What have I been doing since the last blog post?
· I sailed around the world single-handedly
· I cared for my grandson
Unfortunately, none of these. But here I am, back in the saddle.
And this time I want to write about ecologically based early childhood intervention because PRECI has recently asked me to make a video about this topic. PRECI is the Professionals and Researchers in Early Childhood Intervention in Australia, and they have been have been a sponsor of Best Practice in Early Childhood Intervention.
The ecology—or the environment or context—has always been an important element of the Routines-Based Model (Bronfenbrenner, 1977). We understand that the individual child develops and functions to the extent that the microsystem (family, neighbors, friends, school) support the child, and the microsystem is influenced by the mesosystem, a bridge to the exosystem (parents’ friends, extended family, mass media, local governments). The exosystem operates withing the macrosystem (economic system, culture, political systems, social norms), which is influence by time, the chronosystem.
In addition to Bronfenbrenner, the International Classification of Functioning, Disability, and Health (ICF), created by the World Health Organization (WHO), has developed a framework for thinking about functioning in an ecological context (World Health Organization, 2007). Participation in activities is key to functioning. The child’s disability (disorder or disease) can have an impact on this participation, and the child’s physical or cognitive situation (body functions and structures) can similarly affect participation or functioning. In addition, the child’s ecology (environmental factors, including the physical environment and parenting) and personal factors (e.g., grit, resilience, typical engagement, persistence, zest—what some would call “personality”) are both contributors and recipients of the child’s functioning.
The ICF framework influences both our definition of disability and our understanding of how we should support children. The RBM is highly active in Taiwan—a bastion of ICF implementation.
Now we come to the well-known seven circles of the RBM. What do these circles represent? The seven days of the week, and that little sliver is the early childhood intervention encounter, when a family receives a home visit, a classroom receives a consultation, or a family takes a child to therapy. Look at all the white space! Even if you take out sleeping time, the child has learning opportunities all day long, seven days a week (Dunst, 2020). So what should the early childhood intervention encounter focus on? Building the caregiver’s capacity to help the child learn between professionals’ visits.
Now we have the ecological systems model, the ICF framework, and the RBM seven circles. Next, we move on to how we consider the family’s ecology in needs assessment.
First, we are interested in the family’s supports so we conduct an ecomap (Hartman, 1995), which allows us to ascertain the family’s informal supports (kith and kin), intermediate supports (recreation, work, spiritual), and formal supports (services, financial). Below, you can see a simple ecomap for a single mother with one child. Ecomaps can sometimes be quite complicated with additional people. The thickness of the line connecting the support to the family indicates the level of support the family has. Typically, we do this at the beginning of the Routines-Based Interview (RBI).
The RBI is used to delve into the family’s daily ecology—their routines, defined as the everyday activities the individual family carries out. These routines are similar to what anthropologists call ecocultural niches (Weisner, 2002). In the RBM, we like to say life happens in routines. The RBI probes the family’s perceptions of the child’s engagement, independence, and social relationships in each routine. Families have concerns not necessarily connected to routines, so we also ask, “When you lie awake at night, what do you worry about?” This allows the family to think about the meta-concerns they have, such as finances or the future. Sometimes we can help with these concerns, sometimes not.
The RBI and the resulting IFSP/IEP set us up to provide services in natural routines (Woods et al., 2011). We avoid a direct, hands-on approach: See the seven circles above. Not all services need to be provided in routines. We can provide collaborative consultation with families about routines. For example, a difficult routine might be dinner preparation, when another adult partner comes home, but our visit is in the morning. So, we can discuss how that time goes and talk through solutions to make that routine smoother.
An ecologically based approach, as the biopsychosocial approach (Bronfenbrenner, 1986) describes, includes the passage of time as a factor. This means some experiences from earlier in childhood or parenting might have adverse effects on the child or parent (Boullier & Blair, 2018).
We are not concerned only about the child’s well-being but also the well-being of the child’s caregivers. Therefore, in the RBI, we ask, “When you lie awake at night, what do you worry about?” This question allows the parent (we don’t ask this of the teacher!) to think more broadly than in the context of daily routines. The answer, such as financial worries, might be something we can help with: Finding resources. Or worries about the future, which maybe we can’t immediately help with. But the parent hears us asking the question and realizes we care.
With a view to the ecology of parenting, we are on the alert to reinforce four parenting basics. These are evidence-based parenting (and teaching) behaviors:
· Reading with children (Whitehurst & Lonigan, 2001)
· Playing with children or being playful with children (Dang et al., 2021)
· Teaching children (Mahoney et al., 2006)
The ECI practice framework in Australia is a veritable structure for best practices, and the RBM contributes to this structure. I thank Cami Stevenson, my helpmeet and collaborator on all things RBM; my EI@UA team for implementing and probing the RBM; and the RAM Group for implementing the RBM internationally.
Boullier, M., & Blair, M. (2018). Adverse childhood experiences. Paediatrics and Child Health, 28(3), 132-137.
Bronfenbrenner, U. (1977). Toward an experimental ecology of human development [Journal; Peer Reviewed Journal;]. American Psychologist, 32(7), 513-531.
Bronfenbrenner, U. (1986). Ecology of the family as a context for human development: Research perspectives [Journal; Peer Reviewed Journal; ; Literature Review]. Developmental Psycholog, 22(6), 723-742.
Dang, J.-j., Ma, N., & Song, Y. (2021). Relationship between playful parenting and brain function development in children aged 3 to 8 years. Chinese Journal of Child Health Care, 29(4), 389.
Dunst, C. J. (2020). Everyday learning opportunities of young children with and without developmental disabilities or delays. International Journal of Early Childhood Environmental Education, 7(3), 23-41.
Hart, B., & Risley, T. R. (1995). Meaningful differences in the everyday experience of young American children. Paul H Brookes Publishing.
Hartman, A. (1995). Diagrammatic assessment of family relationships. Families in Society, 76(2), 111-122.
Mahoney, G., Perales, F., Wiggers, B., & Bob Herman, B. (2006). Responsive teaching: early intervention for children with Down syndrome and other disabilities. Down Syndrome Research and Practice, 11(1), 18-28.
Weisner, T. S. (2002). Ecocultural understanding of children's developmental pathways. Human Development, 45(4), 275-281.
Whitehurst, G. J., & Lonigan, C. J. (2001). Emergent literacy: Development from prereaders to readers. Handbook of early literacy research, 1, 11-29.
Woods, J. J., Wilcox, M. J., Friedman, M., & Murch, T. (2011). Collaborative consultation in natural environments: Strategies to enhance family-centered supports and services. Language, Speech, and Hearing Services in Schools, 42(3), 379-392.
World Health Organization. (2007). International classification of functioning, disability, and health: Children & youth version: ICF-CY. World Health Organization.
