Our Approach
In the same way the foundation of a house supports everything we see on the surface, your child's development across specific areas provides the foundation for the skills you see them show.
Our programs are centered on human development and neuroscience research. This is the foundation of every skill we learn, and each of us has learned something from places we’ve been, experiences we’ve had, or people we’ve been around. That journey starts right from our first day of life and continues until our last.
Your Child's Personality
We get to know your child, learn about their interests, and understand what their behavior means to them, to better identify their developmental needs.
Your Child's Environment
We learn about the places your child goes and the people they are with, to better identify the skills they need to be successful and independent in those environments.
Your Child's Experiences
We learn about the things your child does regularly and the things you would like to do with them, to better identify the skills that will help them make the most of those experiences.
The Science of Development
Human development is influenced by a combination of multiple factors and is designed to give us the tools we need to thrive in our environment. For example, in some cultures, children start potty training when they are as young as four months old. In those cultures, it would be developmentally appropriate for children to learn to use the potty independently before they are 2 years old, while in other cultures, children don’t start potty training until they are 2 or older.
Many milestones that are considered part of ‘normal’ or typical development actually come from information collected from large groups of people whose development was influenced in similar ways based on their environment. This is one of the reasons why there are so many differences in the way children grow and learn.
While it is important to consider a child’s age when thinking about the skills they have, it can be much more helpful to think about the opportunities they have had to develop the skills they need to be independent and to participate in their daily activities.Our Experiences Drive Our Development
Each stage of life provides us with opportunities to learn new skills and to practice those we already developed. This process starts in the brain; as children are exposed to environments where they have the opportunity to see, hear, smell, taste, touch, and perceive information from their sense organs, their brain cells form connections that allow that information to travel to the parts of the brain responsible for interpreting and storing it. With consistent practice over time, those connections grow stronger and information travels more quickly. This means that children can retrieve the information and show or tell you what they have learned.
Meaningful learning is at first context-dependent, which means that each child is better able to process and apply the sensory information they receive when they do so within environments that are similar to the ones they first learned them in. For example, a child’s ability to process the meaning of the word ‘dog’ develops when they hear the word while seeing or otherwise interacting with a dog on more than one occasion. They are then able to show that they understand the word ‘dog’ when they independently use it to name all dogs and images of dogs they come across, even if they are seeing the dogs or images for the first time.
Meaningful learning happens when your child has developed a skill that has meaning to them and that they use for a specific purpose. Meaningful learning is necessary for your child to become independent and successful within their day-to-day activities. We may sometimes think that a child has learned something when they say or do it after we ask them to, but we can only be sure of what they've learned when we see them show it on their own in several different environments.
What they can demonstrate on their own and in several different environments is what they have learned and can use without help. This means that anything your child is not yet doing on their own is something they have not yet learned. This doesn’t mean that they are not able to learn it, just that they haven’t yet done so.Development is a process that is influenced by everything in your child's environment, including the people they spend time, and the experiences they have every day. With our programs, you can get the resources you need to identify and make the most of the experiences that help your child grow.
The Greenhouse Model
Our programs are designed to understand how your child learns, and to use that understanding to help them develop skills that will serve them well in the different environments they are in. Each level combines all the developmental areas that provide the foundation for the skills your child needs to be independent and successful. These areas are:
- Sensory Development: the way our sense organs (i.e. our eyes, nose, ears, mouth, and skin) learn to take in information from the external environment, convert it to electrical signals, and then send it to our brain to interpret and respond to.
- Emotional Development: the way we learn to identify and manage the physiological changes and sensations in our bodies that we experience because of things that happen to or around us.
- Motor Development: the way we learn how to control and move their bodies in a variety of ways.
- Cognitive Development: the way we learn about what things and people in our environment represent, the relationship between what we do and what happens in our environment, as well as how to interact with the environment in order to cause things to happen.
- Communication Development: the way we learn to create and share messages about what we want, feel, or think with others and how to interpret the messages that others share about what they want, feel or think.
The integration of skills across the developmental areas described above allows children to interact with their environment and to respond in ways that enable them to become independent and find success within their daily activities. When a child has not yet developed a skill that they need to adapt to their environment, even if that skill is controlled by a single area of development, the other areas of development are also affected. This is because each area of development builds on skills from other areas to support your child’s ability to develop as a whole.
The combination of skills from all developmental areas help your child to develop each of the following capacities that serve them well in life:Learning To Be Safe
Safety is both a physical and psychological state of being, which can be described as being free from harm, danger, or injury.
When your child learns to be safe, they:
- learn to identify behavior that is physically safe for them and others.
- learn to identify behavior that is emotionally safe for them and others.
- learn to take actions that keep themselves and others physically safe.
- learn to take actions that keep themselves and others emotionally safe.
Learning To Get Along With Others
Relationships are a crucial part of life.
When your child gets along with others, this means that they can:
- initiate interactions and connect with other people.
- respond to other people when they initiate interactions with them.
- form and keep healthy relationships with other people.
Learning to Learn and Demonstrate Knowledge
This is when your child shows you what they know by understanding and following the rules or expectations for different environments they are in.
When your child learns to learn, they:
- pay attention to and remember information.
- share information with others and adapt their message based on who they are interacting with.
- interpret and analyze information for a specific purpose.
Learning To Build
Your child learns to build by working alone or with others to apply and expand information that they have retained.
When your child learns to build, they:
- create solutions to problems.
- share knowledge that educates others.
- share knowledge that inspires others.
Learning To Maintain
Your child learns to maintain what they have built by adapting to changes in their environment and anticipating changes that may occur in the future.
When your child learns to maintain what they have built, they:
- make concrete plans for the future.
- adjust their plans or goals based on unexpected changes.