What help looks like at each age.
The right next step for an eighteen-month-old is not the right next step for a fourteen-year-old, and for the very youngest children, the most useful programme in Texas is one most families have never been told about.
Start with Texas ECI, and start today.
Early Childhood Intervention is a statewide programme run through Texas Health and Human Services for children from birth up to their third birthday who have a developmental delay, a disability, or a medical condition likely to cause one.
The reason to know about it: you do not need a diagnosis, and you do not need a doctor's permission to refer your own child. You can contact your local ECI programme yourself, today, and ask for an evaluation.
What it costs
Evaluation, assessment, case management, developing the family service plan and interpretation are provided free. Other services run on a sliding scale based on your income and family size, and no child is turned away because a family cannot pay.
Who qualifies
Generally: a medical diagnosis likely to cause developmental delay; being deaf or hard of hearing, blind or visually impaired; or a measured delay of at least 25% in one or more areas of development (33% if the only area is expressive language).
What you get
An Individualized Family Service Plan (the under-three equivalent of an IEP) built around your family's routines, with services often delivered in your home.
The cliff at 3
ECI ends on the third birthday. Transition planning to school district services starts months beforehand. Do not let that deadline arrive unprepared. Ask your ECI case manager about it early.
Two calls, this week
Call your local ECI programme and ask for an evaluation. Call your pediatrician and ask for a developmental screening in the same week. Neither one blocks the other.
Ask us where to start Texas HHS: ECI ↗What tends to matter most, and when.
Every child is different and an assessment beats a table every time. This is the general shape of it.
The window everyone talks about
This is where intensive early intervention has the strongest evidence behind it, and where full-day center programmes usually make the most sense. Goals cluster around communication, cooperating with instructions, play alongside other children, and the daily living skills (toilet training especially) that decide whether preschool is even possible.
- Full or half-day center-based ABA
- Speech and OT alongside, in the same building
- Mock classroom work aimed at kindergarten
- Your district may also offer preschool special education. Ask
School is the whole problem
By now the pressing questions are usually about the classroom: staying in it, following instructions given to thirty children at once, and having someone to sit with at lunch. Therapy tends to move to the edges of the school day, or into the school itself.
- In-home sessions after school, Monday to Thursday
- School shadowing during the day
- Weekly social skills groups by grade band
- IEP and ARD support, see the timeline
The social world gets sharper
Middle school raises the social bar considerably and lowers everyone's tolerance for difference. Work shifts towards self-regulation, handling criticism and exclusion, resisting pressure from a group, and taking on real responsibility at home.
- Tween social skills group, 7th–8th grade
- Independence and responsibility goals
- Emotional regulation in high-demand settings
- Self-advocacy, asking for what they need, out loud
Aiming at an adult life
We provide services up to eighteen, so these years are about what your child will carry out the door. Safety in the community, practical daily living, work-relevant habits, and knowing how to explain their own needs to someone who has never met them.
- Community safety and independence skills
- Vocational habits: punctuality, task completion, taking direction
- Self-care and household routines
- Ask your school district about transition planning in the IEP
“Is my child too old for this to help?”
Earlier is better. The research on early intensive intervention is strong and we are not going to pretend otherwise. But better is not the same as only: independence, safety, social competence and self-advocacy are teachable at any age we serve, and the gains at fourteen are real gains. The wrong conclusion to draw from “earlier is better” is that it is too late to bother.
Tell us your child's age. We'll tell you the next step.
Even if the next step is a phone number that isn't ours.
