A little upset

I received an email today from someone about a family who just got diagnosed, son age 3. I contacted the mother who is in a state of grieving for sure. The situation irritates me because this child was once again in Early Intervention for awhile before getting diagnosed, but that alone does not irritate me: Early Intervention told them to wait until the transition to the school district can take place, this May, before adding services. 3 months of continuing not enough services. Do these people not believe in what they do? The whole point of EI is to act early and act intensely to alter the course of these children's lives? And what do they tell this parent? Wait. uuggghhh.

The mother said that she thinks they didn't want to overwhelm her. I guess I thought that EI was for the child, not the parent. Why do parent's feelings take precedence over the child's welfare? If this was cancer, and you waited diagnosis and treatment because you didn't want to overwhelm the parent would this not be considered negligence? Why is this different?

I understand the difficulties in having to address this with parents, I really do. But there are still ways of dealing with this. First off, what about a reporting chain? Tell it to your supervisor and let them deal with it? Or how about recommend an evaluation by a developmental pediatrician and have him deal with it? Yes, it's deferring it to someone else - but that someone else likely has more experience doing it, and can deal with it better - but at least it gets dealt with.

There is never a good time to have a flat tire, and there is never a good time to find out your kid has issues. Don't delay the inevitable. Why not? Two reasons come to mind rather quickly:
1) Studies and anecdotal evidence show that early intervention WORKS and can make a big difference in the abilities of these children
2) Parents may kick themselves one day for not intervening sooner- and those feeling will be worse then the denial they may initially go through.