Everything that gets built in the first five years, what builds it, and how to tell it is working. Nothing here needs to be bought and nothing here is a test.
You are building a boat. Not a metaphor for your child — a thing you construct with them, out of everything you do together in these years. It is what will carry them through school and into a working life.
The engine is the part that does the work: the brain, and the pathways built inside it before five. Everything school later teaches runs on it.
Build the boat and the engine, and the cargo can be taken on. Reading, arithmetic, a trade, a life — all of it is cargo, and none of it can be carried by a boat that was never built.
Everything below changes with the age you pick. Have more than one child? Switch bands whenever you like.
Everything here is either free or worth checking, and none of it needs anyone’s permission.
At any time, without a doctor’s note and without waiting for anyone to suggest it. If something about your child’s development worries you, that is reason enough.
Before your child turns three — contact your state or county early intervention program. Search for early intervention and your state name.
From age three — contact your local school district and ask for the special education office. This applies even if your child does not attend school there, and even if they attend no school at all.
Most children who are evaluated turn out to need nothing. The ones who do need something get years back — and those years are exactly the ones that matter most.
These are national. What is free varies enormously by where you live — Triple P is funded statewide in some places and not offered at all in others; the same is true of home visiting, parenting classes and early screening. Check what is available locally before assuming it is not. Your pediatrician, your library and 211 all know.
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