When in comes to parenting, there always seems to be new things to learn and new obstacles to navigate. One of these obstacles is the change that come as kids grow up and develop in different ways. In Utah, April is Family Strengthen Month. In this episode, Jen and Hilary, with their vast amount of knowledge, explore how knowledge of child development can help strengthen families and unite parents. This is a great episode you don't want to miss!
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Jen: Welcome to the Parents Place podcast with Hilary and Jen.
Hilary: Welcome to the Parents Place podcast. You just get Jen and I today lucky, lucky ducks, right.
Jen: Just? Are we only a just?
Hilary: That's true. We're not a just. You have the luxury, the privilege, that's a good word. The privilege of hearing from Jen and I there you go. We gotta give ourselves more credit. So we have been given two very similar articles that we want to discuss today about a topic that that I think that we recognize is important, but maybe we don't understand why it's so important. So we want to take a little bit more of a deep dive as to maybe why this is out there and what do we as parents do when it comes to like an action item. Right. So you know if you are a parent or if and you have helped out in this parenting process at all, you probably know that when we take our kids to the pediatrician. We do these well, child checkups. Our pediatrician will offer us advice and then usually, at least in my experience as we're walking out the door or sometimes as we entered the door, they hand us these developmental sheets. Right. This page that says your child is this age and at this age, here are certain things that they can and should be doing right? And depending on how stressful my day is, sometimes I will sit down and I will read those, and sometimes I'll be honest with you, they end up in the garbage. Right. Because I've got my child in one hand and the diaper bag in another, and then the paper, you know, between my 2 little fingers. And as soon as it gets in the car, it usually gets tossed in the back seat so. I'm not a great example in life of what I should be doing? However, let's talk a little bit about what that paper is and why the medical field and the family life field feels so feels like that is such an important thing for us to have during those visits. So. I'll let you like Jen. Tell us a little bit about what these developmental sheets and markers are used for.
Jen: Well, it's a lot of it is to let parents know where their kids should be at certain ages, what they could be doing. It's to help that if they are lagging in a certain area that they we can get them proper resources to help them encourage those developmental skills to increase because that's a lot of a lot of times, that's all that it is, is we need to do a little more focusing on one area of development, it maybe my baby's not my child's not crawling or walking at, you know, whatever age that. We think that they should be and so here's let's give you some resources so we can get some activities going to help encourage that development of the muscle tone of the coordination, all of that kind of stuff that will encourage those two things. So, I think that's the big part of why it's so important to know about where or when your children are going to be able to develop certain skills, but I also think that parents will. Look at this and say, oh, my child one or they're fourteen months and they were supposed to be doing this when they were 12 months.
Hilary: Yeah.
Jen: It's a it's a suggestion. It's a there's give and take on both sides. They may do it earlier. They may do it a little bit later. If I remember right, you had a child that was a scooter, didn't.
Hilary: You. Oh, yes, I remember. So with my oldest child, he never really called. He took, he scooted on his cute little butt and that's how he got around and he mastered the art of scooting. I remember going to my local thrift store and buying just as many pairs of heavy duty jeans that I could and I didn't care what they looked like. Because I knew within a few days, he would wear them out. And so I was like, I will just buy everything on this rack because there is no point in taking the time to spend a lot of money and looking for items that I know that he's going to only temporarily wear, but. I remember going to these well child checkups and stressing out because, you know, according to everyone else and according to these charts, he should be walking at this point and he wasn't anywhere near that. And I think you know, as human beings, as much as we don't want to do this and try not to do this. We compare, we compare ourselves to other people and I think we compare our children to other children. It's hard not to see other kids and what they're doing or not doing and think is there something wrong with mine because they're not doing what so and so you know is accomplishing in their life. And so I remember, bless my pediatrician's heart. I remember going to him and expressing my concerns. And him saying, you know, he listened, he listened to my concerns, which any good pediatrician should be doing that right. And then he did a fairly thorough physical exam. Looking at, are there any potential you know, physical issues that might be disrupting this growth process. And you know, after that exam, he basically said to me he is completely fine. There is nothing that is stopping him from walking. He will walk when he chooses to walk. And then he offered this sweet little advice to me. He said enjoy this stage of life because trust me, once he starts to walk, you're going to regret the fact that you ever wished that he did.
Jen: Where’s the scooting?
