The Case for Emotional Milestones
Childhood milestones are funny things. When kids are young, they take all our focus: When should she smile? Walk? Speak her first words? Somewhere along the way, though, we stop talking about them. Those milestones seem like an easy metric to track and compare to peers, but as a child grows, the whole thing gets a lot more complicated. This topic isn’t so simple - most skills develop within a range, so knowing the expected range is healthy, while panicking that your child is a month behind on a skill but still within the range of normal is not.
If parents know what is expected of the “average” child, you will know what to look for, and when to be concerned about an issue. We don’t talk nearly enough about what to expect from your child emotionally, so there’s often a lag time between when a problem emerges and when parents recognize it as a problem.
Nearly every parent I see in my office says some variation of, “He’s always been a shy kid, and didn’t talk to his teachers, I just didn’t realize it was a problem at first.”
For children with anxiety, I view this “lack of milestones” problem as even bigger, because development and anxiety go hand in hand. If Hannah is anxious about talking to friends, she might sit in the corner and play by herself during free play, which means that she doesn’t learn the reciprocal social skills that come along with playing with other kids her age, which in turn exacerbates her anxiety. Or, if Josh worries about causing harm to others, he might avoid driving when he turns 17, which will make it that much harder for him to do other independence based tasks, because he can’t get anywhere that he can’t walk. His anxiety about driving keeps him from developing that milestone of independence that we expect from teens his age.
The more parents know about what they should expect from kids, the more they can know what not to expect as well.
This is one of the reasons why I wrote my upcoming book, Parenting Anxious Kids. It takes a developmental approach to anxiety by focusing on what you should expect from your child at each age and stage, and what you shouldn’t (you can find the preorder link at the bottom of this email).
These milestones become particularly important as your child gets older, which might seem counterintuitive: when kids become teenagers, we start expecting more from them without even realizing it.
As they move closer and closer to adulthood, we expect them to manage their own academic schedules, hygiene, sleep, food, and emotion regulation, mostly without training! This move towards independence is often overwhelming, but even more so if we don’t take the time to help our kids learn the skills they need to get to those “adulting” skills!
So here’s my call to action:
Know what development should look like as your kids grow (some of the links below can help)
Take the time to help your child learn the missing skills in weak areas. Don’t assume your child will pick up missing skills along the way. If teaching new skills is not something that your relationship with your child can handle, think about who can teach your child these missing skills. Consider other trusted adults, peers, coaches, or therapists.
Resources on Milestones
The CDC has a wealth of resources on milestones for young kids and adolescents, including an app to track developmental milestones.
The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia has information on developmental milestones in early childhood.
The Children’s Hospital of Orange County has many resources online describing developmental milestones from infancy through adolescence.
UNICEF has a range of resources on milestones in early childhood on their website.