Why Does My Child Seem Different From Other Children? Is Something Wrong?: a Webinar

[Julie] So you’ll see a, okay, you will see a button to click there and welcome. We are about to start this webinar with Gwen Crawford. It’s about children who you think might be having a problem with their development and you’re not quite sure what to do or how to know. My name’s Julie McKinney, I’m with Exceptional Lives and I’m just gonna first go through a little bit of housekeeping and then we will introduce Gwen. First off, we like to make sure that everything is accessible and so as part of our accessibility habits, we like to describe ourselves for anyone who’s visually impaired who’s on the webinar. So I’m just gonna tell you that I am a white woman with brown hair and red framed glasses and a red shirt, and I’m in my fifties. So that’s me and we’re gonna get started and just go through a little bit of housekeeping. I’m sure y’all know how to use, well, actually, this is the live transcript. You can, if you wanted captions or a live transcript that sort of shows the writing as we go through. Again, this is for people who might have visual impairments or who just like to have, you know, the words on the screen as we’re talking, you can click to live transcript or close captionings right there. It’s at the bottom of your screen. We also have the host, the chat feature. Of course, we’d like you to feel free to comment or share information in the chat box, introduce yourselves. We’d love to see who’s here. Please change it to everyone. It’s, the default is on host and panelists and you can use the host and panelists channel to let us know if you’re having any tech problems and we will help you right away. But if it’s a comment for everyone, just click that to everyone from the chat icon. And we’d love to hear from you. If you have questions during the program, we will have them, we will have Gwen answer them at the end. We will have time for that. And if you have questions for Gwen, please, if you could use the Q and A button instead of chat, and if you wanna click on the send anonymously, if you don’t want your name to show, that you’ve asked the question, that’s fine too. And let’s see what else we have. Okay, so I’m just gonna tell you a little bit about Exceptional Lives. We are the host for this webinar series, and we, I don’t know if anyone has seen our resources, but we have free resources for parents, caregivers and providers who work with children or young adults with developmental disabilities. And we serve Louisiana, Massachusetts, and then we have lots of information that you can use from any state. The biggest one is a guide to SSI, supplemental security income, but for the Louisiana folks, which is most of you, click on our Louisiana page to see our resources for families. Just a quick down of what we do. You know, first of all, our staff, almost all of us have a child with a disability. So we have all been through the questions and the searching and the processes and getting the resources and our goal is to make it easier for other parents to find support, to find information, to find services that will help their children thrive. So we do this in a few different ways. We have step by step guidance on how to navigate processes like special ed, guardianship, early intervention or Early Steps, Medicaid waivers, things like that. It’s all written in easy to read language because we know that it’s, you know, we want things to be as easy and smooth as possible because we know that you’re, a lot of you are stressed and low on sleep and want things to be easy. We also have a resource directory where you can find local per providers and services by putting in your zip code. That’s also available in Spanish and we have a series of blogs, Perspectives 4 Parents, which is also available in Spanish and that’s tips and support from other parents with kids with disabilities. And then we have a social media presence, so you can connect with other families and get support that way. So we have a new podcast series, which we’re really excited about. It has the same types of topics as our blogs. It’s called Just Needs, parenting children with disabilities. So please check that out. And couple other things quickly, we like to connect with parents to make sure that we are providing the right information that you need and providing it in a way that’s easy for you to access and understand. So we’re looking for volunteers for a family feedback team, which is a two hour per month paid position to just help us get some feedback from families like yours. And then we also have Families and Stories interview project, where we interview parents and children, just to get some advice on parenting children with disabilities. So you can find all of that on our website. That’s a way for us to connect with you all. So with that, I would like to introduce Gwen Crawford. We are really excited to have her. Gwen provides speech therapy through Early Steps program in Baton Rouge Region two. And she’s worked for almost 30 years with infants, toddlers, children, youth, families and older adults. And she’s worked in hospitals, nursing facilities, clinics, natural