Bonnie was doing a lot of professional development around “working from family strengths.” These discussions focused on recognizing families do indeed help their child learn and develop beyond those opportunities provided through EI. The question Bonnie grappled with was how to really understand those family strengths. One day, Bonnie’s aunt shared that her adult son with intellectual disabilities was having a hard time vacuuming all of the living room rug, frequently missing large swaths. Bonnie’s aunt then said she sprinkles powdered cleaner on the rug, which then gave her son the visual needed to successfully vacuum the entire rug. And there it was!  

So Bonnie and a doctoral student undertook a study (Keilty & Galvin, 2006) to really explore the specific learning strategies (i.e., “adaptations”) families used during their everyday routines – what they were, why they used them, how they figured them out, how effective they thought the strategies were, and the supports they perceived as helpful and the supports they perceived as still needed. When asking the families what they thought of the research findings – called “member checking” in qualitative research – some of the families wondered why no one in EI ever asked them these questions and suggested that it is really important for EI professionals to know the information they shared with us. Based on this feedback, we developed a way for EI professionals to do just that.