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Developmental Skills Tension
A text from one of your friends; she is dropping in for a cup of coffee. You panic. The bathroom is a mess and clothes are all over the house. The sink is full of dirty dishes. There are garden implements scattered over the courtyard from yesterday’s digging.
When the gaps are great or extreme as in the above examples, it is called Extreme Skills Tension or EST. Extreme Skills Tension most often stimulates extreme sudden behaviours.
STAGE 1
Bonding {Attachment}
Apart from the wonderful feelings that you have when you first bond with your child, it is important to know what is going on. When you bond with your child, complex physiological changes occur in both of you. It is evident with each day, as you become the centre of your baby's universe.
From this growing attachment, hormones are released in both your baby and you. This gives your baby the ability to learn from you and from their environment. You feel the change yourself when suddenly your baby becomes the centre of your complete focus.
These amazing physiological changes that have taken place, on the one hand enable you to have the patience to take time encouraging your baby’s development. On the other it has prepared your baby for learning. One of Veronica’s favorite sayings is “Bond to Learn”. By the way Physiology is the study of the function of living systems e.g. the respiratory, circulatory and nervous systems.
There is one last very important aspect of bonding. The quality of your bonding with your baby determines how well they bond with dad, siblings, grandparents, peers, the wider community and future partner.
Early Child Development and Behavior
You might have heard recently that certain scientists are being reported as saying that "some children could be born to be bad!" There are others discussing a supposed 'violence gene'. Well put your mind at rest. No child is born to be bad.This is easy to understand when we look at how children really develop.
Children are born with a set of potential biological tools. These tools are called Early Developmental Skills. You might have heard them called Developmental Milestones. A Developmental Milestone is generally defined as a skill that a child acquires within a specific time. In our modern society, Early Childhood Professionals such as Pediatricians, Mothercraft nurses, teachers etc. monitor our children's performance of Developmental Milstones.
Milestones have been grouped in various categories known as Domains e.g. Gross Motor, Fine Motor, Language and Communication etc. The Domains of Milestones form what can be called the Developmental Spectrum. Children have to learn to use as many Milestones in the Developmental Spectrum as they can. The greater the number of Milestones the more stable the base on which the child can build future skills.
Mothers in particular are introduced to some of their child’s early Milestones when they consult their baby’s pediatrician or mother craft nurse. At a very early time in children’s lives they begin to display differences in the Milestone that they can and can’t perform. These differences in the individual performance of a child’s Milestones can trigger automatic behaviors.
If the differences are small, the resulting behaviors are often called personality traits. If the differences are great or extreme, the behaviors can sometimes be labeled socially inappropriate.
Let’s look at two examples of great differences in the performance of Milestones. The moment after Baby Jordan is born, he can lift his head momentarily off the floor while lying on his tummy. He sits, crawls, walks and toddles early. He gets encouraged by his parents and other carers so that the developmental pace in physical activity gets faster and faster. While this is happening, a lot of other Milestones he should be doing don’t get attention.
By the age of two, Jordan is like a Gross Motor machine. He reacts in many social situations with behaviors like throwing himself on the floor, hurling objects around the room or even hitting Mum, Dad or siblings. By the time he is an adult, his behavior at times could be outrageous e.g. If his path is cut off by another driver on the road, he is just as likely to chase the other car and when it stops get out and kick in all of the panels.
Baby Bronte sits, crawls, walks and toddles at a slower rate than many children of the same age. At the same time she speaks very early. She gets encouraged by her parents and other carers by lots of story telling and reading books to her. However many other Milestones don’t get much attention. By the age of two, Bronte is saying complete sentences. Her reaction will be to try and talk her way out of any (for her)uncomfortable situations. As an adult she would most likely filibuster when under social pressure and make excuses if she can’t complete something. Veronica tells me that she has heard women talking about one of their friends who is like this, with the words “She never shuts up! She could even talk under water for 15 minutes.”
You can see from our two examples that children display the Milestones in the various Domains at different times and performance levels. The subsequent relation between these developmental differences is physiological. It is called Developmental Skills Tension.
Developmental Skills Tension
Developmental Skills Tension triggers involuntary behaviors in a child in particular social settings. These automatic behaviors can always be observed in two ways. Firstly the child will do anything to avoid a particular activity that depends on the Milestones that they can’t perform so well. Secondly they reach into their bag of Milestones to grab something that they are good at.
Jordan uses explosive physical strength while Bronte employs torrents of words. Neither child is conscious of these actions.
What you will have noticed with Babies Jordan and Bronte, is that their Developmental Skills Tension induced behaviors remain relatively unchanged throughout their life.
