Fredericksburg Parent

12 Fredericksburg Parent and Family • May 2024 A Partner for Parents When Lauren Jablonski and her husband, Daniel, brought their son, Carson, home for the first time, he was 9.5 months old and had spent his entire life in hospital neonatal intensive care units. Every moment since the Jablonskis first got the call that a birth mother had chosen them as the adop- tive family for Carson had been a journey toward getting the young boy—who was born with severe birth defects in his heart and internal organs—healthy enough to come home. As the Jablonskis adjusted to life with a medically fragile infant at home, and Carson worked to heal from multiple surgeries, the family's caseworker connected them with early intervention services from the Parent Education—Infant Development (PE-ID) program, a part of the Rappahannock Area Community Services Board. PE-ID provides early intervention services for children from birth to 36 months. The team of speech lan- guage pathologists, physical therapists, occupational therapists, early childhood education specialists and service coordinators works directly with parents and children in their homes to minimize developmental delays (and work with atypical development) during the first three years of life. The program serves families in Stafford, Spotsylvania, Caroline and King George counties, and the city of Fredericksburg. For the Jablonskis, the visits for speech and physical therapy made a world of difference for Carson, who was not sitting up, playing with toys, rolling over or engaging in typical activities for a 9-month-old when he first came home from the hospital. "Soon after being home, the therapists got him sitting up," Lauren Jablonski recalls. They progressed to work on crawling, helped get the family special equipment to support Carson's legs and help him learn to stand, and helped Lauren and Daniel understand how all the steps of infant behavior—playing with toys, putting objects in the mouth—are important pieces in a chronological process of skill-building. "Carson has progressed and is now standing and pulling up by himself, and is just on the verge of walking after a year in early intervention," Lauren says in March. "There is no way he would be progressing as well as he is without that therapy." WRITTEN BY EMILY FREEHLING Early intervention can be a "lifesaver" for parents of children with developmental delays Sponsored Material WE'RE HERE TO HELP If you are worried that your child is not meet- ing developmental mile- stones (a good source for these is the CDC's "Milestone Tracker" app), please call us at 540-372-3561. Visit Rappahannockareacsb. org to learn more. Carson Joblanski.

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