environments and community organizations and programs. Her work with Early Steps focuses on the intervention and accommodating infants and toddlers and the education of families with children with disabilities. Gwen lives with her husband and their are two dogs. And as a balance, she is an avid gardener. So Gwen, we are thrilled to have you today and you can take it away now, thank you. [Gwen] Thank you, Julie. Good afternoon, my name is Gwen Crawford Angelos. I am a dark skin, black female. I’m wearing a teal green blouse with matching earrings. I’m a speech pathologist here in Baton Rouge. I have a geriatric caseload and a pediatric caseload, which I will discuss with you this afternoon. I’d like to share a referral I received. It was for a young infant that was having difficulty with communications. As I read the evaluation, I realized that the best way to ascertain the concerns of the parent was to speak directly with them. So I called the mother, I introduced myself. I told her who I was and where I contracted with. And I asked specifically, what exactly is your concern? And she said to me, she wanted to know why her child does not seem like other children. She wanted to know if something was wrong. My first instinct was to tell her that all children are different. Children grow differently, children learn differently, and it was not always a good idea to compare children. And as our conversation went on, I realized this was her first child. And for the first two years and two to three months of the child’s life, he came in contact with no other children and very few adults, only his mom and dad. I asked her then how did he go through his developmental milestones? And it was surprising to me that the mom was not aware that there were established milestones for children to go through. And when I explained to her that everyone goes through milestones differently, she said to me that she knew that children grew and ate and talked and walked, but she didn’t realize they were developmental and there was an established milestones for children to go through. And I began to explain to her the milestones that were in my purview as a speech pathologist. I explained about cognition, how cognition is how the child maneuvers through his or her environment, how they process information and how they communicate and get along with others. Communication. Communication is either expressive, what they say to get their needs met or what they hear and understand. Gross motor skills deal with movement, walking, kicking balls, climbing stairs, and things that would require leg, big muscle movement. Social emotional behaviors. Social and emotional behaviors are the behaviors that children demonstrate when they learn empathy and how they respond to positive stimulation or negative stimulation. Positive stimulation would be interactive play. Negative stimulation would be fighting or arguing. Next slide, please. The signs of developmental challenges are delays in speech production. If you say the word door, which is a one syllable word, the child should be able to produce or imitate what he’s heard, whether he knows what a door is or not. Rambling to produce specific speech sounds. Let’s take for an example the sound S. The S is produced with the tongue placed behind the teeth. Children often thrust their tongue through the teeth, S and it comes out distorted. When there’s clumsiness or uncontrolled spinning of the body or objects, even if the objects are not designed to be spun. Difficulty with non-verbal cues, non-verbal cues can be facial expressions. If you’re smiling, normally you get a smile back, but if you display anger, the child should react to that. But if you get no response, that’s a big indication that there’s going to be a sign of a deficit. Sensitivity to sound, children that constantly put their hands over their ears as if to avoid loud sounds. Sometimes sounds don’t have to necessarily be as loud for them to cover their ears. Textures, at this point, I have a child on my caseload that has difficulty eating anything other than pureed food. Once I try to put some ground meat in some mashed potatoes, she was having none of that. Brightness, if the sun is too bright or if lights are too bright, children will constantly cover their eyes or children that have sensitivity to clothing. They can’t stand to feel clothes on their body. When there’s an obsessiveness to playing the same game over and over or watching television shows over and over. Early in my career, I had the experience of a child that liked the program. “Peanuts” There was one particular episode that he learned the roles of every character in the episode, and would say it along with the episode. Slide please. Some causes of developmental delay. Hearing impairment. A hearing impairment can be as benign, as fluid being in the ear or their blockage. And as serious as a sensory neural loss. A sensory neural loss is a nerve loss. And oftentimes, if a candidate is a, if a person is a candidate for a repair of a sensory neural loss, it requires surgery. Medical problems. When a child is born with palsy or hypotonia or some type of disorder, they’re most likely to be one of the