Each one of us has our own particular form of Developmental Skills Tension. In many cases it is moderate. e.g. On the one hand it can range from one person doodling to another finding it difficult to keep still when someone is talking to them. On the other it can can show up in one person being unable to answer or to another blurting out an irrelevant remark when someone asks a question.
Fortunately extreme Developmental Skills Tension is not as widespread. A typical example would be a daring escapade such as a person spraypainting a moving train. Another would be evident when a parent screams violent abuse at their child under the slightest provocation. Developmental Skills Tension is fine when it is moderate but unnaceptable when it is extreme.
For practical purposes that is all you need to know about Developmental Skills Tension.
However if you are interested, I will look at Milestones and Behaviors in more depth below.
Stage 2
Milestones
Since the early part of the 20th century, Psychologists and Medical Practitioners have studied the Milestones of large groups of children from birth to age 8. From the results of their observations they were able to determine what could be called the normal Milestones that children should be able to perform at various ages. These Milestones are set out in what are broadly called child development scales e.g. Vineland Adaptive Behavior Scale and Bayley Scales of Infant and Toddler Development.
As I said before, Milestones have been separated into various categories called Domains e.g. Gross Motor, Fine Motor, Language and Communication etc. When all of the Domains of Milestones are put together, they form what can be called the Developmental Spectrum. Children have to learn to use as many of these Milestones in the Developmental Spectrum as possible.
We saw before with babies Jordan and Bronte that children display the Milestones at different times and performance levels. Other examples are, one child can crawl while another of the same age is struggling to sit upright. Another child can use sentences while a second one of the same age can’t even say “Mum,Mum!” or “Dad,Dad!”.
You will have noticed that some children do not appear to be able to perform all of the Milestones. One child could be advanced in drawing a picture but unable to stand up in front of the class at school to describe their favorite toy. Another could be advanced in playing ball games but unable to socialise with peers. A third could be advanced in completing 1,000 piece jigsaw puzzles but lagging in the ability to write little stories.
The first question then is “How do children learn how to perform Milestones?”
Milestone Performance
Children learn how to perform their Milestones, in three ways.
1) They perform them spontaneously e.g. crawling [occasionally however a child might even need help learning how to go about this one].
2) They copy parents, siblings and other people [including characters on TV and radio].
3) They have to be taught how to perform particular Milestones by parents or other caregivers.
I will just add something here. Very significant research is being conducted by specialist medical practitioners into prenatal development e.g. you have probably heard of babies who within minutes of being born, could turn immediately in the direction of their mother’s voice. It seems likely then that children are born with some of their early Milestones already in place.
The more Milestones a child learns to perform, the better prepared they are for school, the greater their self esteem as well as their social and future employment options.
Some parents object to encouraging and teaching their children how to perform various Milestones. They claim that it stops children having a childhood. Well that kind of thinking is absolute nonsense. If children are not fed properly, their growth is stunted. Learning how to perform Developmental Milestones is as necessary for a child as quality food.
By now you are likely to be asking the obvious question “Can my child learn how to perform all of the Milestones?” Well in many cases yes.
There are some children however who have issues with say their hearing, sight or even physical function, which could delay the performance of some Milestones. There are cases where these issues could even prevent the children from learning certain Milestones at all.
Other children have difficulties processing the data that comes through their senses. This can delay or prevent a number of children from learning how to perform particular Milestones.
In practical terms however, as a parent you have an opportunity to help your child perform most, if not all, of the Milestones across the Developmental Spectrum.
I would like to put in a personal note here. It is my goal to help as many children as possible, to learn how to perform all of the Milestones in the Developmental Spectrum that they are capable of doing, so that they can have the future they deserve. This means assisting Mum, Dad and other carers through our Site. [Kevin Byron Rowney]
The Developmental Spectrum
The Developmental Spectrum is the catalog of early child developmental Milestones. The range and type of Milestones a child can learn how to perform across the spectrum, is the skills base on which to build all future skills.e.g. Good performance of the Domain of Fine Motor during early childhood will be useful in the future for careers like Cooking, Graphic Arts, or Medical Surgery.
If children don’t have any specific issues that inhibit their performance of particular Milestones, then it is possible that they can learn how to perform all of the Milestones in all Domains across the whole Developmental Spectrum. These children would then have the essential skills base they need to build on so as to be successful in any future activity or occupation.
Does this mean then that all of these children would have identical potential? Not at all. During the early child development years, individual children will progress at different rates through particular Milestones in various Domains. They will also exhibit different levels of performance of specific Milestones. As well the stimulation from Mum, Dad and other carers will vary in many ways.
A gardening metaphor will illustrate why children won’t all turn out the same. Suppose we purchased five flowering shrubs all of the same age and species. We make a decision to plant them in five different positions in our garden. Avoiding getting too technical, since I am no gardener, there are some basic differences that are obvious. Sunlight, drainage, moisture and wind spring to mind as well as our own influence in terms of the attention we give to each plant.
