Partnering with Parents and Caregivers
Children grow and learn within the context of social relationships with the people that are most important in their life.
Caregiver and child looking at object
Children grow and learn within the context of social relationships with the people that are most important in their life. For children, this is their parent(s) and other primary caregivers. These are the people who spend the most time with a child, and who have the greatest influence on a child over the course of their lifetime. They are the people who get them up in the morning, help them during daily activities like mealtime, getting dressed, and taking a bath. Parents are also the people who teach the child about their family culture, provide social opportunities, and support the child as they explore and experience the world around them.
As therapists, we often come and go in a child’s life. Even for those children we do see for an extended period of time, our impact is typically only for a season or short window of their life. We bring specific expertise based on our field of training. Parents bring the expertise of knowing their child, their family, and what is most important to them. As a therapist, the greatest and most lasting impact you can have on a child’s life is through close collaboration with a child’s parent(s) and/or primary caregivers.
The goal of our services is to partner with you as a parent or other caregiver to help you learn to use research based strategies that help your child learn within daily routines and activities that you do on a regular basis. This helps you as a parent in feeling successful in supporting your child with unique learning needs, and it helps your child gain new skills more quickly with many more learning opportunities throughout their day.
“An “environment of relationships” is crucial for the development of a child’s brain architecture, which lays the foundation for later outcomes such as academic performance, mental health, and interpersonal skills.”
National Scientific Council on the Developing Child (2004). Young Children Develop in an Environment of Relationships: Working Paper No. 1. Retrieved from www.developingchild.harvard.edu.