causes for a developmental delay. Oftentimes, having a low birth weight and prematurity tends to go hand in hand. If your child is born premature, most likely their body weight is going to be very low. Family history. A child can inherit whatever disorder from the parent. In fact, at one point in my caseload, I had a situation where the grandfather had the disorder, who passed it on his son who passed it on his four children. Lead poisoning. I was surprised to find out the many ways a child can consume lead, through, obviously through water pipes that are old, soil, household dust, pottery toys and of course, paint. And often time, causes for developmental delays it can’t be determined, the causes are unknown. Next slide, please. What to do? The first thing I would recommend that you do is discuss it with your pediatrician the sooner or later. I, the sooner, the better. I have often heard that pediatricians say, wait, give him time, let her grow. But if the problem continues, of a concern persist with you, request a hearing evaluation. I tell parents all the time, you can’t do brain surgery, but you can get a hearing evaluation. If the child is not hearing all sounds, he’s not gonna talk as he should or online or even after he’s had intervention. When, you should always trust your instincts, always trust your instincts. How I would suggest you advocate with your doctor is, if you should call and say that you wanna referral to and an ENT or an audiologist, those are the specialists that do hearing evaluations. Pediatricians can do hearing screenings, but evaluations are done from the outer ear to the inner ear where the nerve is, it’s a complete evaluation. If you call and request a referral and the doctor is hesitant, speak with the nurse, you might not get to speak with the doctor. The nurse you speak with, you should write her name down. So if you should have to call back again, you ask for that nurse because doctors normally have two to three nurses in their offices. And if you call on Monday and you get nurse Jane, and you give your information to her requesting a referral for a hearing evaluation and then you get no response, you call back the following week on Wednesday. You don’t wanna have to start over. So you ask for nurse Jane again, eventually, nurse Jane is going to get the information to the doctor for the referral, seek services, next slide please. Early Steps Early intervention Program. Early Steps is a federal program that is designed for children that are from zero birth until three years. There are 15 different services provided through Early Steps. How to access Early Steps. As I said, the first step would be your pediatrician. You can access it through the Early Steps online website. You can, through the school system. Each school system has pupil appraisal service. You can access it through social workers, your church. It often goes by word of mouth, daycare services, nurseries, family members, family liaisons, doctors office, other than pediatricians, because doctors, in doctor’s office, you find often a lot of different pamphlets. Organizations like families helping families and family roads. The source I often use, when I have a question for anything is Google. You can put a question into Google and get an answer for almost anything. Who qualifies for Early Step services? The people, the children that qualify for Early Steps services are the ones with deficits in cognition, motor, vision, hearing, communication, social emotional behavior and adaptive skills. Choosing providers that best suits your child’s needs. Slide please. You go to the Early Steps early intervention website. You click on this is the process for finding out how you would choose the best provider to help your child. You would click on Louisiana Service Matrix. Then you’d go to the service matrix, slide please. On this particular screen, it’s the service matrix. You go through step one, you put the parish that you live in. It’s not necessary to fill out the other steps, but you have to fill out the recommended spaces. In this particular instance, the person was looking for an ABA service. That’s the only, you only need to put in your parish, where you’re located and the recommended specialty you’re looking for. Then you put random, if you want the names to show up randomly and their availability, that’s the times they have available for services. The number of service times they have available for services. And when you submit it to the right of your screen, this is what will come up. In the Baton Rouge area, this person looked for providers of the ABA service. Three providers in Baton Rouge respond. When she clicked on it, the three providers that were available for the specialty she asked for, which was ABA services, came up. This particular provider, the first one, it tells where she lives, how to contact her, how long she has had experience working with children, infants and toddlers. Her, the type of does she provides, her qualifications, her education and the language she speaks and the parishes served. Even though she lives in East Baton Rouge Parish. These are the parishes that she is willing to travel to. Ascension, East Baton