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Most books on child development include charts of some sort outlining
the normal milestones that children reach as they grow older. Parents
can look up the ages of their children and see what those children
"should" be doing. A nine-month-old, according to a typical
chart, will show a fear of strangers and can hold her own bottle.
Such charts often include a note explaining that parents should
expect and accept as normal a certain amount of variation in the
ages at which children can perform the tasks described.
Unfortunately, those warnings are often ignored. The fact that the
information is in a chart and that it involves numbers makes parents
take these charts too literally and give them too much importance.
Holding a bottle and becoming fearful around new people are behavior
that do not magically develop on the first day of the ninth month
of life. (In fact, there's evidence from several studies that the
fear of strangers that parents were told to expect from their nine-month-olds
does not appear at all in a significant number of infants.) This
leads parents to become unreasonably upset if their child is "late"
or inappropriately happy if their child is "early."
When it comes to developmental markers of any sort, the most important
thing to remember is this: The fact that a child reaches a marker
or passes through a stage is almost always more important than the
age of the child when he or she does it! In other words, unless
your child is extremely late, it doesn't matter when she learns
to hold a cup by herself, learns to walk, becomes toilet trained
or does any of the thousands of other little and big tasks that
we pay so much attention to as a measure of her progress--as long
as she achieves them.
A classic example of this is toilet training. In the long run, it
really doesn't matter if a child is successful at age two, three,
four, or even five-years-old. (Beyond that age, we start to get
more concerned.) Yet many parents become upset if their child appears
to be lagging behind his age-mates. One question I ask these parents
is whether, before they were married, they asked their prospective
spouses the age at which they had been toilet trained. I have yet
to find anyone who actually asked! My point is that while it feels
so important at the moment, in the long run the timing really doesn't
matter as long as the child is successful.
If a child reaches the developmental markers in these typical charts
a month early or a month late, it's usually no big deal. As a child
grows older, reaching a milestone even a year early or a year late
doesn't really matter. The patterns of development are much more
important than the precise timing.
This is not to say that such charts or guidelines are useless. Quite
the contrary, they help orient us to the patterns of child development
and warn us of possible problems. If, for example, an infant cannot
hold a bottle by the time he's a year old (i.e., well past the average
age at which most children do this), you probably should see a pediatrician
about the problem. If a child still can't read by the end of second
grade, you should insist on his undergoing some testing for learning
disabilities and getting special help for him before the problem
becomes more difficult to solve.
The developmental patterns presented in typical charts of physical
development can also be seen through the universe of children's
behaviors. The stages of physical development are fairly clear-cut
and readily observed. Newborn infants will show what appear to be
random but symmetrical movements of their arms and legs. During
the next stage of development, which usually occurs somewhere around
six months of age, they will begin to reach for specific objects
with their arms. A few months after that they will have enough control
of their hands to use them as pincers for picking up small objects.
Somewhere around one year of age most children can reach for small
blocks or rattles, pick them up, and, if they're in the mood, give
them to you if you hold your hand out.
Language shows similar discrete, if fuzzy-edged, stages of development.
Within three months or so, most infants will progress from only
crying to a form of cooing or making certain simple vowel sounds.
The ability to form consonants, especially the sound mmm,
comes a few months after that. (Children who say "mama"
before they say "dada" may be telling us more about their
neurological development and coordination than about their preference
for a parent.) After a few more months they usually respond to their
name and certain frequently heard key words such as "NO!"
Somewhere around one year of age the child will start using words,
especially nouns. After another year or so the child will know a
couple of hundred words and will be able to tell you the names of
some objects in picture books--a very important step since a picture
of a dog or a chair is very different from a real dog or chair.
By the time children are ready for preschool they know about a thousand
words and will soon begin saying complex sentences such as, "You
can watch me draw a picture."
Similar stages may be seen in psychological development as well.
Issues such as fears change in a generally predictable pattern as
the child gets older. Infants often dislike loud noises, being poorly
supported while they're held, and being uncovered. Within about
nine months to a year, they may become anxious when their mothers
or other caretakers leave them alone and when they see strangers.
By the time they're toddlers, their fears focus on things they can
see and hear, such as dogs or thunder--so-called concrete fears.
Preschoolers have more sophisticated fears that reflect their growing
understanding of their own bodies and of abstractions. They insist
that cuts and bruises be covered by a bandage and, if one of their
parents is around, kissed "to make it better." They worry
about ghosts or being kidnapped by pirates or other bad men. These
are fears of abstractions since, unlike the dog or the thunder that
frightened them earlier, pirates and ghosts don't have to be seen
or heard to be frightening. Such abstract fears often continue into
adolescence, when they are replaced by fears that reflect the child's
self-concept. Teenagers worry about failure and embarrassment--issues
that would have made little sense to them a decade earlier.
Telling a preschooler that she shouldn't be afraid of ghosts or
a teenager that he shouldn't be concerned with what other people
think is fruitless. Such statements deny their developmental accomplishments.
Being afraid of ghosts when you're four years old is, in many ways,
something to be proud of. It is a demonstration of the child's developing
intellectual capabilities. Similarly, being acutely aware of social
awkwardness at age thirteen reflects the child's growing skills
at empathy.
The most commonly described developmental markers, such as when
a child first sits up, says a complete sentence, or goes out on
a first date, reflect only a tiny fraction of the important physical
and social changes children are constantly undergoing. Although
we attach importance to such developmental milestones, we largely
do so because they are easy to observe. Looking for some of the
more subtle changes can, quite frankly, be a lot more fun. Unfortunately,
children don't come to breakfast in the morning and say things like,
"Hey, Mom and Dad, I now understand the concept that objects
can be classified in more than one way!" Such realizations,
which as adults we take for granted, are equally important to a
child's development.
Yet children do tell us when they reach these less-obvious milestones.
The ways in which they give us that information, however, are often
cryptic and require that we shed some of our adult assumptions if
we are to decipher them. Looking for and interpreting these clues
are among the greatest joys of parenthood. The stories children
tell, the things they fear, the games they play--all provide a window
through which we can glimpse their developing minds. To dismiss
their behavior as simply childish is to do it a great disservice.
Being scared of strangers at twelve months of age or acting defiantly
at age two are not simply benign stages through which a child passes
on the way to becoming an adult. They are as much a sign of normal
development as is toilet training or learning the alphabet. Often,
subtle behaviors actually give us more insight into a child's growth
than the obvious milestones, like learning to walk or saying a first
word. Be open to seeing these subtle behaviors, for they will bring
you great joy as well as appreciation of the changes in your child.
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