Preschool Power: Supporting Learning Differences Early
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Aleia Mastroianni: [00:00:00] If you've ever wondered whether preschool really makes a difference, especially for children who might have disabilities, speech delays, dyslexia, or behavioral challenges, this episode's for you.

Today we're talking about how early preschool supports learning differences and the power of early identification.

Hi everyone. Welcome to SpecialEd, IEPs, 504s, Oh my: Conversations with DCSEAC. I'm Aleia, and today I'm super excited and honored to be joined by Lisa Graham, the director of Early Childhood Education here in Douglas County.

Hi, Ms. Lisa. 

Lisa Graham: Hi.

Aleia Mastroianni: Lisa has an incredibly broad and extensive background in preschool and early learning, so she's the perfect person to bring in today to talk about all things preschool.

And before we jump in , many parents feel nervous about preschool, especially if you have any little suspicions that you might have a developmental disability. Every emotion is there. There's fear and avoidance and worry and [00:01:00] guilt. This is all normal. You'll keep feeling all these things and it's okay. Today we want our conversation to be empowering and encouraging because the earlier that children are supported, the more opportunities they have to thrive. The best tool you can have in the end is knowledge.

Today I invited Lisa because she knows more about this than anybody else and she's gonna help guide us through some of these questions.

Okay What's your background and what led you to early childhood education? 

Lisa Graham: Well, it's been a long, long journey and it actually started back when I was a young child myself. I was not the child that had an invisible friend.

I had an entire invisible classroom growing up. I even had little Johnny that would pull little Susie's hair or Sally's hair in the back of the class, and I'd write his name on the board. And clearly I didn't know much about positive behavioral supports back then.

I was five. And so it started then.

The blackboards. Yes, the chalkboards. One of our jobs being to clap the erasers and get all the chalk dust out. Terrible if you have asthma. But that's what they were. And our music teacher would have [00:02:00] the little tool that you put five little pieces of chalk in and it would create all five.

It was the, it's the office supplies, right?

Aleia Mastroianni: Yes.

Lisa Graham: It's the tools of the classroom. Mm-hmm. And I just, I thought they were so magical. And my favorite was the teachers always had the book with the answers in it. And I thought, that's what I want in life. I have so many questions that I want the book with all the answers. So that's the part that really stirred that love of learning, was I felt the classroom was the place that all learning happened.

And it opened the doors for absolutely any question that I had or any interest area that I wanted to explore . And so I just wanted to replicate that and bring that joy to families and to students and to have that place that they, they have to go to in the day.

They don't really have a choice to have it be magical and exciting and any of their interests that they come to in the classroom, to be able to explore them and investigate them with them and be curious about them [00:03:00] as well. And so that's really where it started.

And the teaching part, I began exploring even before I was a credentialed teacher, I was also a lifeguard and a swimming teacher at the YMCA in Florida.

So when I was a young teenager, I would teach swimming lessons to little ones anywhere from two to six. My favorites were those 2, 3, 4, 5 year olds where I would be teaching the little ones water safety and swimming.

And their parents were there, they weren't in the water with them, but they were watching, and they would ask questions from the side and how to teach them to float. And, uh, hot tip for any of you that are out there, if you have pools or if you go swimming is one of the most dangerous things that parents do, is they'll stand three feet away from that wall and have their child jump out to them to catch them in the water. 

Aleia Mastroianni: That's what everyone does. That's what I did.

Lisa Graham: And that's not what you're supposed to 

do. And so it was something that I learned that [00:04:00] much of parenting is intuitive. Right. If your baby cries, you pick them up, you hold them, you change them, you feed them, you try to do all the things that you know to help support them, but they don't know these particular specifics because why would you, how would you? 

So the key is you're supposed to stand alongside the wall, hold your child's hand, have them jump out away from you, and immediately turn them away from you to put that hand back on the wall.

Because oftentimes if you accidentally fall into the pool, panic sets in and you are typically looking at the far end of the wall and in your brain you think that's the closest wall for me to get to. You forget you're six and a half inches from the wall behind you.

So you want to condition them into that muscle memory of turn around the walls right behind you and reach and grab it there. So it was some of those, to me minor, but yet really, really important pieces that if parents knew that they would help support that.

And they would carry that [00:05:00] over and maintain that water safety for them when I'm not there with them.