If we examined the five shrubs after say two years, we would find that what started out as five similar plants all have acquired different features. This would range from possibly one that struggles to survive through say three that are healthy with modest floral displays, to one that looks magnificent in full bloom.
Developmental Skills Tension
Let’s now take a closer at child development by looking at a two hypothetical situations. Suppose a child is 15 months of age. We will look at the Gross Motor area [big muscle activity] first. We see that the child is performing like a 24 month old. We notice also that the same child is performing Milestones in the Expressive Communication area [early stages of speech and communication] like a 10 month old child. Even though the child is a 15 month old, the performance of Milestones differs by 14 months [Gross Motor 24 months less Expressive Communication 10 months]. That's a huge variation.
As we said before these differences in the level of performance of Milestones in the various domains sets up the child’s Developmental Skills Tension. Although only 15 months old, he will act like a 2 year old by trying to climb up the ladder on the play gym at the local park. On the other hand, when he is with a child of similar age, his 10 month level of communication skills won’t let him express his excitement in words so he hits him but with a similar amount of force as a 2 year old.
Let us consider another hypothetical child. This baby is 10 months of age. In the gross motor area the child is performing at the 10 month level. However when we observe the Self Help performance, we see that she is at the level of an 18 month old child. Our baby is 10 months of age but differs in the performance of Milestones by 8 months. The result is she won't let her parents help her in any task, particularly feeding. By the time she is two she would be attempting to go to the fridge and pour her own orange juice. Her theme song would be "I did it my way."
Then there is the little girl at the mall who runs away from mum and jumps on all the checkout counters. Or again I am sure you have seen the embarrassed mum as her little boy begins to scream uncontrollably because she won’t let him do what he wants.
A lot of what I am saying you already know. In fact many people have been aware of these behavioral effects of Developmental Skills Tension for centuries. They just didn’t know what caused them. How often have you heard someone say or you might even have said it yourself to another adult “stop behaving like a three year old child!”
Developmental Skills Tension, both yours and mine, was well and truly established in our early years. In fact the first 18 months is the critical time in a child’s emotional, social and intellectual development as well as the resulting Developmental Skills Tension.
As a parent you will have an enormous effect on the level of Developmental Skills Tension your child will display in various social environments. That level of Developmental Skills Tension will affect your child's social behavior for the rest of their life. That’s a big responsibility isn’t it?
The obvious question you might want to ask is whether we can change our Developmental Skills Tension so that our behavioral reactions are a little less extreme. Not completely but the good news is that we can modify it. We can do this in two possible ways.
The first way, usually done when a child is young, is to identify and teach any missing Milestones. In some cases a child might perform all of the Milestones across the Developmental Spectrum but be particularly efficient in a specific domain. This can still result in Extreme Skills Tension or EST.
The other way often occurs by accident. Older people may learn a musical instrument or how to play a sport. Sometimes it can occur during a trade apprenticeship. Have you ever spoken to someone who tells you that they couldn’t study at school but 20 years later they are at university getting Distinctions in their assignments?
So where does that leave you and me? Some of us find that we are repetitively doing things or making verbal outbursts that we don’t like. One way out is for us to excuse our behavior “Don’t blame me, it’s my EST!” But some people would say that is a copout. So now the really big question comes up “If many of my behaviors are automatic and caused by my Developmental Skills Tension, can I control them?”
The answer to our question is that we can definitely limit our Developmental Skills Tension reaction. It's important to realise that our Developmental Skills Tension causes the initial behavioral reaction in a particular social setting e.g. do you know someone who, every time they are asked to go to a party with people they don’t know, gets a sick feeling and makes excuses why they can’t go.
As we begin to understand our own Developmental Skills Tension, we can avoid the situations when the behaviors we don’t like usually appear. However that's not always possible. Sometimes we can just find ourselves in one of those situations. When this happens there are some simple techniques that we can learn to limit our initial Developmental Skills Tension behavioral reaction. I will discuss these in a future Blog.
There is one more important thing. Since we all develop Developmental Skills Tension, we want to avoid it becoming too extreme in our child. Some of the behaviors that can be caused by Extreme Skills Tension or EST in children are things like, bullying and oddly enough being bullied, continual screaming and throwing things.
If EST isn’t modified in childhood, particular behavioral reactions in adulthood can be disastrous. Look at road rage.
Kevin Byron Rowney
Definition
Developmental Skills Tension is the physiological relation between the differences in the level of performance of Developmental Milestones by a child across the Developmental Spectrum, which impels involuntary behaviors in particular social settings.
Kevin Byron Rowney
