Putting it All Together: Identity and Early Intervention

As early interventionists, we spend the bulk of our time in family homes giving advice to caregivers about how to raise their children and address disability. All of the beliefs we hold about how to raise children and frame disability are a direct reflection of our social identities and cultural backgrounds. If we are not intentional about thinking critically about why we gravitate toward certain child-rearing practices and developmental interventions, we’ll likely default to thinking that our way is the only or best way for all families. We need to be firmly rooted in our own identities and ways of being to engage in the level of cultural relativism required to truly meet families where they are and make recommendations that reflect the family’s culture more than our own.

Due to our status as experts from a government program, we are in a position of power over families. As we discussed in Chapter Two, the size and impact of this power dynamic varies depending on the social and cultural identities of the EI providers and their therapists. Most EI providers are White women (Childres et al., 2024).  Only about half of all babies born in the last three years are White (Osterman et al., 2024), which means that many families are assigned to work with EI providers who have social identities and cultural backgrounds different from their own. It’s imperative for us to understand the ways that the sociohistorical context impacts our identities and how the culture of those identities shapes our own beliefs about the right and wrong ways to frame disability and raise children.