Early Intervention is an incredible service for young children under 5, but accessing it and knowing WHEN to access it can often be confusing. I welcome Amanda Selogie who is a special education lawyer and the Executive Director and Co-founder of the Inclusive Education Project.

She joins me to discuss:

• What Early Intervention is
• How can a parent get early intervention services for their child in the U.S.
• How age matters in regards to these services
• Cost, wait times, and access for Early Intervention

Learn more about the Inclusive Education Project at inclusiveeducationproject.org or on Instagram @inclusiveeducationproject

Episode Links and Resources:
CDC Early Intervention

00;00;01;01 – 00;00;31;09

Amanda Selogie

Early intervention is a very broad term. It’s used to describe the services and supports that are available to young children. So we’re talking babies, infants, preschool age usually who might need more support. And the most common way people I think think about it is children with developmental delays and disabilities at an early age. So usually pediatricians and other providers kind of recommend referrals to families to get quote unquote early intervention when there’s a diagnosis.

 

00;00;31;14 – 00;00;55;01

Amanda Selogie

So whether it’s from birth, a cerebral palsy, Down’s syndrome, or it’s a year into their life when they are diagnosed with speech delay or autism, they’re kind of on the spectrum. That’s kind of like that. First go to, we’re going to send you a referral for early intervention because early intervention allows you to get started earlier than just going into school.

 

00;00;55;03 – 00;01;14;08

Dr. Mona

Welcome to the PedsDocTalk podcast. This show’s success is largely due to you and the way you share the podcast with others and leave reviews. So thank you so much. You have caused this podcast to become a top 50 parenting podcast, and I am so grateful to have the most amazing guests to guide you in your parenting journey.

 

00;01;14;12 – 00;01;40;25

Dr. Mona

Topics about all things parenting, child health and parental mental health and child development. Today’s guest is Amanda Solo. She is the executive director and co-founder of the Inclusive Education Project. And we’re talking about an important topic in child development, which is early intervention, what it is, why it’s important, and how to get services. Thank you so much for joining me today, Amanda.

 

00;01;40;27 – 00;01;51;03

Amanda Selogie

Thank you for having me. I’m so excited. I’ve been following your podcast for so long. Having a pandemic baby to your podcast and your platform has helped me so much. So this is just a real treat for me.

 

00;01;51;05 – 00;02;16;09

Dr. Mona

Oh well, it’s a real treat for me too, because that’s so sweet for me to say. And also, I just think the topic that we’re discussing is so important, and I haven’t had anyone on the podcast particularly talk about early intervention yet. You know, I speak about it in my stories, even on some blogs that I have and resources I have, but I’m just so grateful that you connected and that you wanted to come on the show to share your experience and also why this is so important for families to know.

 

00;02;16;12 – 00;02;29;28

Amanda Selogie

Yeah, it is very important. It’s something that I don’t think I think is talked about broadly. I don’t think there’s as many like actionable steps that people to make to say early intervention, early intervention, go do it. But then families are left with how.

 

00;02;30;00 – 00;02;37;20

Dr. Mona

Well tell us before we get into that conversation, tell us a bit more about yourself and even about the inclusive education project that you’ve co-founded.

 

00;02;37;23 – 00;03;01;18

Amanda Selogie

Sure. So early on I worked with kids all my life, kids with disabilities, and I thought I was going to be a special education teacher. My aunt is a special ed teacher, and I worked at a school with full inclusion and fell in love with the kids I worked with, but I quickly just learned how much red tape there is in the education system and how much difficulty that teachers have with really doing the work that they want to do.

 

00;03;01;24 – 00;03;21;14

Amanda Selogie

And I’d always been told I should go to law school, and I worked with this family who told me about how they had to file a lawsuit against their school to get their child included in a general class. And it really was kind of one of those like, blending of things for me. It kind of clicked, and I was like, this is what I’m supposed to do.

 

00;03;21;17 – 00;03;44;28

Amanda Selogie

And so I went to law school finding out more about education, law and special education and realizing just how much I could, like, impact family’s lives and help them from that side of things. And so I went to law school, met my business partner, and we both started practicing special education law, realizing that, like this one case at a time approach just wasn’t having a great impact on the system.

 

00;03;44;28 – 00;04;15;14

Amanda Selogie

Yeah, the law is very individualized. So when you help one family, it doesn’t really help other families as much. And so we started our nonprofit, the Inclusive Education Project, as a way to still support families with legal services. But on the lower end, so free and low cost services. But what we wanted to do was help spread awareness and help educate parents to be able to advocate for their children in a way that they wouldn’t always need an attorney.

