development

My major was in Child Development and Family Studies. I took so many Development classes: Child Development, Adolescent Development, Adult Development, Life Span Development, etc, etc. (I didn't take Infant Development which was fine with me until I had my own infant!)

There are so many ways that we develop: emotional, social, spiritual, physical, linguistic. And we often break physical development down into things like large/gross motor skills and small motor skills. Then there are tasks like eye-hand coordination that take skills from several areas. So, as in the rest of life, understanding development can be a very complex task.

It is so easy to encourage physical development and language skills. Just go to a toy store and you can find quickly find all kinds of educational toys. It's also easy to conceptualize how to develop these skills. Want your child's language skills to develop? Expose them to language! How? Talking, reading, singing. Most people can grasp the connection without any explanation.

Encouraging emotional, social, and spiritual development is much more difficult to conceptualize, let alone actually figuring out how to do it. Do you know anyone who feels that their spiritual development is complete? Probably not. How do you encourage your child's development in an area where your skills aren't even fully developed?

When Jacob was born, I knew he had a high potential for academic success. Over and over again Jacob has confirmed this high potential. He's a bright and alert kid, so it doesn't take a lot of effort to teach him new skills. And, it's easy to find educational toys that basically allow him to teach himself some skills.

While academic success is great and exciting, I wondered if Jacob's brain also have the capacity for appropriate social-emotional development (unlike an autism spectrum kid). It has been somewhat of a relief that Jacob is able to develop social and emotional skills. I have spent a lot of time trying to teach these skills to Jacob. I'm not always sure how to provide a social skills education. It's more difficult because you can't just walk into a toy isle and find a resource. We talk about and practice manners, sharing, feelings, self-awareness, self-esteem, and how to care for/about others. Of course, these skills are rather limited in a preschooler!

If you are unable to achieve academic success, you can still have success in life. If you are unable to achieve success in life, then it really doesn't matter if you're the Valedictorian or National Merit Scholar. . (To put that another way: The Unibomber was smart, but we don't remember him for his academic skills.) Every time Jacob is praised for being smart, I cringe. Being smart isn't something he has any control over and praise for something so general as "smart" just isn't useful. I challenge people to praise him for his tenacity, his love of details, his demonstration of cause and affect, his showing others that he cares about them.

Yesterday Jacob played with PlayDoh for the first time. At first he completely ignored the PlayDoh. Instead he focused on taking the lid on and off the container. Eventually he moved on to the PlayDoh. He pinched off small bits and placed them into the container, one at a time. This is a perfect example of Jacob's personality. He is very much concerned about having things the way they're supposed to be (lids should be on containers).

I have a vision of a future phone call going like this:
Teacher: "I'd like to talk to you about Jacob's performance on the math test today."
Me, envisioning all As and entrance into the gifted program: "Yes?"
Teacher: "He didn't even start the test because he was too concerned about the confetti on the floor from yesterday's class party. He spent the whole test time cleaning up the floor. He said it was more important to be happy in life than to have academic success."
Me: "Oh."

This whole post was inspired by an excellent and interesting story I heard on NPR about how Old-Fashioned Play Builds Serious Skills. This story should be required listening for anyone who has interactions with children! Please listen to it now! They talk about how play has evolved over the past 60 years, and how that change has impacted children's emotional development. I especially like the story link because it has a sidebar with examples of "better" ways for children to play. Examples are always good.