MODEL OF CARE
How does the IEP for Home help?
The IEP for Home will help you become your child’s best teacher. It is inspired by evidence-based parenting courses. Evidence based parenting courses are those parenting courses that have been proven to be effective. The IEP for Home uses strategies commonly taught in evidence-based parenting courses.
What steps should I take?
The first and most important step in any parenting course is to develop a positive relationship with your child. The second most important step is to develop positive relationships with other adults who can support you in your role as your child’s best teacher. You can start with your child, with other adults, both, or neither.
What order should I choose?
After you have considered positive relationships, you might decide to jump straight to one of the goals in the Content Pages and not focus on Positive Relationships first. Would your relationship with your child be more positive if you both slept well? Would your relationship be better if you established screen time rules first? When your child is not engaged with a screen, maybe there will be more time available for you to build a positive relationship. So, you might want to work on Sleeping first. Or, you might want to set up screen time rules, as describe in the Schedules page. In fact, both the Goal of good sleeping habits, and the objective of screen time rules are offered as Jump Starters. See the explanation of a Jump starter in the paragraphs below. If you discover that you are not being successful, read the Content Page that the Jump Starter was taken from, and learn more about how to teach that skill. Or, you can look at the Resource Pages and discover new Teaching Strategies. Or, you can learn about Stumbling Blocks, and how they get in the way of your success.
Whatever steps you take, just make sure that you end up having something successful to share. Remember that so-called failures can lead to success, especially if you learn something new. For example, not being successful might give you the chance to see one of your stumbling blocks. Discovering your stumbling blocks is a very important step towards success. Whenever you are successful, relationships are more likely to be positive.
What’s a Jump Starter?
Jump Starters. Four Jump Starters are listed in the Starter Kit. They are a faster way of seeing some success early in your journey. Jump starters might help you feel more positive about your role as a parent.
What are stumbling blocks?
Stumbling Blocks. No matter which goal you choose, pay attention to your stumbling blocks. Stumbling blocks are something to welcome. They always get in the way of the goal that you are trying to reach. But, if you pay attention to them and learn how to work around them, you can end up being a much more powerful teacher for your child.
What are teaching strategies?
Teaching strategies. For the whole IEP for Home, be sure to learn about different teaching strategies. Your child might be able to reach objectives and goals, but need supports from you. Supports can be physical, verbal, and nonverbal. One strategy is to start teaching by offering a lot of support, and then reducing the supports gradually. Effective teaching also means knowing how. to break goals down into objectives. The IEP for Home already does this. However, some objectives can be broken down even further. See what ideas you might come up with.
Rewards and consequences. A teaching strategy that is not usually recommended in the IEP for Home is to offer rewards or consequences. Rewards (and their counterpart, consequences), are usually not effective teaching strategies. Remember: the goal is for your child to function independently. Your child will function much more successfully, and much more independently, if they do not need a reward (or a consequence) in order to perform successfully.
How do I know if I’m being successful?
There are many ways for you to experience success. First of all, you will know that you were successful if your child ends up reaching your goal, and when your child ends up functioning more independently. that’s worth celebrating.
Even if your child does not reach the goal that you set out to reach, there may still be some successes that are worth celebrating on the way. For example, you might be successful because you learned a new teaching strategy. You might be successful because you reduced the level of support to your child. Or, you might be successful because you discovered one of your stumbling blocks and learn how to overcome that stumbling block.
As you practice becoming your child’s best teacher, pay attention to what it means to be successful. Choose one or two objectives, not necessarily one or two goals. Make your definition of success be about you as a teacher, not just your child as a learner. Celebrate steps that get you closer to success. And, welcome failures, especially if they teach you something about you and your child.
You will never know if your child is being successful if you do not choose the goals that you want your child to reach to reach. The IEP offers a set of goals and objectives that you can use to measure your child’s success at functioning independently. One option is not to choose a goal, and to choose an objective instead. Another option is to break down the objectives and make them smaller. Whenever your child reaches these small objectives, they are being successful.
You should also define success for yourself. you are becoming your child’s best teacher whenever you learn a new teaching strategy, whenever you discover a stumbling block (and can overcome it), and whenever your teaching leads to more positive relationship with your child.