Rouge, St. Tammany, Tangipahoa and West Baton Rouge. Even though she travels to all these parishes, the zip codes that you see listed are the zip codes that she works in at the bottom, where it has additional comments, is the write up on the specifics about this particular provider. You read through with this information after you’ve had your child evalue, excuse me, after you’ve had your child evaluated, and the family service coordinator comes to your home for you to choose, she’s going to bring a list of names. With this information, how to peruse the matrix, you can search and find the provider that best you feel best suits your child’s needs. In the right hand corner, you’ll see available, may not, may no longer be available. That is not necessarily always the case. Providers are encouraged every month to update their page and some forget, some neglect to do it. But because you see that there, doesn’t, the red writing where she not have the availability, that might not necessarily be the case for that provider. It just might be a situation where she has not updated her page. Next screen please. Managing your own emotion, it’s not your fault. When a parent finds that their child may be not meeting the developmental milestones the way they should. The first emotion that comes into effect is denial. He’s gonna get better, she’s gonna grow out of it. Then comes fear, that maybe this is not going to be something that can be fixed. You’re confused because you don’t know where to go or how to help your child. I’ve heard so many times, I know that there’s an issue, but I don’t know how to help her. I don’t know how to assist him to get to where he needs to be. That brings about a certain amount of guilt. It brings about a certain amount of guilt and you feel powerless, powerless. It’s not your. Relief comes. Relief comes when you have been able to navigate the process and find someone that can actually assist your child to get where he or she needs to be. I’ve learned that you can go to Colorado up in the mountains and sit on a porch in a cabin, breathing nothing but pure, fresh, clean air. Drinking, pure mountain stream, fresh, clean water. Everything, doing everything you should do during your pregnancy and still have a child with a developmental delay. It’s not your fault, it’s not. Next slide, please. These are resources that can help in your search. I was pleasantly surprised to find that, here in Baton Rouge, the hearing healthcare Louisiana provides free hearing test. It’s very important, I can’t stress enough how important it is that the child is able to hear all sounds. There are 26 letters in the alphabet, but there are 46 sounds. And the reason that it’s important to have a hearing test and know that your child can hear all sounds is that, if you say the word thin, if you say the word thin, it begins T-H-I-N, your tongue is flat. If you you’re saying it correctly, if you say the word through, T-H-R-O-U-G-H, your tongue is slightly curved. This comes with time and experience and practice. So it’s very important to have a hearing test, to know that your child can hear all sounds. Some other resources of partners and family health, ages and stages is the questionnaire that is used to determine where your child is at that particular time, what the current status is. The CDC has, I was informed that in February, the CDC has changed its guidelines for developmental milestones. As, I have not through the entire list of changes, but they moved from a child being able to produce true words during their 18th month of life, during their 15th month of life to the 18th month of life. Let me repeat that to make sure I got it right. The CDC has changed, the standard before was by the 15th month of life. The child should be able to produce true words, that has been relaxed and pushed back to now the 18th month of life. And I’ve also learned that crawling, crawling is no longer a developmental milestone. Early Steps website is available to you and how you reach the providers on the matrix is also available to you. I, but I strongly suggest that everyone take the time, at some point, all your families should at least look at what the new changes in the CDCs developmental milestones currently is. Milestones are normally done in increments of three months, three, zero to three, zero birth to three, three to six, six to nine, nine to 12, 12 to 15, and then on until 36 months, that is the age of infants to toddlers. Next slide, please. Oh, I’m through, question? Okay, thank you so much, Gwen. I also just wanna let people know that I put all of those resources, those great resources from Gwen’s slide are all in the chat. So if you want to copy those from there, you are welcome to, and we’ll also put in some more resources from Exceptional Lives. So at this point, you know, we’re open for questions. And so we will, you know, give you a minute. And if, you know, if you have a comment or a question, I know this brings up a lot of feelings in parents, and you know, you may just have a comment or wanna share some of your experience. Please feel free, if you click on, if you raise your hand, the hosts can unmute you if you want, but. I have