Growing up, I loved playing with dolls. I always wanted to be a mommy. I loved babysitting and I taught dance lessons and cheer camps to younger kids and worked as a cabin counselor at a youth camp right after high school. And I worked at a daycare after high school, too. It was a daycare that catered to parents who worked the late shift so I would be there until midnight, putting kids "to bed" until their parents came to pick them up. How sad for parents to not be able to put their own kids to bed, huh? But, I enjoyed caring for, playing with, feeding, and putting kids to bed. It was the grown up way of playing with dolls, haha! I really enjoyed working at the daycare.
In college, I wasn't sure what to major in but my roommate was majoring in child development and that sounded fun so I took Child Development 110 and loved it so I chose the same major. I loved my classes. It was fascinating to me to learn how children learn and grow and how to be a good teacher to them. While in college, I taught dance lessons for a studio in town and I worked as a developmental therapist for a developmental disability agency, where I worked one on one with children and adults with developmental disabilities and I really enjoyed it.
After I graduated, I was hired by The Learning Center in Idaho Falls as - what was then called- an Intensive Behavioral Intervention therapist or IBI therapist. After the medicaid changes, the job title was changed to Habilitative Intervention. Basically, I was a behavioral therapist, who works one-on-one with children with a developmnetal disability (such as autism, cerebral-palsy, downs syndrome) ages 3-18 years. Therapy sessions can take place in the home, community, school, and facility. Therapy involved doing a functional analysis to find out what problem behaviors were occurring, what was triggering them, writing an implementation plan, teaching replacement behaviors, rewarding desired behaviors, and extinguishing target behaviors, and training important people in the child's life to allow for generalization across settings, people, and situations. Therapy also involved teaching life skills that will help the child be more successful in any environment. It required training and classes in Applied Behavioral Analysis (ABA) and Child Development and Learning Theories. To certify, I was required to complete those courses and to have 3000 hours experience working with kids with developmental disabilities and I needed to complete a Student Project, where I conducted a functional analysis, wrote an implementation plan, carried out that implementation plan, made a video of my work with the client, and tracked his progress. Oh, did I mention the test I had to take? I had to take a big test to show my knowledge in the IBI program. It involved multiple choice questions and two essay questions, where I explained how I would apply my knowledge in various situations. I think the test took me 2 hours to complete!
Whew...that was a lot of work to certify. But I enjoyed it, it was fascinating to me. Staff trainings every month were my favorite night because I would learn some amazing techniques that I was excited to use with my clients. I often would call my mom on the drive home and tell her what I had learned that night. She is a school teacher and so she was interested in it, too. I would share what I learned with the parents of the kids I worked with. This was called consultation and it was required that I do about 2 hours a month of consultation with the parent, where I use a hands-on approach to teach parents the skills and techniques we use with their children. I worked for The Learning Center for 6 years, 2 years full time and 4 years part time after my first daughter was born. I worked with a dozen or so kids over the course of that time. I worked with some amazing, really cute, fun, smart kids. It was such a learning and growing experience. I was very passionate about my work, and loved to learn more about that type of work. I received exceptional employee reviews from my supervisor and also great reviews and comments from the parents of the kids I worked with - and even some requests for me specifically to be their child's therapist. I kind of got the reputation at work as "the one with all the creative ideas." (Yes, I am tooting my own horn here, but a little horn tooting once in a while is healthy, isn't it?) Plus, I am just stating the facts, and I have the documents to prove it. Seriously, I can scan my employee reviews right now if you want.
So, I think I was pretty successful at what I did. And then I became a stay-at-home mom.
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