 

00;04;15;16 – 00;04;34;07

Amanda Selogie

Certainly, there’s many cases. They still need an attorney, but it was a way for us and we created our podcast, and we have social media platforms as a way to really help educate families on where they can go for support and really trying to empower them to advocate for their children, because a lot of families are really worried about how do they do this?

 

00;04;34;08 – 00;04;36;23

Amanda Selogie

They’re worried about retaliation and whatnot.

 

00;04;36;25 – 00;04;56;07

Dr. Mona

Oh, this is so great. I didn’t know that before. Obviously, chatting with you about the law background and obviously being a special education lawyer, that is the nominal way to kind of bridge that passion. And obviously for childhood education. And I resonate with the idea that you mentioned about the red tape in education and how that existed. It exists in healthcare, too, in many states especially.

 

00;04;56;12 – 00;05;15;12

Dr. Mona

So I love it. I’m so glad that we could connect. And we are chatting about early intervention, what exactly it is, why it’s important, and how to get services. So let’s start with what it is. And I recognize that people who maybe listening outside of the United States may have similar services, but we’re really talking about it for United States, particularly because that’s what we know.

 

00;05;15;16 – 00;05;19;17

Dr. Mona

But yeah, what is early intervention and why is it important that parents know about it?

 

00;05;19;19 – 00;05;50;23

Amanda Selogie

Yeah. So early intervention is a very broad term. It’s used to describe the services and supports that are available to young children. So we’re talking babies infant free school age usually who might need more support. And the most common way people I think think about it is children with developmental delays and disabilities at an early age. So usually pediatricians and other providers kind of recommend referrals to families to get quote unquote early intervention when there’s a diagnosis.

 

00;05;50;25 – 00;06;17;26

Amanda Selogie

So whether it’s from birth, a cerebral palsy, Down’s syndrome, or it’s a year into their life when they are diagnosed with speech delay or autism, they’re diagnosed on the spectrum. That’s kind of like that. First go to we’re going to send you a referral for early intervention because early intervention allows you to get started earlier than just going into school, because we know we don’t have universal preschool in this country yet.

 

00;06;17;26 – 00;06;41;23

Amanda Selogie

So the first time many kids are exposed to school, especially low income families, is kindergarten. So the idea that these children really need more support to learn new skills to overcome challenges and increase their successes once they get to school. So it’s usually dispersed to 3 or 5 year range is usually what we’re talking about with early intervention.

 

00;06;41;25 – 00;06;47;00

Dr. Mona

And the age range that you just mentioned. So births to three and five, but does it just depend on state?

 

00;06;47;02 – 00;07;08;12

Amanda Selogie

So under the federal law if a child has a disability, whether it is a diagnosis ability or it is something that is suspected, a lot of people think, well, if I don’t have a diagnosis, then I can’t get services. And that’s just not correct because there’s a lot of things that we don’t know right away. Right? We don’t always know there’s a disability at birth or even at 2 or 3.

 

00;07;08;14 – 00;07;31;28

Amanda Selogie

Sometimes it doesn’t come up. We get children diagnosis fact we are in fifth grade. So having any underlying challenges at that early ages is what we’re looking at. So the federal law, there’s a number of, the Ada, American Disabilities Act, there is the Ida, which is the individual Disabilities Education Act. These laws govern how we are treating people living with disabilities.

 

00;07;32;00 – 00;08;11;00

Amanda Selogie

And one of the important things is that when a child reaches the age of three in all 50 states, school districts are obligated to support these families. Now, what that means is when they are two and a half, they can start the evaluation process to getting services. So when we talk about this 3 to 5 year range, that’s usually the time when families are starting to see challenges, whether they’re at a preschool setting and they’re getting kicked out for behaviors, or they are then going to speech therapy for a while and they’re not seeing an improvement, maybe they can’t get into a preschool, or maybe they are in a preschool, but they’re not really sure.

 

00;08;11;00 – 00;08;32;06

Amanda Selogie

How am I going to get my child ready for kindergarten? And the public education system doesn’t kick in yet. So this time frame, the 3 to 5 is when the school districts actually are still on the hook for providing services. There are agencies across the board and across each state that supports children who are at birth to three.

 

00;08;32;09 – 00;08;53;23

Amanda Selogie

In California, they are called regional centers. In other states they’re called different things. I actually looked it up in Florida. They have different names for it in other agencies. The CDC actually has a nice little link I had found that has all of the different states and like agencies, you can get early intervention if your child is under three.

 

00;08;53;25 – 00;09;14;29

Amanda Selogie

So that’s before the school district kicks in. But what most people are aware of is this 3 to 5 year old range. When the school district is on the hook and parents can receive services, whether it is preschool services in some states, in some districts, or speech therapy, occupational therapy, it kind of is a wide spectrum of services that are available.