And those are the pieces for me that classroom teachers embody. These are things that we studied for years and this is what we went to school for and I can share something with you to know about on behalf of your child and what you can share with me is, you know, your child best, you can share with me, Ooh, they had a bad experience, they might be a little anxious or trepidatious so that I can be more aware of that and introduce them more gently or slowly. It's those kinds of things. 

Aleia Mastroianni: What experiences have shaped your passion for working with preschool kiddos? 

Lisa Graham: So many, many experiences along the way. I started in Florida as a teacher of the deaf, and my first experience was in a middle school classroom for oral, aural meaning speaking and listening, which for me was very, very different. My undergraduate program had prepared me to sign with children, either American sign language or total communication.

So that was [00:06:00] a learning curve to understand even within a profession I had studied there are still avenues and aspects I still had to learn. And then, I had always dreamed of living in Alaska, so my 23-year-old self decided to pack up our little Isuzu Rodeo that we called Guido and a popup camper and had a sign called Alaska or Bust.

And we were driving from Tampa, Florida to Alaska. We did not make it. So we landed in California. I got a job as an itinerant teacher of the deaf in Contra Costa County in the Northern California area. What's really interesting is I am an itinerant support provider and I'm going into all of these general education classrooms with teachers and advising and guiding and directing and supporting them on what they should do to address and support the needs of the students in their classroom.

But I had not ever been that general education classroom teacher myself. And one of them called me on it and she said, well, if that's so easy, you should do it. And I went, okay, maybe I will. So 

I did. I was hired on [00:07:00] as a fifth grade general education teacher. And whew, it's a lot. Uh, but I, I got to experience all the things that come at those general education teachers with having a variety of different students. So it was a really great opportunity to experience that firsthand. And I appreciated, you know, having that teacher sort of call me out and say, try it and recognize it's amazing experience, but it is overwhelming and it is hard and it is a lot.

Aleia Mastroianni: And props to you, by the way, for going in and doing and being like, awesome, I'll give that a try. And it gives you that special knowledge for these specialists to come in and make recommendations, there's a bunch of other things that are at play and it just gives you a richer understanding.

Lisa Graham: That compassion piece is, is key.

So I went back as an itinerant teacher of the deaf in Oakland. We had a teacher who went on maternity leave and so I opted to go into takeover for her preschool position in the deaf hard of hearing preschool classroom. And so that appreciation for that early childhood and that preschool world solidified.

Aleia Mastroianni: [00:08:00] On that note, can you tell me what the mission and philosophy is behind DCSD's Early Childhood Education program?

Lisa Graham: Sure. So in Early Childhood here in Douglas County, this past summer, we engaged in an activity with our families to refresh and revitalize our mission statement.

And the goal was to make it 10 words or less. We're at 12, we're close. And so the new mission statement now is simply growing early learners through play, belonging and partnerships with family and community.

And so we were able to distill it to what really are the core components of our program. And our program is a very play-based program. And our philosophy is if we start with belonging that it's a step beyond just inclusion. Inclusion is okay, you're in the room. But belonging is that factor of, I want you in this room.

It's not just about, uh, you're here. It's about you bring something to us that without you, we would [00:09:00] be missing a part of this community. And so our vision statement is, we collaborate to serve a full continuum of learners where students feel safe, valued, and connected in order to reach their highest potential.

Aleia Mastroianni: So Lisa, for many parents, they may think that preschool is optional. How would you describe why those early years are so foundational for brain development and learning? 

Lisa Graham: Well, there's a ton of research on it, and we know that. The, the most critical developmental period for a child is before age five. Up to 90% of the brain develops before the age of five.

Aleia Mastroianni: Oh my goodness. 

Lisa Graham: So it's huge. It's a significant factor.

The first two years of the child's life, they're typically at home with a parent or guardian family member, nanny, grandparent, community member, to support them in that. And that three to 5-year-old timeframe, which is when the brain is working to make those patterns make sense, is where preschool can give them those opportunities to play and [00:10:00] practice and rehearse and what looks like random free play is actually very intentionally designed learning opportunities for students to explore different materials, different activities. If you walk down the hallways of our classrooms, you'll see the cooperative art projects that our students are doing with paint and golf balls or they're using string to measure the circumference of a ball and the various different balls and, and they just see the different lengths of string, which starts them recognizing, huh, they have bigger shapes and it layers in the foundation for later years to start making greater sense.