questions. Oh, go ahead. Love to hear some of your comments. Yeah. Okay, let me just see, just quickly, someone asked about the PowerPoint and yes, we can send that out, but also, I just wanna let people know that there’s also gonna be a recording of this webinar on the webinar page of our site of Exceptional Lives in a couple weeks. So if you wanna share this webinar with others you know, come back and check that out. That will be there with the transcript and everything. So let’s see, I’m trying to say, what else we have here. How, okay, here’s a question, Gwen. How would one with a young adult handle their disabilities? What, a young adult? We’re talking about what age in particular? I would suggest, with a young adult, especially if they’re school age, contacting your school system pupil appraisal services. Yeah, and if, you know, if you have, if you have a child either who’s not in school yet, or who’s in school, and you’re wondering if they might have a disability. Our resources also have information on how to start that whole process with both Early Steps and special education. We’ll put some of those in the chat, but that can sort of help walk you through that. I have to explain too, that Early Steps services stops the day before the third birthday and the school system services, if the child continues to qualify for services, the school system services picks up the day after the third birthday. So if the child is in Early Steps and is receiving services and reach that third birthday mark, and they continue to need services, the school system picks up after the day after the third birthday. [Female Speaker] Excuse me, Gwen. Lorraine did specify 18 to 21 as the age for the young adult. And she would like for you to explain what the pupil appraisal service is. Oh, oh, more than, I’ll be more than glad to. The pupil appraisal services, because it’s through the school system, the pupil appraisal service, it acts just like Early Steps does. It provides the services, communication, cognition, adaptive services, through the school system. They have their own providers that do that. I think it’s until 21, they’ll do it. Yes, it’s through the age of 21. Okay, thanks Gwen. So we have another one. Early Steps tells me that there is a several month wait, what should I do? My baby is 18 months old. Seven months wait for what, normally there’s a process. The way the system point of entry operates is, they send out an evaluator to evaluate your child. And after the child has been evaluated, then they get together and with a meeting with the needs, if the child needs speech or physical therapy, they’ll get, the family service coordinator will get together with the caregiver or parent and provide them with a list, which I went through the matrix to show you that you can choose your own providers who you would like, but she brings a list. And I don’t understand why they’re is a waiting list, unless you are in an area where there are no providers. Yeah, and you know, I know there’s a shortage of providers in so many different things right now. But just another thought is, we have a resource directory at Exceptional Lives, I just put the link in the chat. And obviously it’s better if you can go through Early Steps, but if you are stuck for some reason, and if you have the means or if you have Medicaid perhaps, to there, you can get some services that way. And you can look for service providers in our resource directory as well, if you’re looking for ones outside of Early Steps. I would also suggest you could go talk to your families, helping families. There are local families helping families support centers all over the state. So if you go to your nearest one, then they should, they might be able to sort of help you advocate. And here in Baton Rouge, I can’t speak for other parishes, but here in East Baton Rouge Parishes, you can also get services from our local hospitals. Yeah, that’s great. Okay, thanks. Gwen, we have another question here. Sure. Clara says my child passes all the developmental milestone except speech. She is 19 months old, should I seek services? She doesn’t speak at all, your saying or she’s intermittent with her speaking? I think that you should try to, it wouldn’t hurt her, if she’s reached all of her developmental milestones, but she’s not talking in accordance with the development that she should be on at her age, I would, yes, suggest that you do, because it just might be an instance where she might just need a little stimulation. Yeah I, and I just let me, and I think when you said this before, is that it’s, you know, it’s always better to see if they can, if they qualify for services, it’s always better to get a little bit of that. I had two children who had speech services and one of them did the whole way through, two months through three years and needed a lot of help. And then I had another child who just needed, who just had that, like the last six months before he turned three. And it was just enough of a little bit of support to get him going. And of course now you can’t get them to talking. So I would. Yeah, I would I would suggest at least try it. I would definitely suggest that you seek speech therapy