 

00;09;15;02 – 00;09;27;10

Amanda Selogie

And certainly the birth to three. A lot of times we’re looking at behavioral services. Most of the time it’s for developmental disabilities, but it really just depends on on the individual need of the child in the family.

 

00;09;27;12 – 00;09;47;07

Dr. Mona

And so you brought up a grant thing that I wanted to talk about is people you mentioned, like what exactly are you getting evaluated. So yeah, 0 to 3. Obviously a lot of this stuff is developmental feeding issues and 0 to 3 are part of that too. People forget that feeding is development. So yeah, feeding issues. So speech therapy, physical therapy occupational therapy behavioral and same thing from 3 to 5.

 

00;09;47;07 – 00;10;03;28

Dr. Mona

Right. Does early intervention services or just say it’s a three plus year old child that’s going to go through like a school system, behavioral concerns, like if a parent of a three and a half year old is struggling with tantrums and has really tried everything, do they go through these services or how would they get help for those kind of things?

 

00;10;04;00 – 00;10;27;21

Amanda Selogie

Yeah, so a lot allows for a lot in this age range. There is no rule that says you have to have a diagnosis of autism or a diagnosis of Down’s syndrome or, or the like in order to get services. All it requires is that there is a suspicion of a disabling condition that is impacting learning. And remember, learning isn’t just, you know, arithmetic, reading, writing.

 

00;10;27;22 – 00;10;58;07

Amanda Selogie

It’s not just the classroom environment. Learning is everything. Like you mentioned, feeding. If your child is learning to speak, to communicate with you, to feed themselves, to use the restroom, to tie their shoes, using fine motor skills to hold on to a fork. These are all aspects of learning that if there is something going on that you as a parent or as a provider, or suspect that there is something going on, this child can be referred to the school district as early as two and a half.

 

00;10;58;07 – 00;11;32;24

Amanda Selogie

And the reason I say two and a half is because the assessment process for the district sometimes takes a few months. In some states there is a strict timeline. So in California it has to be done in 60 days. From the time that the parent consents to assessments. But in other states, it’s what’s considered a reasonable time. So if the idea is that you want services to start at three, if you’re at two, two and a half and you’re thinking, man, I’m really struggling and I’ve gone everywhere else and no one’s really able to help me, then this is the time to go to your school district.

 

00;11;32;26 – 00;11;41;00

Amanda Selogie

At two and a half, so that you can get everything going so that by the time they start three, they can be possibly placed in a program within the local school district.

 

00;11;41;02 – 00;11;54;18

Dr. Mona

So I think it’s important that we clarify this, because a lot of times, for example, like let’s see, we’re talking about a two and a half year old, okay. Who is maybe just saying a private preschool or not yet in school. Parents don’t realize that, yes, you are going to use the public school system at that point, right?

 

00;11;54;18 – 00;12;07;05

Dr. Mona

So how would a parent contact or start that process if it’s an older child, let’s say a two and a half year old, meaning would they just Google, go online and search on the internet, like how to contact the school district to get that ball rolling?

 

00;12;07;08 – 00;12;29;21

Amanda Selogie

Yeah. So every school district is going to have a website under the federal law. Would they talk about liaise or local educational agencies? Because in some states school districts are very large. So when we think of a large school district, we think of Los Angeles Unified School District two, which is one of the most the largest districts. And some states like Texas have like county districts.

 

00;12;29;21 – 00;12;48;22

Amanda Selogie

So they’re very large in other states. They have smaller school districts that have, like, you know, 4 or 5 schools. So you’re going to look either for your district or your local educational agency. So when you’re looking at, let’s say, kindergarten and you go online, you say, what’s my local school? Where is my kid going to go? You’re going to kind of do that same process.

 

00;12;48;22 – 00;13;09;01

Amanda Selogie

When they’re two and a half, three, you’re going to say, where is my home school and what school district or LA are they in? And that’s who you contact in. I mean, we’re in the age of technology and everything is online nowadays, right? So Google that school district on their website. They should have a section for special education sometime.

 

00;13;09;03 – 00;13;30;19

Amanda Selogie

It’s going to be called support services. But you can always give them a call. You could always show up to the district office and say, I’m concerned that my child something that’s impacting their learning, whether you have a diagnosis or not, and you present the school district with this information and you say, I’d like to get my child evaluated to see if there are supports available for them.

 

00;13;30;19 – 00;13;40;25

Amanda Selogie

And that is what triggers the school district’s obligation to do an assessment of your child, to see what they might qualify for during this time.

