Emily Wachter has been providing mental health services to children and families for over then years, and switched to exclusively providing Early Intervention services a few years ago. Like Shanell, Emily is another person who specializes in development and behavior, but she works primarily with rural kids, and kids are only eligible for her services from birth to age three.
Emily is also very different from Shanell in a lot of ways, so her perspective on parenting – both her personal experience and what she’s observed in the field – is entirely unique from last week’s, but very complementary.
Emily talks a lot in her episode about the cyclical nature of generational issues like mental illness, poverty, and neglect, and how those cycles allow such issues to persist. Emily is in a unique position, along with all Early Interventionists, to enter a child’s life at a developmentally significant time and have a positive impact on development that could potentially be the thing that breaks the cycle for that child. But, while she’s there to serve the child, Emily and other EI workers try to incorporate a family systems approach to solving problems, because it’s never just nature – brain development. It’s always a bit of nurture – our environment – as well that causes delays and problems.
Emily’s episode is full of great information on how she tries to empower parents to take the initiative to educate themselves and supercharge their parenting. Her job, she explains, isn’t to fix the problems but to help families figure out how to fix problems for themselves as early in a child’s life as possible.
Check out Emily’s Early Intervention Services here!