Hilary: Exactly because he said then he will be on the move and he will be unstoppable. And so I'm so glad that my pediatrician went about that scenario, resolving it in that way. He took me seriously and I think that that's important. Right. That I had a concern and instead of him just brushing aside and saying it's fine, don't worry about it. He listened to me and he said OK. I see that. I understand that, you know your child better than anyone else. Right? And so he listened to my concern and then he followed up with this potential delay. He looked into it. He made sure that everything was happening the way that it was supposed to be happening. But you know, Jen, I think you bring up the fact that. These developmental charts and knowing developmentally what is typical. We don't necessarily want to turn these charts into a report card that is not their intention. That is not the goal is for us to sit down and to check. Yes, yes, yes, yes, no, no. Crap. My child's what a B+ child that most like That's not it, no.
Jen: Yeah, I was just when you were talking about this it reminds me of our friend that we have in common. And her oldest daughter that I remember going to lunch with her one day and she, her daughter was maybe 2. And that little stinker she was talking in four paragraphs. My good heavens, that girl was just talking away. And she's like, I know. She's like, what happens when I have my second one and they don't talk like this. And so, it's that whole comparing and realizing that kids just develop. This is kind of the area of the range that we do, but it is, there's a lot of give and take, there's great resources that you can if you're interested or you're concerned. There's the ASQ, which is the ages and stages questionnaire to where you can go through and say. Oh, my child's doing this and this and this. And there's a range of. Ohh they're just fine even though they're not doing that yet. But then there is a place to where, like, oh, I might need to be looking for some resources, and you can go online and find the ASQ and we can put that in our show notes as well, because it's something that parents can do on their own at home and then they can take it into their pediatrician. And show them and say see, I am seeing all of these things, they may not be performing when I'm in your office. But they I do see them. Throughout the day and. And it's a nice way to say ohh I need to look into my community and see if there's something that can help me encourage this development.
Hilary: Yeah. And I think that, I mean, I think that the key here for parents, which you are describing so well is just this idea that I think. It's awareness. That's what we want. Like we said, it's not a check off the list, but it's an awareness and you as a parent, as you mentioned, Jen, spend more time with their this child than anyone else. I don't know about you, but I every time I can spend the entire night with my child coughing and I am getting. You're asleep, and so the next day I take him to the doctor's office. Doesn't cough once and I'm like. Trust me, he coughed for 12 hours last night. But when he gets there, he's as happy as a clam.
Jen: It is like talking your care to the mechanic
Hilary: Oh, my gosh. Yes, right. Yeah. Like I'm not hearing noise. I don't know what noise you speak up here. It's that same thing. But I like that it's just as parents, let's be aware. You know, let's keep our eyes and our ears open. And let's be aware of ohh yeah, I've noticed for the past few days. I'm going to continue to be aware and maybe you know if I want to be a little bit meticulous, which will let you decide if you want to be or not, and maybe we'll jot a few notes down. I'm not going to stress myself. Well, I'm not going to let this consume all my thoughts and my energy, but I'm just going to notice so that. When I do bring it to my pediatrician, I can say hey here, you know, actually for the last three months. I've noticed the following things. You know what do you think? What's your advice and feedback on that? But I think so often we as parents see one minor flaw when we jump the gun and we say something must be horribly wrong with my child and that's not the case. And so. I do. I love. I love that these they don't knowing proper development. It can ease a lot of burden and concern, but it can also bring up a lot of burden and concern for parents. And so I think we want to remember the intention of this. Yeah, the intention of this, I think primarily is to provide some early intervention if needs be. And sometimes that's the case and that's OK, right? But the intention is not to say, hey, your child's here and my child's here and my child's better and your child's worse. And I love that you even bring up the point that, like even within the same household, comparing our own children to each other. Right. Well, they walked at nine months. But this child's not walking. And then they're 13 months and so this one must be more, you know, intellectually capable. No, that's not the case. It's just that every child is different. And so that's why I appreciate on a lot of these charts that they offer a range. They don't necessarily say at exactly this point. But around this time frame is when it's typical. It might happen a little bit before it might even happen a little bit after, but typically this is kind of your general range. Yeah. And I think that's good.
Jen: I think that. Another thing that comes from these developmental charts, because there's one for your gross motor and your fine motor skills of walking and writing and talking and all of these things, but there's also social emotional development that comes. And I think part for me of knowing what to expect, helps me in my discipline process, yes. Because I am not going to expect too much or too little I remember. You and I had a client we went to. And I went. I remember the day she said my baby should be finding her own binky. Do you remember that?