 

00;13;40;27 – 00;14;00;17

Dr. Mona

Well, that’s great, and I love that we’re talking about the older child as well, because you had already mentioned, like the names are different in every state. So in Florida, our early intervention program is called Early Steps. So maybe that’s the name. So with early steps it’s under three. But yes, that two and a half to three is a great area because once that child hits three they no longer qualify for the services of early step.

 

00;14;00;17 – 00;14;17;08

Dr. Mona

So I love that you’re talking about older children. Now if it’s a younger child let’s say it’s under two and a half okay. A lot of the misconception is that you need a pediatrician referral or a clinician referral, but that’s not the case. So how can a parent contact early intervention services if they’re younger than two and a half?

 

00;14;17;08 – 00;14;19;25

Dr. Mona

Would that CDC link be a useful one?

 

00;14;19;27 – 00;14;46;24

Amanda Selogie

Yes, absolutely. So every state the way they operate is different. So in California we have what’s called regional centers. And those are private nonprofit organizations. But they contract with the state. So in a sense they are a wing and arm of the state. And what they do is they provide the support from birth to three and then 20 to on, because the school district’s obligation is from 3 to 22.

 

00;14;46;29 – 00;15;16;02

Amanda Selogie

So the regional centers kind of fill the bookends gap of the school age child. And unfortunately, the regional centers here in California, they mostly are dealing with developmental disabilities. So kids with autism, and we see that sometimes families are not eligible. So we have the regional center is the perfect first place to start. So if you go to the CDC link and you find your state, you’re going to see different agencies that are there to support.

 

00;15;16;05 – 00;15;37;02

Amanda Selogie

Certainly there are other nonprofits in each state that support as well. The ones I see you see website are generally going to be ones that are either an arm of the state or partner with the state. So they’re usually going to receive state or federal funds to help fund these services. And that’s how they become low or free cost services for families.

 

00;15;37;02 – 00;15;56;28

Amanda Selogie

But there’s certainly nonprofits out there as well. And one thing sometimes families don’t know is that their insurance, if they do have insurance, covers a lot of these services as well. It may be limited, but ABA or applied behavioral analysis, those are, behavioral therapies that can be in your home from birth to three. Those are usually covered by insurance.

 

00;15;56;28 – 00;16;22;04

Amanda Selogie

This is a more recent development, speech therapy, occupational therapy. So we always tell families like go to the government agencies, go to the nonprofits and also ask your insurance because you may get a block of hours of services in one, but it may not be enough. So you need to go to two. And we realize that this isn’t always the case for families that don’t have insurance, or are unable to access these services.

 

00;16;22;04 – 00;16;28;25

Amanda Selogie

So so that is kind of a problem that we are seeing across the country, is that the access to services is often challenging.

 

00;16;28;27 – 00;16;48;00

Dr. Mona

And the costs that you mentioned. So the evaluation itself, like just say a family wants to get their child evaluated. Is there a cost to that or does that depend? And also what are the cost of services like if they do qualify for speech therapy as an example, does that also just depend on state insurance coverage and things like that?

 

00;16;48;03 – 00;17;02;10

Amanda Selogie

Yeah. So most of these agencies that are arms or connected to the state are usually going to be free. Both the evaluation and the services, whether they provide services in-house or with the pandemic. We saw you know, low staffing.

 

00;17;02;12 – 00;17;03;09

Dr. Mona

Yeah. It was.

 

00;17;03;09 – 00;17;33;02

Amanda Selogie

Rough. Yeah. Still experiencing. So these agencies have had to partner with private organizations to fulfill the services that they promised to provide. And it’s supposed to be free. That’s why these agencies get the money from the federal and state government. Insurance companies can sometimes pay. And I know that Medicare and Medical often can pay for some of these, too, especially like developmental screenings we often post because there’s usually at least a couple times a year.

 

00;17;33;03 – 00;17;54;18

Amanda Selogie

There’s nonprofits that do developmental screens for free for families. And I know that there are organizations across the country that do this. So sometimes the evaluation part, it’s a little bit easier to access free assessments. It’s the services that may not always be free. If so, you can go to these agencies and they say, okay, you qualify for ten hours of speech therapy a year.

 

00;17;54;18 – 00;18;15;09

Amanda Selogie

And you’re like, well, what if my telling me that once a week there’s only two weeks in a year, that’s not going to be enough. And even insurance companies may pay, the majority, but there’s still a copay. So it’s not always going to be free. There are avenues to get free services, especially for low income families, but it’s not like a guaranteed thing.