Those algebraic equations that they will have to learn later the formula for a circumference. We don't teach them that in preschool, but we start laying in those just through exploration and play and their natural curiosity of what do you wanna know more about? What do you think you know, what's your guess?

Let's test it and see what happens and have the children start putting those pieces together is where [00:11:00] preschool shines. That is the core of what we do is create those learning opportunities for them. It's very play-based and it's very authentic in that environment. 

Aleia Mastroianni: And, and I contend that it's an experience for children and their brain development that their parent can't provide. Because even if you are the most exceptional parent who's dedicated their entire life to enriching their child, that was not me, I was trying to survive every day, you still can't recreate the beauty of unique experiences and interacting with a peer or a teacher.

It, it's is truly just the different environment is so worthwhile during that rich time when the brain wants to develop to vary those experiences as much as possible.

Lisa Graham: And it's where they learn that cooperative play with peers. And they, they have to learn how to share and take turns and ask for turns differently and set a timer. And so they learn those cooperative skills and activities that really are more designed for how they will live [00:12:00] as an independent human in life outside of their family home structure. Most of our students are gonna have to go out and have a job, interact with colleagues at work. And so preschool is that opportunity for them to rehearse those skills differently.

Aleia Mastroianni: It's a great place too, where you start seeing people with disabilities. If you don't have people with disabilities in your family, it's a great place to start introducing kids to the concept that, hey, some people are different. It normalizes it for them so early. And I love that all of our special education support for our preschool students happens with all their general education peers.

Lisa Graham: There are those pieces of, again, that inclusive environment, the research will show it benefits not only those students with disabilities but it also benefits that general education student. We find in our preschool classrooms, those neurotypical peers absolutely recognize the differences and they figure out ways and learn to accommodate on behalf of their peers with disabilities where we don't have to explicitly teach them that. Some of those pieces [00:13:00] where they see the differences, but they don't see them as differences. They just see them as, okay, that's my friend and if I wanna play with a friend, I have to ask them in this particular way. I think the adults perceive it as a challenge much more than our students do. Our children who are three or four, if it's in their environment and this is just what it is and it's considered normal, then okay, it's normal. They don't think anything of it, which is beautiful.

Aleia Mastroianni: Lisa. Many families don't realize that preschool is often where learning differences or developmental delays are first noticed. There's a lot of fear and wonder and worry, and sometimes it makes you not wanna go seek out that information, but I want families to know that preschool is this amazing resource when it comes to early identification.

A lot of families don't realize that preschool teachers and staff are trained to look at kids to say, alright, is this developmentally typical? Is this something I see , does this fall outside of that range? When trying to help parents [00:14:00] understand that, how does your team approach trying to respectfully and gently tell these brand new parents, Hey, we might be seeing something that's a little different. We wanna look at it some more. 

Lisa Graham: Great question, we recognize that oftentimes when the first person to share any information with a parent about anything atypical, that could be their pediatrician at their 4-year-old pediatric checkup.

, Anytime anybody recognizes there's something atypical, it's going to sort of light up that fear in the parent of that instantaneous defensiveness, shut down, protectiveness. I relate it often to, let's imagine you go to your doctor for your annual standard checkup. They're gonna do a battery of tests and that doctor may see something in the blood test levels, or you walked the length of the hallway and they started to recognize there was something a little off in your gait.

It could be minor, it could be nothing. But they're gonna bring that up and say, I'd like to look a little closer at this. Can we do more in-depth blood work? Can you do a [00:15:00] fasting test? Maybe go to a specialist and just check it out? It's really more from the sense of, I wanna catch this, whatever it might be early, so that we could then intervene if necessary medically, to prevent it from becoming something irreversible later or a bigger issue later.

It's really that. So in classrooms, the correlation to that is we will do a universal screener where we're gonna do this general assessment of all students to see where they're at. And we typically do it six weeks into school because sometimes this is the first experience any child has been in a school-based setting. They're not going to, in day one or day two follow the routine. That universal screener gives us that first initial opportunity to see, hmm, there's something indicating that we might need to look a little closer in this area.

And it's not something to be scared of. I understand though, just like the medical, right, when a doctor calls you and says, I wanna do more tests that instant, oh my gosh, what's this gonna mean? And you, you start immediately thinking it's, I dunno, malaria, it's something [00:16:00] awful. It is not necessarily something awful, it's just an area that we wanna look closer at it.

