When I first started working in remedial education, I became very aware of the importance of milestones and the point at which children achieved them. When you are helping elementary aged children learn to read, write and complete basic arithmetic, you have to know at which age they strung their first sounds together, at which age tehy strung their first sentence together and at which point counting became automated. There is the question of ear infections and how long they lasted, the question of when the child first picked up a pen and whether or not the grip was right, and lest we forget, how many languages the child learned and at which age the languages were solidified. In that first year of my career one of the most common conversations that I was trained to have with parents was to explain how the fact that a child only spoke their first sentences at age four was a great indicator that they would also be delayed by about two years in reading and writing, or that the fact that a child had severe ear infections in its first two years of life could result in full-blown dyslexia, not just a simple gap in meeting those milestones that are so essential for success in school. These conversations often dealt with me trying to professionally deliver this news while also trying to show empathy while trying to come up with the practical solutions to help the student and the family cope with what was going on.
This conversation is somewhat different when you are the parent and receiving the news about your child's delays in achieving milestones. Maybe it is because I have been on the delivering end of this conversation that it becomes easy for me to recognize the signs when someone is trying to assure me that it really is okay that your child did not started walking independently until she was 16 months old. The line goes something like, "Well the majority of children meet this milestone at 12 months but really there is nothing to worry about. There are children that only begin walking at 18 months. Any later than that and we start to worry but you are absolutely fine... ahem... for now." Sigh... How hard it is to be on the receiving end of this type of euphemistic conversation, especially when you know what the educational implications are of any type of delay in achieving these milestones. The challenge is to not become depressed by this type of news and just keep loving your child and helping them grow at whatever pace they are setting. There is a choice to be made and I think that it is vital that every parent make the choice to not become bogged down by the milestones, by the details that we have created by gathering statistics and determining averages and using those to judge our children's achievements. My child is no average and I am SUPER proud of that fact!!! It makes me love her all the more.
How did I come to reach this conclusion that milestones need to be taken with the proverbial pinch of salt? As with so many of the things that I have learned in the past two years, my daughter taught me. Not only has she taught me how artificial these milestones can be, she has taught me to celebrate and applaud her achievements ragardless of when she reaches them. And I do mean that she has taught me to applaud her, because when she has been working hard to achieve a task or a skill, she turns to me and she literally makes me give her a round of applause. Not only does she like applause for actually achieving the goal, she loves recognition for her efforts. There is such a huge emotional benefit for recognizing how difficult it is to learn how to pee seated on a toilet, to learn how to hold your breath underwater in a pool or just how to put your toy teaset away after a bout of playing pretend teatime with your mommy (often at 6:30 in the morning). Our latest efforts have been in the toilet training arena and she has progressed so well. In such a short space of time, she has gone from refusing the toilet seat to asking for her necessities and the accidents are at a minimum. In something like a month, we have moved from nappies (diapers) to training underpants to little girl briefs with cute pics on the front. Why do I think this has gone so well? Well, wouldn't you want to poop for someone if you knew that they would applaud you and hug you and kiss you when they heard your turd drop into the water? Wouldn't you try hard to get the timing of your trips to the loo just right when any accidents were met with an understanding hug and kiss and a, "It is okay baby girl. Mommy loves you for trying and next time it will go better"?
My baby girl has not reached all her milestones quickly or easily but she has taught me so much about what the right setting is for reaching for those goals. She is willing to just keep trying to reach those milestones that are an indication to the professionals of how her future will go. When she doesn't succeed, all she needs is a little applause to keep going and a lot of applause when it is perfect... No exceptions!!!
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