 

00;18;15;09 – 00;18;33;14

Amanda Selogie

But when you get to the 3 to 5 year range and older, that’s when it should be entirely free because it is covered by the school district. So that’s where the change usually lies. And we see a lot more kiddos that need the services between 3 and 5 because they didn’t get it earlier on, mostly because of cost and access.

 

00;18;33;16 – 00;18;59;28

Dr. Mona

This is so useful. I love this conversation because I think there is some discrepancy in communication of that that I hear also from families, when they’re surprised that there may be a cost or what’s going on. So thank you so much. And you had mentioned about the pandemic, you know, the pandemic. Absolutely. I saw it as well, the barriers to access for a lot of things, not only just when things open back up, getting in to see your clinician, but also developmental evaluations and resources were so hard to find.

 

00;18;59;28 – 00;19;19;08

Dr. Mona

And it was very stressful as a pediatrician with families coming in for this. Yeah. Is there any legal requirement on wait times, like my biggest concern as a pediatrician and someone who’s obviously very into child development is, you know, just see, a family calls for an early intervention evaluation. Let’s use an example of a two year old and they don’t hear back.

 

00;19;19;08 – 00;19;33;07

Dr. Mona

And maybe this was more so in the pandemic. Not so much now, but they don’t hear back. So they call back again. Or I have it where the family doesn’t follow up. And I always say, I’m like, make sure you call back. Be the squeaky wheel. Like, please be the squeaky wheel call, call, call. If you don’t hear from them, call back.

 

00;19;33;07 – 00;19;52;00

Dr. Mona

Because sometimes we get families lost in the cracks because we tell them, you need to do this. They don’t do it because they have 5000 other things happening in their life. I don’t blame them. I’m not saying that it’s their fault, but they also need to call and stay on top of it. Do you see, like there’s been reports of families feeling like there’s a long waitlist or wait times?

 

00;19;52;00 – 00;20;05;19

Dr. Mona

Or is it really that as long as you call, you keep calling, you get on the assessment list that you should be able to get an evaluation in a timely manner? Because we know that development is important early on, which is why we want them to get evaluated.

 

00;20;05;21 – 00;20;32;18

Amanda Selogie

Yeah, I mean, we are seeing real wait times. I mean, it’s gotten better. Probably six months. But you know, we work with a lot of providers and we have a lot of providers on like our podcast that we talked to about this. And unfortunately, there was a lot of burnout and Covid and a lot of people left the field or they switched or they completely changed careers, whether it was because of, you know, needing to be able to pay for expenses or just the burnout.

 

00;20;32;18 – 00;21;02;19

Amanda Selogie

And we are seeing a lot of staff shortages across the board from public agencies, school districts to private agencies. And so, because school districts and regional centers and these early intervention services, they’re having shortages. They’re having to then reach out to private organizations to fulfill their contracts, which then makes the private agencies even more full. We’re in Southern California, and I’ve I had a family that wanted ABA therapy, behavioral therapy.

 

00;21;02;19 – 00;21;27;06

Amanda Selogie

You know, I could throw a rock and I could find five. But in rural parts of the state and the country, that’s not the case. So even if a family is told, hey, just keep calling more and more places, they may not find someone except for someone who’s two hours away. And if they’re going to go two hours away for therapy, is that beneficial for their one and a half year old to sit in the car for four hours to get a service, it may not be feasible.

 

00;21;27;08 – 00;21;51;19

Amanda Selogie

You would ask about are there, you know, legal timelines and when it comes to the school district so that three and up. Yes, when it comes to birth to three, it’s a little bit more of a gray area because these agencies that are providing these early intervention services, they are receiving money from the state and federal government in most cases for this purpose, to provide early intervention.

 

00;21;51;22 – 00;22;13;16

Amanda Selogie

But the law is kind of put in place by Congress and how they’re getting those money. It’s not as clear what their obligations are with it. And so it’s a little bit more difficult to enforce challenges. So yeah, what we often see is a child should be receiving speech therapy at, say, the age of two. And if they can’t get speech therapy until three, they are even more behind.

 

00;22;13;19 – 00;22;29;18

Amanda Selogie

If they had gone it too, they may have needed 30 minutes a week for that year, and maybe they could have exited from speech because they would have made enough progress. Right? But if they’re not starting until three now, they might need an hour a week or two hours a week, and it might take two years to get to that point.

 

00;22;29;18 – 00;22;51;02

Amanda Selogie

So we’re always going to see it kind of eventually lead to the school district in a school system. If these kids especially are pandemic kiddos, because these are the ones that are hit the most. A lot of kids who, you know didn’t get a lot of social interaction their first few years of life or, say, kids who started preschool in the pandemic and then couldn’t go to preschool.

