Early Intervention Specialist

I had the pleasure of interviewing two people who work with children that have special needs.  They are both Early Intervention Specialist, one works with Early Developmental Intervention Services (EDIS) and the other is a manager for the military Exceptional Family Member Program (EFMP).  Both work with families who have children that need additional support with their development.

Early Intervention is a system of services that helps babies and toddlers with developmental delays or disabilities.  They learn the basic skills that typically develop the first three years of life, physical, social, cognitive and language.  Some of the services that are provided are, audiology, speech, family counseling and physical therapy among others.  Early interventionists also serve as advocates for the families they serve.  They help families to understand their child’s special needs and how to support them.

Being an advocate for families is probably the one thing that stood out most during the interview.  The location here is small place with limited services.  Often young parents have a difficult time speaking up for themselves and their children.  The specialist support parents during consults and conferences between the medical staff and educators.  They attend these meetings to ensure that the rights of the children are protected.  They help parents to navigate the system.

My Course Project: Military Children and Deployment

Children of service members have experienced several deployments, injured parents returning from war and death.  There were over 5600 casualties during Operation Iraqi Freedom and Operation Enduring Freedom.  Many service members have committed suicide returning from war.  Most children experience adaptive grief when their parents die.  Adaptive grief is “characterized by sadness, longing for the deceased person, and being comforted by positive memories of the deceased” (Cohen & Mannarino, 2011, p. 219).  However, there are some children who experience traumatic grief.  Traumatic grief has traumatic symptoms.  These symptoms interfere with adaptive grief.  Children who suffer from traumatic grief, picture or imagine the details of the death, to include the pain that the deceased parent may have felt.  These children suffer with strong emotions of guilt, revenge and/or anger.  Understanding the grief process that children go through is important to social behavior.  Children who are in therapy will need to have extra support in the classroom.  Teachers are in a good position to help children and families that experience grief.



Cohen, J. A., & Mannarino, A. P. (2011). Trauma-focused CBT for traumatic grief in military children. Journal of Contemporary Psychotherapy, 41(4), 219-227.