The Process of Development

Development is an unfolding, one petal at a time – until you see the full bloom of maturity.

As a society, we are conditioned to see development as multiple boxes that we need to tick-off. Rolling over, sitting, crawling and standing need to happen at certain ages – saying your first word, mastering two-word and three-word sentences, articulating clearly when speaking, being toilet trained, being able to dress yourself, even sleeping through the night, transitioning to solids – so many skills that we as parents need to monitor and help our children achieve. The list never ends!

This leads to a lot of fear – what if my child is not sitting yet, something must be wrong, what if my child is not speaking yet, does he have autism? Sometimes these delays can definitely be red flags, but other times we need to accept that not all children develop at the same rate. We are trained as parents to see the ‘what nots’ but there are a million things our children are doing that we are not celebrating, not enjoying and not noticing.

Development is not a list, and every child does not fit the box of typical development. Neurologically, genetically we are all different. Internationally there is a drive to accept that we are not all the same – that different is not necessarily wrong. Look at all the books about neurodiversity and what an impact neurodiverse individuals have had on our society in the past. They did not tick the developmental boxes, but they were some of the gems in our society. People such as Alan Turin, Albert Einstein, Henry Ford and Bill Gates to name just a few.

So yes, the boxes and age norms give us a guideline, a starting point. But it also makes us outcomes driven. If only my child can sit, he will be ok. If he can only start speaking, I will feel less worried. So we drive the mastery of outcomes from such a young age, and we stand in awe and wonder why our children (and society) are so performance driven. Why we are all so prone to burn-out and a myriad of mental health difficulties? Well, it started when you took your first breath.

I don’t have anything against developmental norms, I use them in practice daily. They have their place, they should be used by medical professionals that can see the bigger picture. They are there for a reason. I have just started to wonder about our focus, our motivation. We use them as a measuring stick, we measure our success as parents against it. We compete with it. We boast with it. This can only do more harm than good.

I feel a deep sense of sadness as I write this, a sense of loss, almost like mourning. Because we are losing out on so much because our focus is on the wrong things.

I have many parents coming to me worried because their child is not doing A or B.  I see the confusion and the worry. The question: ‘why is my child like this?’, ‘what did I do wrong?’ The guilt. I experienced this when my eldest son did not develop speech in a typical manner. The sleepless nights, the worry, the research, the questions. It is exhausting. Believe me I know.

Therapists always feel the pressure to ‘fix the problem’. ‘The teacher wants my child to write better’ so therapy must focus on handwriting. Fix the handwriting, teach the child to cope through adaptations and strategies, but what about the underlying systems and skills that they also need to develop to tie shoelaces, to fold an envelope, to drive a car? Because these are not crucial at that given moment, they do not get addressed.

Personally I am a therapist who is process-driven, not outcomes driven. By saying this I do not mean that outcomes do not matter to me, but I like to get to the root cause of a problem and fix it bottom up. Strategies to help a child cope until they can master a skill should be in place, but the dynamic interaction and interplay between the child’s various systems (sensory, emotionally, cognitively) are more my focus. There I can make lasting and meaningful changes. There I can actually change more than just ‘fix the problem’.  I love to use a strengths-based approach. One of the greatest joys of my job with parents is to help them reconnect with who their child really is – apart from the norms and boxes and societal expectations. Each child is beautiful and has many strengths, many victories that have already happened but that went unnoticed because we were not trained to see them.

Our world is rapidly changing, but our expectations and how me measure progress is not changing with it. Futurists such as Graeme Codrington explains that the future is human-centric. He talks about the skills of the future as complex adaptive thinking, entrepreneurial mindset, problem-solving, curiosity, emotional intelligence, diverse intelligence, communication to list a few. These skills are becoming far more important than our traditional academic skills.  How many children are losing out on the opportunity to develop the crucial skills that they will need as an entrepreneur, or an employee one day, just because we were too focused on the immediate outcomes?

We need to rethink what we as society deem to be important, we need to rethink how me measure and encourage our children, we need to start focusing on their strengths and celebrate their developmental victories. We need to focus on the process of development, and not just on the outcomes. We need to support each other in our journeys, instead of criticizing and creating fear and guilt.

There is more to development than ticking all the developmental boxes. There is more to a school report than the symbols your child gets for each subject. I encourage you to look deeper, to search wider, and to enjoy the journey with your child.