for your child, I would, because it just might be that she needs just a little stimulation. Always remember that children respond differently to their parent than they do other people. She might just not be talking for you, but it might be an instance with a little bit of stimulation or just a little bit of therapy for, to enhance her speech. It’ll get better or it’ll get where it should be. And you’ll be wishing that she stopped talking. Yeah, and another thing about, the nice thing about Early Steps is that it helps, the providers work with you as a family and sort of help you learn how to play with your child. In a way that will support their development. And so even if you get, even if you get a few months or a little bit of speech therapy or occupational therapy or physical therapy, you learn as a parent, what you can do to keep supporting your child’s development in that area. So it’s really, if you can get even a little bit, I would say it’s definitely worth it. Yes. So, I want. [Female Speaker] Excuse me. Okay. [Female Speaker] Gwen, I was gonna point out that, one of the stories you told me about a child being asked the same question over and over, and they couldn’t answer it. And you know, you pointed out that you need to give them time to answer. Yeah, that was the story of where my friend sent me the voicemail of the child. The child was two years, five, six months or so. And the parent was concerned that the child was stuttering because she would always say, wait, wait, wait, wait. And the child was asking for time, but the mother was so anxious for the child to say what, the response to what the question she was asking, that she wasn’t giving the child time. But, yeah, sometimes it is a situation where, you just need to follow the child’s lead, edge them on, but follow their lead. If they tell you, wait, I can’t do this. Or wait, wait, wait, wait and let them respond in their own time. It very well, maybe a situation where they need a little encouragement or cuing to complete whatever it is they’re trying to complete, but it is necessary to follow the child’s lead in some instances, to allow them to come out with whatever it is you’re looking for. Yeah, thank you, Gwen. We’re still, if people have questions, we still have a little bit of time, but I wanna let you know that there’s a poll on your screen now, it’s an evaluation. If you could please fill that out, that would really help us to make sure that we are providing good high quality webinars and other resource for you. So if you could fill that out, that would be fantastic. So let’s see. Okay, there’s another question here. Gwen, about whether there’s a federal resource that provides free hearing screenings for children. That’s a great one. Now that, I was surprised, it’s in the resources. That was here in Baton Rouge. I don’t know it’s available, if it’s available in other parishes, but yes, actually I called, I left the number in the resources and I called and I spoke with a representative there and they said, yes, it is a free screening, hearing evaluation, hearing testing. It’s not a screening, it’s a hearing testing and it’s available to any and everyone, but that’s here in East Baton Rouge Parish, okay. And you can’t just walk in, you have to call to make an appointment first, but it is free. I’m not, it’s called, going back to hold on, resources, resources. It’s called Hearing Healthcare Louisiana. And by being called Hearing Healthcare Louisiana, there’s the possibility that it’s in other parishes as well. The website is there on, in the resources. Yeah, so, and I put those in the chat. So, but contact them. Yeah, I would contact them to see if that service is available in your parish as well. But this particular one is available here, in East Baton Rouge. Yeah, and you know, someone asked for federal, I know that there’s some people here, perhaps from other states, I just put in the chat a link. If you wanna find your parent center in your state, you can find it there. And these are all a listing of centers that are federally funded to help, help families of kids with disabilities to get advocacy and support and information. So if you go there and go to your local parent training and information center, they will be able to help you answer questions. Like where can I get a free screening? And we’ll also put in, in Louisiana, for the state, it’s, they’re all called families helping families. And we’ll put that link in as well. Okay, let me just see. Okay, okay, someone is asking, this is a good question. Do you have any recommendations, Gwen, of apps for young kids with speech delays? There is one good, it’s called First Word Animals. It’s called First Word Animals. It brings up an animal, a picture of an animal and the word of the, let’s say cat, it brings up a picture of a cat. And then the word cat is above at the top of the screen and the letters, the random letters are on the lower part of the screen. And the child pushes the letters up to match letters at the top and it sounds out the word. First Word Animals. First Word Animals, okay. Okay, thank you so much. Gwen, thank you so much for all of this wisdom and for answering the questions. It’s