What Is Wrong with My Child?

In this article, I want to discuss how children develop, and how they do so at different paces. I am not a child psychologist and my opinions here are formed from my experiences and observations as a Primary School teacher and based on the theories I learnt during my training at the National Institute of Education.

Theories on Children’s Cognitive Development

Swiss Psychologist, Jean Piaget, posits that humans develop through a series of four stages. They are characterised by advancements in language and motor skills, concrete to abstract thinking, and the understanding of the world around.

The stages are sequential and progressive, and children do not skip stages. For example, children have to start with calling a physical apple an apple before they can associate the symbolic letters arranged as “apple” to the physical apple.

Also, children develop through these stages at their own pace. The progression is biological and cannot be forced.

Piaget’s contemporary, Lev Vygotsky, theorizes that children develop with the help of social and cultural forces, for example, a teacher or the parents. This is the cornerstone of strategies like remediation and tuition, where an adult expert helps a child to transcend their perceived limitations and achieve more than they thought they could. However, in reality, I find that for some children, there is a limit to how much they can be stretched. I believe this is what Piaget was suggesting.

Late Bloomers

Canadian journalist, author and speaker, Malcolm Gladwell, in his book titled “Outliers: The Story of Success”, details how most of the strongest players in Canada’s National Hockey League were born in the first few months of the year.

This was a massive revelation for me. Just think about it. A child born in January has had 11 more months to develop than a child born in December of the same year. It’s a huge advantage for the former.

This age difference will matter less as children grow older. However, for some older teenagers who performed poorly academically in their early years due to being born late in the year, they grew up with the belief that there was something wrong with them.

This may have been hammered into their psyche by their peers, teachers, or even parents. Now, when the cognitive playing field is more or less even, their false belief still holds them back; a seemingly insurmountable hurdle that they have accepted and prevents them from ever achieving their full potential.

It may be hard for some parents to accept, but not all children develop at the same pace. Some mature faster than others, while some struggle to grasp abstract ideas until late into their teens.

A Different Kind of Smart

Sir Ken Robinson, Professor Emeritus at the University of Warwick, England, shared a beautiful story during a TED talk.

He described how a young girl, who couldn’t sit still in class, was brought to a child psychologist by her worried mother. Thankfully, the psychologist was not quick to label her as ADHD and prescribe her with medications to “calm her down”. The psychologist’s diagnosis was, “Your daughter is a dancer.” The mother enrolled her daughter in a dance school and today, that girl is Gillian Lynne, the choreographer for two of the longest-running Broadway shows, CATS and The Phantom of the Opera, among her other achievements.

Besides not developing at the same pace, some children develop differently at different paces. Piaget’s stages are representative of most children. But your child may not be “most children”. At his or her stage, your child may not be study smart, but body smart, or people smart; In fact, maybe way smarter than his or her peers.

While this is not an excuse for a child to do badly in school, it is an opportunity for the parent who is able to recognise their child’s talent and provide the support to develop them further.

I’m sure that any caring parent would push their own children to achieve excellence. However, when they don’t meet our expectations, let’s not be quick to label them. Instead of forcefully imposing upon them what we want them to be, sometimes we need to understand and accept what and where they are. You cannot force a flower to bloom, only provide the right conditions for it to do so.

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