period of time for a child. This new world is opening up to them and they are experiencing that through their physical, sensory, motor, social/emotional, language areas of development. It just goes to show how important it is for us to be aware of each child’s stage so we can set goals, create interventions, and look at responses in a musical environment that is safe, realistic, and purposeful. The more we understand children’s interactions with their environment, the better we can identify their needs and support their overall development.