really nice to hear from someone who has three decades of experience working with his and families. It’s just, you can tell how deep your knowledge and how compassionate your, you know, your education style is. So we really thank you. Thank you. For being here. Thank you, Julie. I wanna let everyone else know that, that we have a few more, we have a few more webinars. The next one, the one next week is on creating a support system, helping your family and community understand autism. And then after that, we have a couple that are geared towards families of teens and young adults with disabilities. So we hope that you will, that you will come to our page, look at our webinars, look at the rest of our resources and, you know, take into consideration, you know, the, what you learned from Gwen today. And so again, I wanna thank you, Gwen. And I wanna thank all of you who came out to this. We had a great turnout and so pass the word along and thank you all for being here. Before we end, Natasha had a question and your mic is open if you’d like. Yeah, We can stay on. Oh, yeah. We can stay on for a bit, if there are more questions, so. Please feel free. Yeah, if you wanna just read that out. [Female Speaker] She has her hand up. Oh, great. [Female Speaker] She just turns on her mic, she’ll be able to. Great. [Female Speaker] Speak. Natasha, you wanna go ahead? [Female Speaker] Okay. No, okay. All right, does anybody else have any questions? You know, with the formally, the webinar is done, but, you know, we, Gwen has a little time. We have a little time, if you have more questions. I can entertain any question, all questions. I’m more than happy to, even a comment. [Christina] Miss Gwen, this is Christina, I’m also with Exceptional Lives, I have a quick question for you. We, my son is older now and we went through pupil appraisal, but sometimes I come across friends who, their child is just past two years and nine months, but not quite three and so they’re kind of in that little bit of a limbo, if you have a child that’s right in that age gap, where would you tell them to contact, Early Steps or pupil appraisal? Pupil appraisal won’t take the child until after three. I would suggest that you contact Early Steps. I have a serviced children that were two months away from their three year birthday, but the pupil appraisal services will not take the child until after the third birthday, but I would recommend calling Early Steps, I really would. How much longer does he or she have? [Christina] No, I’m talking just kind of in general, as a general question. ‘Cause I’ve had friends in the past that have asked for some of their kids and I’m like, oh, I’m not really sure. And I’ve always told them, you know, call both. Now Early Steps, Early Steps will take them a month before, three weeks before. But the school system will not, until after the third birthday. [Christina] Okay, thank you for clarifying that. Thank you. Yeah, and Christina and others, I just put in, in the chat, we, Exceptional Lives has a, is working in the state with the department of education and we have, we just created some resources to help your child transition from the under three into the school system. And so if your child is around that age, take a look at the resource that I just put in, ’cause it sort of can help walk you through, you know, who to call, what to do if your child is just about to transition into the school system. Because you know, what happens when you work with kids in Early Steps under three, that’s one system. And then once your child turns three on their birthday, they switch over and they can get the similar services from the school system, but they have to get evaluated again. So you can contact your school system before your child turns three, to get things ready and get the evaluation. So you can, at least, once your child turns three, you have everything set up and you don’t have too much of a gap in services. So this link here can sort of help you walk through that transition. Normally, when the child is in Early Steps, from two to four months before the third birthday, they contact the school system. That’s effort to try to have a continuity of services. They contact the school system between two and four months before the third birthday, that’s Early Steps, so that the school system can come in and do their evaluation before the third birthday. So when the child turns three, so their services can start directly after the third birthday. Yeah, yeah, great. Okay, someone has their hand up, Amos. Do you wanna go ahead? I think Jackie has unmuted you, or maybe allowed you to unmute. You might have to click unmute yourself. Okay, Amos, if you can’t get unmuted, somehow, maybe you could put a question in the chat, if you have one. We don’t wanna leave you hanging. And by the way, we’ve stopped recording now.

Real Talk About Disabilities:
Issues faced by families of color

These free webinars are for parents and providers caring for children with disabilities. Hear from professionals in the Greater Baton Rouge Area addressing topics that concern their community, such as mental health, racial disparities, life skills, and youth services.