What I would want is for parents to see it as that, just to recognize just like your annual physical checkup, I wanna do this universal screener. There might be an area we wanna investigate a little bit more. And even if we go a little farther and get to the point where we're making a recommendation for a full Child Find evaluation to look much deeper and much more comprehensively in these areas that a parent, a: has to consent every step along the way.

So it's not anything that you're not gonna be aware of or a part of. And even at the end of that, we're gonna bring you and share with you all of that information and what our findings were. And even then, at that point, parents still have the right to say, thanks so much.

I don't want any part of going any further. Some families take that information and have medical diagnosis or private therapies that they wanna explore outside of the school.

That's fine. That's all good and okay. Every parent will make a choice for their own child that [00:17:00] works best for them. All we would want is the opportunity to provide that information to families so that they have the information to make the best choice for their child. But it's nothing to be afraid of.

Aleia Mastroianni: I love comparing education to the medical field. I think it's an analogy a lot of people understand , I would talk to my doctor. But I would hope, that if your doctor's like, Ooh, I think you might have an infection, let's run a test that you're not like, nope, no, no, no . Because, you know, it's just gonna get worse. It just means you're gonna take antibiotics for two weeks and you'll be 100% okay. But if you left that infection, it could spread, it could go septic, it could get so much worse.

It's so much harder when it's your child and you're worried and you wonder what do labels mean? What does this mean? Some people worry what their families will think, or there's so many things to be concerned about, but, every single worry or concern doesn't mean, your child's gonna have a significant disability. Sometimes it can be like your kiddo is struggling to communicate their needs, but we can teach them and fully pull them back up. And I don't know a parent out [00:18:00] there that would say, I want to keep a resource away from my child that would help them be successful.

And I try to help parents understand that even though special education can have this label, really what it is, is its support services.

Special education, it comes with a lot of emotional baggage, but knowledge is power. Just knowing is so powerful. Even when it's hard or you're worried about it, it's worth getting that knowledge and your preschool team can help you. 

Lisa Graham: And I think if you knew that your child had a mild vision impairment, would you not want them to have glasses? The same with hearing impairment, would you want to pursue amplification so that they could hear better? It's similar for communication or dyslexia or autism : there's a variety of strategies and skills and supports that we can make available that sometimes can fully remediate and other times become just a lifelong accommodation that they recognize, oh, this is what I need in order to learn, then this is what I need in order to learn.

Aleia Mastroianni: I know that there can be a bunch of answers but as someone who sees children all day long I am sure you have a [00:19:00] couple of flags or things where you're like, oh, I'm noticing X one that jumps to mind is walking on tiptoes or w sitting, or lack of eye contact would probably be the most quintessential.

What are some things that you noticed that might be early signs at the preschool age? 

Lisa Graham: I won't go into any particular category or area specifically, but there's a variety of sources out there. The CDC, the Center for Disease Control has quite a few number of resources about those milestones, sort what is typically expected. Colorado Department of Education, Colorado Department of Early Childhood, they all also have, we call them the one page wonders that will give you just a little synopsis of what to expect at two and three, and four, and five, just to see if your child is making expected progress along those developmental milestones.

Some of them that we look for are primarily in the communication and language. Remember that vision and hearing is that first neural pathway language is the second neural pathway, and so. How many words is your child using to communicate? Are they using words to communicate? If they are [00:20:00] three, and they're not using any language or words specifically, and they're just pointing and grunting,

or taking you by the hand and bringing you over, they're still demonstrating communicative intent. But if they're not using words for that, that would be one of those hallmark flags where we'd start to question and wonder why not. Babbling is a very early sign, so if they're not using those words or that articulation piece, three year olds notoriously a little bit challenging to understand.

Families, we call it, a known listener, will often know what they mean by context or they figure it out. But if it's so challenging and frustrating to your child that they can't use their words to communicate with you, and that makes them mad, makes them cry, any of those things where it starts impacting your child's emotional wellbeing, that level of frustration of communication is a flag to investigate and want to know more.

Social interactions: it's very typical in the [00:21:00] development of play, children will typically play alone first, even if they're sitting next to a peer, we call it parallel play. They'll be doing their own things with their own toys, but they're near each other. They're just not necessarily engaging or interacting. That's fine.

But if we start to see that when they're four, when they're five, we start questioning that because again, typically children who are two and three and four, when they see another same age child, they want to engage and interact with them. They want to seek those opportunities. So if you have a child who does not want that level of social interaction or actively avoids it, that would be a sign of, Hmm, let's investigate that further. Let's get to know more.

