Assess­ing the babies is Oba­ma’s agenda

An Alert by Ani­ta Hoge

This is the birth to kinder­garten men­tal health inter­ven­tions for our babies. This is research for the ear­ly learn­ing and the $1 bil­lion that Oba­ma is fund­ing for day­care and preschool.

This toolk­it Facil­i­tat­ing Indi­vid­u­al­ized Inter­ven­tions to Address Chal­leng­ing Behav­ior is an overview of the social and emo­tion­al and behav­ioral inter­ven­tions for infant through kinder­garten. This sys­tem uses the Pos­i­tive Behav­ior Inter­ven­tion and Sup­port (PBIS) of the Pyra­mid Mod­el to build an indi­vid­u­al­ized behav­ior plan. This is referred to in oth­er terms: mul­ti-tiered sys­tem of sup­port, and Response to Inter­ven­tion, (RTI). All of these terms and inter­ven­tions use the 3 tiered inter­ven­tions for ALL stu­dents. These terms are con­tin­u­ous­ly found through­out the ESEA Re-autho­riza­tion Act in the sec­tions for Ear­ly Learning.

The toolk­it man­u­al is a must read… every word is impor­tant in this book. Be sure to exam­ine pages start­ing at page 53. But the actu­al CHECK MARKS for the func­tion­al assess­ment begins on page 59 and goes to page 74 where the teacher (care­giv­er) is doing anec­do­tal screen­ing and assess­ment in this “func­tion­al behav­ioral assess­ment,” and the col­lect­ing of data on each baby. Things like tantrums, does­n’t put their toys away, sep­a­ra­tion anx­i­ety, cry­ing, not want­i­ng to take a nap, not play­ing with oth­er chil­dren, not shar­ing, hit­ting anoth­er child… all these are con­sid­ered to be men­tal health disorders.

This infant and tod­dler data is being fed into com­put­er banks. This is so encom­pass­ing and labor inten­sive in the data col­lec­tion, I’m not sure how they care for the chil­dren. The stroking of the par­ents to get then to agree to the inter­ven­tions has been referred to as “par­ent engage­ment,” also aligned in this manual.

This is also why the “FAMILY” had to be re-defined in ESEA. Get par­ents involved in the teams, a home vis­it, a sooth­ing “we are help­ing your child.” Just remem­ber the “white soft rat” stim­u­lus response activ­i­ty, and read this man­u­al, and you would nev­er put your child into a day­care or fed­er­al­ly fund­ed preschool cen­ter, EVER!!!

Facilitating Individualized Interventions to Address Challenging Behaviors (Ages 0–5)Authored by Center for Early Childhood Mental Health Consultation-This product was developed with funding provided by the Office of Head Start, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, through an Innovation and Improvement Grant (90YD0268). AUGUST 2011

Below is the doc­u­men­ta­tion for the Pyra­mid Mod­el from Van­der­bilt Uni­ver­si­ty, Cen­ter on the Social and Emo­tion­al Foun­da­tions for Ear­ly Learning

Van­der­bilt’s Pyra­mid Mod­el of Social & Emo­tion­al Development
http://csefel.vanderbilt.edu/resources/pyramid.html

Resources and Train­ing (many links for research)
http://csefel.vanderbilt.edu/resources/training_infant.html#mod1

Mod­ule 1
http://csefel.vanderbilt.edu/resources/inftodd/mod1/1.1.pdf

Address­ing Chal­leng­ing Behav­iors of infants and toddlers
http://csefel.vanderbilt.edu/resources/inftodd/mod1/1.4.pdf

Inven­to­ry of Practices
http://csefel.vanderbilt.edu/resources/inftodd/mod1/1.6R‑1.pdf

Below are illus­tra­tions from Pennsylvania:

Penn­syl­va­ni­a’s Mul­ti Tiered Sys­tem of Sup­port http://pattan.net/category/Educational%20Initiatives/Multi-Tiered%20Systems%20of%20Support%20(MTSS-RtII)

RTI Train­ing Model-Pennsylvania
http://pattan.net-website.s3.amazonaws.com/images/instructional/2012/05/14/District%20Level%20RtII%20Implementation%20Training%20Module.ppt