Christopher Watson watso012@umn.edu - 612-625-2898 http:www.education.umn.edu/ceed

1. Christopher Watson watso012@umn.edu - 612-625-2898 http:www.education.umn.edu/ceed

2. Children in Their Earliest Years: Many Get a Poor Start • We remain daunted in our ability to ensure that every child receives basic care and nurturance for healthy development • Out-of-home childcare • School readiness • Early childhood intervention programs • Costs of developmental failure • Children with special health care needs • Developing a “collective will” to provide what children need

3. Today’s Presentation • “Active Ingredients” and a Conceptual Model for Child Development • One example of intervention: Challenging behaviors and the mental health of young children • What does it mean for early intervention today?

4. Thinking Pragmatically about Child Development • Children develop as a function of their interactions with their parents, others, and the environment • All developmental outcomes – “good” and “bad” – are influenced by these interactions • Children’s interactions are embedded within, and affected by, a variety of context factors • Improving child development rests, in large measure, with understanding the effects of these contextual factors

5. Active Ingredients and Dosages in Child Development • Active Ingredients • The opportunities, interactions, and experiences that provide children with • Challenges to try new, more elaborate, more competent acts • The guidance to meet these challenges with success • The love and rewards that help children value these successes • Dosages • The frequency, quality, and intensity with which children are exposed to “active ingredients”

6. Thinking Academically about Child Development: An Ecobehavioral Model • A model that emphasizes the critical role of learning and experience • “Active ingredients” and “dosages” of developmental opportunities • A model that emphasizes the important contributions of caregivers and interactive partners • A model that includes the influence of proximal and distal environmental factors as well as “mechanisms” for learning

7. Ecobehavioral Model Violent Distal Variables - Social and Cultural Practices Neighborhood Physical/Sexual Psychological & Sociodemographic Variables Abuse Physical Environment and Setting Variables Parenthood Single Proximal/Social Variables Cultural Bias Lack of Employment Child Caregiver Education Low Self-Esteem Limited Inconsistent Caregiving Unavailable Caregiver Child Limited Knowledge of Child Development/Parenting Inaccessible Inadequate Poverty Health Care Nutrition

8. Why Worry About Early Development? • We care about our children • Early development is related to later educational and social outcomes • Prevention and early intervention works

9. Marshaling Resources to Support Child Development • Most parents and communities care deeply about their children’s development • We need a system that encourages and supports parents’ participation in all aspects of their children’s lives • Ensuring knowledge and skills in active ingredients • Ensuring adequate dosages of these active ingredients • We must guarantee resources for successful child development • Ensuring knowledge and skills in active ingredients • Ensuring adequate dosages of these active ingredients

10. Bridging Education and Mental Health Expanding our horizons to address the needs of young children who engage in challenging behavior to support the success of all kids.

12. Challenging behaviors (or problem behaviors) "result in self-injury, injury to others, cause damage to the physical environment and/or interfere with the acquisition of new skills, and/or socially isolate the child" (Doss & Reichle, 1991)

13. Mental Health • Mental health is a state of successful performance of mental function, resulting in productive activities, fulfilling relationships with other people, and the ability to adapt to change and cope with adversity. Mental health is indispensable to personal well-being, family and interpersonal relationships, and contribution to community or society. • Mental health is the springboard of thinking and communication skills, learning, emotional growth, resilience and self-esteem. Surgeon General’s Report on Mental Health (1999)

14. Our search for a better understanding of the needs of children who engage in challenging behavior multiple and multidirectional layers of influence on child’s behavior

15. Why is this so crucial? • One in five children and youth have a significant mental health need during their school years. (U.S. Surgeon General David Satcher’s 1999 Report) • Mental health disorders put children and youth at risk for poor school performance. • These children may be on a increasingly antisocial developmental trajectory into adulthood(Miller, Brehm & Whitehouse, 1998).

16. Students with serious emotional disturbance are at risk for educational failure: • Fail more classes • Miss more days of school • Earn lower grades • Repeat more grade levels • Drop out at a higher rate • Have more difficulty finding & keeping a job • Are more likely to be involved with the criminal justice system (U.S. Department of Education, 1998)

17. Recognition of Mental Health problems • Parent(s) recognize a problem at age 3.5. • Outside agency records indicate problems at age 5. • First documented school intervention at age 6.5. • First eligibility for special education at 7.8 and 50% of these children were identified as LD. • EBD programming began at age 10 with placement in a self-contained classroom. (Study conducted by Steve Forness, California)

18. Foundation of our Approach • Our focus is on the behavior that is perceived to be challenging by us and which makes us feel ineffective in our work. • Our goal is to create an environment that increases the opportunity for children to succeed. • When children succeed in learning new skills and enjoying relationships with us and their friends, we, in turn, feel effective as professionals.

19. Why don’t we go straight to strategies? • a “bag of tricks” is not what we bring to the situation • we need to decide what the child needs (the meaning of the behavior) before we can decide what to do

20. Common Components of Our Understanding of Behavior • All behavior is communication. • It has meaning. • It is the language of the child. • Relationships are a primary pathway to learning.

21. What points should we ponder? • Life circumstances/events • Setting events • Function and communication • Relationships

22. Life circumstances/events • Effect of physical and developmental disabilities • Family’s access to resources • Family/cultural expectations • Abuse, neglect, stress and trauma

23. From a mental health approach…. we recognize that we experience the present in part through the past.

24. Setting events Recent events or circumstances • Home • physical • meals, sleep, medications • emotional • trauma • School/childcare • transitions, peer interaction, change of routine/environment

25. Function and communication • Skills and developmental stage • Social/nonsocial functions • Avoid • Task • Attention • Control by another • Obtain • Objects • Attention • Activities • Control

26. Positive Behavior Support • Expands the child’s ways of communicating and behaving • Redesigns the environment to enhance the child’s quality of life and minimize his or her problem behavior (Carr, Horner, et al., 1999; Koegel, Koegel & Dunlap, 1996)

27. Relationships • Child & other children • friendships, conflicts • Child & family (parents/caregivers, extended family) • attachment, guidance & discipline, abuse, neglect • Child & caregiver/teacher • attachment, guidance & discipline

28. An experience that provides “repair” is about: • changing the environment so that the child can grow socially and emotionally • providing opportunities for the child to learn new social/emotional and educational skills. • We may not be able to change the child's home environment. • We can create an emotionally safe environment while the child is with us.

29. What can we do to make a difference in this situation?The major question… What is under our control?

30. Opportunities within our control to nurture successful kids: • Use of the physical space • Effective use of our time • Emotional support in relationships: • With the child • With the parents • Between the child and other children • Between us and other staff

32. “…The goal is to see the child not as an object to be changed, but as a potential author of her own change.” Carol Cole Project Leader Project Relationship

33. What’s it All Mean…for Early Intervention today? • We know enough to… • Know that intervention is sometimes needed • Know that intervention can make a difference • Know that our “good intentions and ideas” are still tentative, and need to be evaluated • We have the opportunity to… • Expand our knowledge of what matters and what works • Expand the reach, and the quality, of the services we provide • Integrate and coordinate these services across different ages, agencies, and conditions • We have to keep going, and we will figure it out!

34. Christopher Watson watso012@umn.edu - 612-625-2898 http:www.education.umn.edu/ceed