My role in our program is the mental health consultant and special service provider. I work with both children with identified special education needs, and with our general education preschoolers and all their families and teachers. The role I have is to guide all support plans related to behavior or mental health. I believe that I can support others on our team, including the family, to see the value they have in creating plans. Although I may be looked at as the expert, I am definitely not the expert on that child in all environments and during all periods of regulation and dysregulation. I would encourage families in particular to make sure their input and what they see their child doing is critical to the process. I can help them by explaining that they understand their preschoolers dysregulation in ways we may not and they have insight into what is regulating. Particularly when students have never been in school before. I can help our specialists (OT, ECSE and SLP) realize that they also have roles in the process, as each of them has a different lense from myself, the teaching team, and the family. In addition to the family, I believe that the teaching team has enormous amount of information about the child’s regulatory needs although they may not realize it. I would encourage them to notice that their relationship with the child is different than mine would be, and just as important. I would give examples of how children will seek out particular adults during different parts of the day depending on what their needs are. An example I could give is that the OT brings out lots of energy in the child, so when the child sees them they are excited and bouncing around and wanting to play. Thus during rest time, this adult is not the most appropriate to bring the child down to a resting state and that person may be one of the teaching assistants, or the speech therapist. Giving examples like this make it concrete for them to realize we all have an important and separate role in the child’s life- and therefore in the support plan.