 

00;22;51;02 – 00;23;17;05

Amanda Selogie

Yes, they’re the ones who are needing this early intervention and they’re not able to access it. So when they finally get to the school system, they are more behind. As ever now, the way that the school laws kind of work is that it doesn’t matter kind of whose fault it is that the student didn’t receive services, whether the family couldn’t access early intervention, or there was a waitlist or nobody knew that there was a disability.

 

00;23;17;05 – 00;23;36;22

Amanda Selogie

Whatever the case may be, the reality is, when a school district receives a child and there is a delay or their child is behind, it doesn’t matter where that delay came from, all it matters and they need to address it, and they need to bring them up to speed with where they should be kind of commensurate with their abilities.

 

00;23;36;22 – 00;23;43;10

Amanda Selogie

But that is probably the biggest reason why my job even exists, because that to happen most of the time.

 

00;23;43;12 – 00;23;59;05

Dr. Mona

Well, yeah, I mean, we’re talking so much about just all the different steps that it takes to get the services versus recognizing that you need services. I think that’s such an important role in education for families on what is, you know, what we expect to be typical in terms of age and what’s going on with your child’s development.

 

00;23;59;09 – 00;24;17;00

Dr. Mona

And that’s a lot on clinicians. And then obviously getting the services set up, getting the evaluation, obviously getting them, you know, tied into whatever they need. And you mentioned that it is something that ends up in the school system. You know, part of me, I’m in health care. I see the stuff is so important to me. As you know, this is why I wanted you to come on.

 

00;24;17;00 – 00;24;42;23

Dr. Mona

Like early childhood education and early childhood development. And I’m talking that first five years, let’s say, even like the first six years. Okay, you’re in California. I’m in Florida. It’s so stressful that a lot of it is dependent on where you live in this country and to a large degree. And I’m speaking like I’m in Florida, where I have autistic children, and getting them in to ABA or getting them into just even an evaluation, it takes forever.

 

00;24;42;23 – 00;24;58;28

Dr. Mona

And it’s not the parents. Sometimes it’s literally like the waitlist, like moms have told me that, oh, I’m on a waitlist at some, you know, there’s a school nearby in our area that does work with a lot of autistic families, and it’s so frustrating because I’m like, they need the support, but there really is such a barrier to that.

 

00;24;58;28 – 00;25;22;17

Dr. Mona

And putting it on the school system too. I know that they have so much going on. You know, there’s so much that they’re evaluating and with low funds and I’ve always felt like we just need way more resources and way more funding to this entire area. And I know you agree, and I know we’ve chatted about, you know, the state differences and stuff, but this is so important so that parents know how to advocate for themselves and how to push if they need the help.

 

00;25;22;19 – 00;25;44;19

Amanda Selogie

Yeah. And I mean, when we touch on why is it so important? It’s not just that kids ages birth to five. That’s when so much development occurs. But it’s also the goal is to get your child ready for school to. And that’s the piece that I think there’s a lot on social media right now about kindergarten readiness and what you need to do.

 

00;25;44;19 – 00;26;07;08

Amanda Selogie

And I’m not talking about getting your kid ready for kindergarten so that they can be reading and writing. That’s not what I’m talking about. Being able to have your child be in an inclusive environment, because what we see happen so often is that a child who could have should have received services at one or 2 or 3, and didn’t they enter kindergarten?

 

00;26;07;13 – 00;26;28;12

Amanda Selogie

They struggle. And the school district says, your child is so behind, they’re not accessing or they’re having behaviors, so they’re having to remove from the class. Maybe they’re getting suspended, which that’s a whole another topic. I saw a kindergartner getting suspended, but that happens. Yeah, these are happening. And the school district then says, you know, your child really can’t be in this environment.

 

00;26;28;12 – 00;26;48;25

Amanda Selogie

They need to be pulled to a special day class. They need to be pulled to a separate setting. And what happens to that child when they are just starting their educational experience, and they are being completely excluded from the general population and the general education environment. They are being taken away from the equal opportunity to learn. That is really important for our kiddos.

 

00;26;48;25 – 00;27;13;29

Amanda Selogie

And so when we look at early intervention, a lot of what we’re looking at and kind of when we have clients and when we have families we’re working with and we’re trying to get them the right services, a lot of it is that eye of how can we get a lot of these underlying skills. This is skills that are a little bit easier for most families to teach their kids that these kids with developmental or any other type of a disability, they have an extra hurdle.

 

00;27;14;04 – 00;27;36;15

Amanda Selogie

How can we get them up there to where they can access that general education kindergarten the minute they step through their school district doors, because the minute they get pulled to a separate classroom, it becomes more challenging every day they are in there to get them back to an inclusive setting. So we’re looking at it from the eye of wanting to give kids an opportunity to learn the same way as their peers.

