How can Early Learning help your family?
Hear from Emily and Melissa about how Early Learning has helped their families.
We provide services for families with infants and toddlers with developmental delays and/or disabilities. The program also serves children who may be at risk for developmental delays including those born prematurely, those exposed to substances during pregnancy, or children who have experienced varying degrees of trauma.
We also have many services available for families who are simply curious about their child’s development and would like to learn more.
Learn more on our Early Learning page.
Transcript
Melissa: I have three children. I have Carter, who is 12 years old, Lincoln, who is nine years old, and then our youngest is Madison, and she’ll be two next month. My youngest, she was born somewhat premature, and then it was low birth weight. She developed maybe a little bit behind, so we were working on things with her. They referred us to Community Connections.
Emily: I don’t really ever remember not knowing about Community Connections. Every child I’ve had it’s like okay, I had a baby, let’s do our eval. My first qualifying for the program, she was behind in her receptive knowledge and so then it was just like a given after that. I think three have been in the program and we have six kids.
Melissa: With each of our children, they do an evaluation, and they assess the infant and then see what areas that the infant needs to be worked on. They bring in specialists like a fine motor, a gross motor specialist, and then a speech therapist to work on those different areas. So today, we worked on some fine motor skills by doing a little craft.
Emily: At a home visit, we eagerly await Brynn or Mindy, we hear the knock on the door and all the kids go running and then Brynn or Mindy would help us with strategies to help them close the gap in whatever delay that they were facing. They always love Brynn coming to visit us. It mixes up the day and, new games to play and new ideas.
Melissa: It’s exciting. You miss those little early stages when you can just rock them but then it’s exciting to see them just flourish and grow and meet the milestones that you’ve been working on.
Emily: It’s really rewarding for sure. It’s just like proof that the hard work that you do as a parent is paying off.