That emotional behavioral regulation? We'll see often online of the parent saying, you know, my child was crying because they wanted the green cup, so I gave them the green cup and now they cried because I gave them the green cup.

So there are some pieces of, you know, I think it's the absurd reasons why my child is crying today. That is very typical because, again, very big emotions. They've been on this earth for a [00:22:00] thousand days and everything is really big. They have all the emotions of an adult in a tiny little body that they don't understand what to do with them.

But if we start to see those emotional responses, sort of outweigh the circumstance and be much, much bigger than what we think should be expected for the fact that I asked you to put your shoes just on the other foot. When we see those sort of explosive reactions or responses that are atypical, that's when we'd start to wonder in question.

The sensory pieces. Sometimes the atypical can go either direction, either they will avoid anything. The slime, the sticky, the Play-Doh, the glues. I don't want anything touching it. I don't want paint on me. And they're very particular, and I don't want. And to the other extreme, there's kids who will crave that.

I'm gonna go run myself into the wall because I'm seeking that deep pressure. We had a little one again in Berkeley where he would go out on the really sharp rocks outside at home, not at school. He would take off his clothes and roll around on [00:23:00] those rocks because he desperately sought that level of sensory input.

Those pieces are indicators of either sensory seeking or sensory avoiding that are beyond a typical expectation. So those are some of those hallmark pieces. If they're constantly needing to spin, to move, to tap, to dance, to do all those things, their body regulates at a higher level than typical, those are some of those pieces that we look at.

The motor milestones, if you have a little one who will still, it's called reciprocal gate. Typically you go left foot, right foot, left foot, right foot up or down stairs. But if they're continuously going down one step down and then joining and one step down and joining and one step down and joining, that's sort of atypical.

The tiptoes that you mentioned. If you have cupcakes on a counter and they go up on tiptoes to see what's on the counter, okay, fine. But if they regularly are doing these things or don't wanna be in shoes, because the shoes sometimes prevent them from being able to go on tip toes.

If you were to take them to the [00:24:00] playground and you look around at what the majority of all the other kids are doing and your child is doing something really different than that, or at an age that seems a little old to still be doing those things, spidey senses kick in. But there's also, again, from the CDC or CDE, these charts that will show you what some of those little milestones are to look out for.

And they would be the indicators that you could start to question and wonder, Hmm, is there something more there that I should look into? Sometimes parents have said they've gone to their pediatrician and the pediatrician goes, no, it's fine. But then they go to a childcare center, they go to a preschool and they go, Hmm, that's a little odd.

That medical provider, again, their level of developmental expectation is much broader. Whereas in the preschool, we have a much narrower band of developmental expectations that we can start to see some of those factors that fall a little bit outside of that one side or the other.

And that's the piece to recognize , sometimes the behavioral [00:25:00] regulation pieces aren't just the explosive outbursts. Those are the easy ones to see. But you also wanna look at when your child doesn't want to engage with you. They would rather sit with their trains or their dinosaurs rather than watch a movie with you or play a game with you.

Anything that falls outside of those developmental expectations are something that parents should go, Hmm, maybe I should get a little bit more information about this. 

Courtney Nagle: I feel like you are literally looking back in time. I vividly remember printing out these guidelines and going to his pediatrician and saying, Hey, he's not meeting this, he's not doing this. And then mentioning these explosive reactions. And the whole, second sibling, he is a younger one and his older sister, so advanced and all these phrases that I had heard time and time again, and it's just second child, this is what happens. Get used to it. Buckle up.

But it doesn't always have to look like an explosion. And in fact, explosions are actually more [00:26:00] common than the opposite. 

Aleia Mastroianni: I think it's gonna be really helpful for a lot of parents to listen to this section. If when you were listening to that list, your heart sank a little bit. I'm actually sitting in the building where my daughter had her Child Find appointment. And I remember having worries and concerns and kind of like Courtney was talking about making all the excuses.

She's the third child, you know, you make those excuses 'cause you don't wanna overreact. And she's my third kid. I'm like, whatever. I'm not, I'm not like this paranoid mom. It's gonna be fine. But there was still that inkling, that spidey sense, that worry. And I remember sitting for the assessment and sort of like when you went through that list right there, I was like.

Lisa Graham: Check. Yep. Check. Yep, check. Yep.

Aleia Mastroianni: Every single one of it. 