 

00;27;36;17 – 00;27;49;21

Dr. Mona

Well, I was just going to ask about inclusive education. Obviously, your project, your nonprofit about inclusive education project. I think you already alluded to it. But why is this so important? If there’s anything else you want to add, why is inclusive education necessary for children?

 

00;27;49;26 – 00;28;22;00

Amanda Selogie

So inclusive education really benefits us all. It benefits everybody. It benefits the child living with a disability. It benefits their peers to adopt our communities because it doesn’t just encourage these equal opportunities and equity, but it also encourages understanding and acceptance of differences. So which unfortunately is something that many adults in this country have trouble with. And we want to why they have trouble with it because they weren’t taught that as kindergartners, unfortunately.

 

00;28;22;07 – 00;28;45;23

Amanda Selogie

So the school that I worked at before I went to law school was a full inclusion school, meaning that it was a public charter school where 20% of their population was kids with disabilities, and they were fully included in the general education environment. If they needed Aids, they had Aids, they needed speech therapy, they had it. The goal was to have them in the general education class as much as possible, and it was one of those 1 in 1,000,000 schools.

 

00;28;45;23 – 00;29;07;23

Amanda Selogie

It was amazing to see that not only were the kids that I worked with were supported the way that they should be, but their peers, the students with disabilities, weren’t students with disabilities. To them, they were their friends. They weren’t anything different because they learned from kindergarten on that they were just one of their peers, that there was nothing different about them.

 

00;29;07;23 – 00;29;27;22

Amanda Selogie

They were on this special bus. They weren’t on in this special class. They weren’t a special education student. It was. And the amount of just amazing things I saw in this school of these peers who I worked with, a little boy who had Down’s syndrome. And when he needed a little break, a sensory break from the classroom, we pull him out.

 

00;29;27;22 – 00;29;48;28

Amanda Selogie

And he loved basketball so he would get to choose a peer to play basketball with him for, you know, what was like three minutes. So it wasn’t a huge time out of the classroom. And the kids loved playing with him. They fought over who got to help him in class and outside of class because they not only accepted him, but they understood him as their peer.

 

00;29;48;28 – 00;30;09;00

Amanda Selogie

They didn’t see him different and I can only imagine because that was so many years ago. These all of these kids that I worked with are now adults, and I can imagine that they are much more accepting adults. And peers who, you know, when I was in school, I remember there being two kids with autism who were at my school.

 

00;30;09;00 – 00;30;30;20

Amanda Selogie

That’s the only ones I knew of, and they were in a separate class. And the only reason I even knew that they existed was because once a week, for one hour, they came into our class and we rotated sitting next to them. That was all. Yeah, all we were taught. So this inclusive education is the first time when kids are exposed to maybe people who are different.

 

00;30;30;22 – 00;30;50;12

Amanda Selogie

And if we can teach them at an early age, we’re not having to backtrack and have as many problems as I think we see with employers not being accepting of disabilities from having former presidents who think it’s okay to make fun of people who are disabled. You know, we have a lot of problems with not accepting each other.

 

00;30;50;12 – 00;30;53;05

Amanda Selogie

And I think this is where it all begins.

 

00;30;53;07 – 00;31;12;29

Dr. Mona

Absolutely. So much of what we are and who we are and what we learn is in that first seven years, I say it all the time to my husband, like how we learn to communicate with others, respect others differences, our relationship with ourselves, our bodies, food. I mean, it’s so important in not putting pressure on us as parents, but it’s an important role, you know, like it is an important thing.

 

00;31;12;29 – 00;31;20;27

Dr. Mona

I think we have to recognize that parenting is a responsibility. And also, like you said, education, inclusive education is so important as well.

 

00;31;20;29 – 00;31;37;28

Amanda Selogie

Yeah. And I know that a lot of families sometimes will be well, you know, I was told that we can go into the special day class and it sounds amazing. The school districts, they sell parents on these classes by saying it’s going to be individualized to your kid. It’s going to be a slower pace. It’s going to be all the support they need.

 

00;31;38;01 – 00;32;08;02

Amanda Selogie

But if you take a classroom where you’re learning at a slower pace, inherently you’re going to learn less than a year and every year you’re learning less. You’re falling further and further behind. So it’s not giving that child an opportunity to access the same amount of learning. It’s not giving them the opportunity to encourage growth and skill development, like through peer modeling, and also just having higher expectations because these separate classrooms have lower expectations.

 

00;32;08;02 – 00;32;30;29

Amanda Selogie

And under the law, we talked all the time about the expectation is for challenging goals and objectives for kids. They need to be challenging. They should be challenging. Just because a child has a disability doesn’t mean they can’t be challenged. And I think that’s something that is lost in the shuffle. Oftentimes it’s like, oh, we need to make sure that they can do it without thinking, well, maybe they can.

 

00;32;30;29 – 00;32;35;08

Amanda Selogie

Why are we thinking they can’t? We should be first thinking that they can.

 

00;32;35;11 – 00;32;51;22

Dr. Mona

Oh, Amanda, this was such a great conversation and so important. And I love that we chatted about this final piece about this inclusivity. So all this goes more than just we need to help the kids. It’s also just about we need to help each other and accept it. So I love this conversation. What would be your final message for everyone listening today?

 

00;32;51;25 – 00;33;13;04

Amanda Selogie

I think to parents especially, but also to providers. Trust your gut if you think that there is something going on, even if you don’t know exactly what it is, trust that gut. There’s so many resources out there and I know it’s difficult sometimes with information overload, especially with a year of knowing like, who do I trust or who do I follow?

 

00;33;13;07 – 00;33;34;21

Amanda Selogie

If you’re able to find an agency in your location in your state, whether it’s worth to three and it’s one of these separate agencies or it’s three and above and it’s your school district, there’s no harm in asking for support and for services, even if there is seemingly long lines. Still don’t push forward because you deserve it, and you deserve it too.

 

00;33;34;22 – 00;33;50;09

Amanda Selogie

You deserve to have the tools to help your child as much as you can. And I know that sometimes families go to one doctor or another, a therapist, and they’re told, no, your child is fine. Don’t worry about it. If you and your gut think, no, there’s something going on, trust that I get a second opinion.

 

00;33;50;12 – 00;34;10;19

Dr. Mona

I couldn’t agree more. And I will be linking that CDC link because I do like it as well where it has state by state kind of the hyperlinks of, you know, where to get those resources. Especially for that 0 to 2 and a half year range is there anywhere else in terms of if people want to stay connected with what you’re doing with the Inclusive Education Project or other resources that you want to share with everyone today?

 

00;34;10;21 – 00;34;36;01

Amanda Selogie

Yes, absolutely. So you can go to our website. It’s Inclusive Education project.org, but most importantly is our podcast every week. We’ve been doing this podcast I think since 2017. We have on professionals who share as much information as we can kind of get to families. We talk about inclusive education, we talk about early intervention, we talk about speech therapy, from sensory regulation to dyslexia to school district challenges.

 

00;34;36;01 – 00;34;54;19

Amanda Selogie

It’s not really a legal podcast, although we share little tidbits, but it’s really about trying to get families informed, and educated on how they can better support their child. So, you know, we encourage people to go listen to our podcast. And, we do have our social media handles. It’s inclusive education project, same as our name on Instagram, Facebook.

 

00;34;54;19 – 00;35;00;04

Amanda Selogie

And we recently joined TikTok. I don’t know how I feel about it because I don’t like video, but.

 

00;35;00;06 – 00;35;02;00

Dr. Mona

I try to talk. It’s a lot.

 

00;35;02;03 – 00;35;03;17

Amanda Selogie

It’s a lot.

 

00;35;03;19 – 00;35;18;13

Dr. Mona

But it’s good. You have to kind of go where the people are. So just like Ariel from Little Mermaid, you gotta you got to go where they are. So there’s a lot of people, a lot of and especially a lot of young families on TikTok. So I understand you, Amanda. Thank you so much. This is so helpful. Like I said, I’m going to be linking those resources as well.

 

00;35;18;16 – 00;35;20;02

Dr. Mona

But thanks again for joining us today.

 

00;35;20;08 – 00;35;22;07

Amanda Selogie

Thank you for having me. It was so much fun.

 

00;35;22;09 – 00;35;40;06

Dr. Mona

And for everyone tuning in. If you love this episode, which I’m sure you did, it was so informative and I just love talking about early intervention and the importance, but also how to get there if you need it. Make sure you leave a review or rating wherever you can. This is how the podcast and show continues to grow and reach more people that need this information.

 

00;35;40;12 – 00;35;43;09

Dr. Mona

And I cannot wait to chat with another guest next week.

 

00;35;43;09 – 00;35;48;00

Dr. Mona

Thank you for tuning in for this week’s episode. As always, please leave a review.

 

00;35;48;03 – 00;35;51;03

Dr. Mona

Share this episode with a friend. Share it on your social media.

 

00;35;51;05 – 00;35;58;28

Dr. Mona

Make sure to follow me at PedsDocTalk on Instagram and subscribe to my YouTube channel, PedsDocTalk TV. We’ll talk to you soon.