Courtney Nagle: Double check. 

Aleia Mastroianni: And like my heart would sink more and more. And then I remember crying and feeling overwhelmed and this reality hitting me.

But it was after that that I finally started doing something productive. Like it was the fear and the worry and the suspicion was so much worse than when I finally was like, [00:27:00] okay, this is a reality. And I think the word disability is sometimes so hard 'cause it makes it sound like your child is tainted and broken.

That is not true. All it means is we have identified a difference. We wanna support that difference. And at preschool, we don't know. I don't know how that's gonna play out what that's gonna mean in the future. But if your heart sank when you heard some of those, 

Lisa Graham: it's okay. 

Aleia Mastroianni: It's okay. And it's not the end of the world. I promise you on the other side of getting that assessment comes, the information and the resources and all the things that empower you, that make you feel like, okay, okay, I can address this. But the probably six months that we spent wondering and worrying, is torture.

Lisa Graham: One of my favorite books is The Monster at the End of the Book. Right. Where Grover don't turn that page and he's putting up, you know, brick walls and nailing up two by fours. Don't turn that page. There's a monster at the end of the book.

And when you get to the end of the book, he's like, oh wait, it's just me. I'm lovable. And I'm okay. And there's truth to that.

When a mom [00:28:00] specifically, learns that she's pregnant, you immediately start dreaming. You immediately start planning. Are they gonna be happy and healthy and a contributing member of society and they're gonna get married all the things that you imagine and then you have this disability label, and then you immediately start thinking, that's it.

All those dreams are crushed. That's never gonna happen. They're never gonna be happy, they're never gonna get married, they're never gonna have a job. They're never. And it's not that at all. It just may look different.

And it's about the how they might do it that will be different than what you had played out in your head. There's a poem called Welcome to Holland, you have this plan, I'm gonna go to Italy and you have these dreams and you're gonna have coffee on the terraza . And then your pilot goes, err. And we're now landing in Holland. And you go, wait, wait Holland. And you're initially disappointed. And what I want families to know and to feel, and to hear and to recognize is, that's okay. That is expected. That is a typical response. You are not a bad person because you felt disappointed and disheartened [00:29:00] and a little sad. That grief is real and it takes a little while. And so you get off the plane and you're in Holland. It takes you a little bit to appreciate what you can see because all you have in your mind is, but it's not what I wanted.

It's not what I thought. It's not what I expected. And there is beauty in Holland. And there's another author who wrote autism is not a trip to Holland because sometimes, right, this particular author says, it's more like being in a jungle without a map. And it's chaotic and you feel lost.

And it's not just a serene, lovely trip in Holland where you can watch the windmills. And so every experience is so different. There's nothing wrong with that initial grief sentiment. Every parent's journey is different. Sometimes that recognition happens immediately. Sometimes it takes weeks, months, years even to get to that place of being able to understand enough about that individual [00:30:00] human to celebrate what their bright spots are.

They're not what you expected them to be, but when you do see them in them, for them, you go, ah, there it is. 

Courtney Nagle: I love to tell other autism moms and dads that just like every child's journey looks different, every parent's journey looks different. And it might have taken you a little bit longer to accept it and love it and embrace it fully, but that doesn't make you any different. 

Lisa Graham: Right. You're not a bad person.

Courtney Nagle: I might have been the one fighting for the diagnosis , but that doesn't mean I'm a better advocate . No. That just means my journey is different. No journey looks the same. And that's okay.

Aleia Mastroianni: Okay. Hi families. This is Aleia. I'm jumping in long after our recording session, while I'm editing this together. Lisa, Courtney and I could have gone on talking forever and we basically did. We actually all really like each other, we all love to chat and we're [00:31:00] all passionate about early childhood education, and we had so much to share about the preschool experience, especially for parents learning about disabilities and special education.

We just ended up talking way longer than we could reasonably expect you to listen to a podcast. So we decided to split our conversation into two episodes. So make sure you come back next week to hear us talk about the distressing connection between preschool and suspensions. As well as early identification, IEPs in preschool, and the benefits and challenges of attending a DCSD preschool versus a private childcare center.

You can check our show notes for the links we talked about in the show, specifically DCSD's early childhood education page, the Child Find page, as well as the CDCs page for common milestones during childhood.

So until next time, we're here to help you navigate special education together. Just one conversation at a time. We'll catch you on the next one. Bye.

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