Hilary: And you're like, well, not necessarily the case
Jen: She shouldn’t be responsible for her own binky and we're like. She's not. And if I remember right, she was not happy when her daughter could not find her baby and so should we get upset and? Just understanding so you're not getting upset or frustrated because you think they're misbehaving, it's because developmentally they can't do that yet. It's not that they're choosing to be little stinkers to you. It's they. They just can't. And that is probably the number one reason why physical abuse happens is because parents just don't know. What to expect when it comes to discipline and when their expectations are too high for their kids, then they get frustrated.
Hilary: Mm-hmm. I have a we have a good friend that she works in this field as well, too. And she has a sister-in-law who raised her kids a little bit later on in life. And so she spent a lot of her adult life observing other people, raise their kids and now she's in that stage of life herself. But she often calls my friend and says my child is doing my child is biting. My child is yelling. My child is throwing a tantrum and she always uses the she always uses this phrase. She always. Says, am I raising a sociopath here? And my friend says you're not raising a sociopath. You're raising a toddler. That's what toddlers do, right? They yell, they scream. They bite. They hit. That, you know, they lie. They do things that are very common for that developmental stage. And that doesn't mean that we ignore those things. No, not necessarily. But it means that we recognize that those things are normal for kids that age to do. And so, we take it with a grain of salt knowing. MHM. That this probably isn't going to last forever, right?
Jen: There's light at the end of the tunnel. My husband would always say, oh, this is developmentally appropriate so. We just don't need to deal with it, so I like that you say it's not that we ignore it. Yeah, but we teach them skills. And that's what this whole process is for. Ohh, they're biting. OK, let's teach them what they can chew on and what they can't chew on. Do they need something like do they need that oral stimulation. Are they teething? Are they getting, you know, all of these things? So it's not to ignore them, but to they're teaching opportunities for us.
Hilary: Yeah. Yes, I mean, I just think even just understanding a child's brain development, I mean, if we know if we if we can help ourselves to become educated on how the brain develops and how quickly certain things happen. One thing that I think is that parents need to understand is the that, you know, these sweet little ones, though, they're their prefrontal cortex, isn't fully developed until later on in their life.
Jen: 25.
Hilary: And that and that is the portion of their brain that helps them to make good decisions and have impulse control and be able to think logically. And so there are times where parents are like my child is throwing a major meltdown and I'm trying to tell them to stop. And they won't listen. And I wanna say it's because they it's because their brain is not capable of processing that information that you're trying to give them at the time. And so I think just recognizing where our children are in that stage of what can like if I'm trying to provide a lecture, guess what, I can continue to provide that lecture that I'm going to hear myself and nobody else will, yeah.
Jen: Yeah, and I there's.
Hilary: We have oh, go ahead.
Jen: There's, there's a professor that would come in and talk to the interns that we have here and he would always say, what have you learned? And the intern would say whatever. But he would always remind him he's like, you're working with children. And yes, let's say that Johnny gets really frustrated. But all of a sudden he's happy because he got his truck. Now, Johnny doesn't. Think about all of the kids that he had to push out of the way or you know. Maybe bite or slapped to get that truck. All Johnny remembers is he got the truck and he's happy now. And so I think remembering all of those things, kids brains just don't have the capability to see the bigger picture. They are very focused on themselves.
Hilary: And that's normal, right? Because they go from that egocentric stage of life where it's hard for them to show remorse and to feel sorry and to empathize with other kids. And so it doesn't necessarily mean that they're awful kids. It just means that they haven't developed that skill yet.
Jen: Absolutely.
Hilary: And they probably won't. For a while. We have a colleague in our but it's always.
Jen: Always a good teaching moment, I mean it takes practice and repetition of trying things.
Hilary: Yeah, we, Jen and I have a colleague in our office and I don't remember the conversation that I was having with her, but she mentioned that her pediatrician offered the advice one time that if you're going to give your kids a set of directions, you know something that they need to do. Maybe to provide and not you know, a lesson or whatever it. Just you need to try to keep it as many words as they are old and I was like, wow. Yeah, that's hard, right? So if you were in the process of helping your toddler clean their room. It's really easy for us to walk in that room and be like you need to pick up that room. It's a huge mess. Put your toys away, put them in the bucket, put your shoes in, put your shoes in the closet. How many words have we just created at that point? How many? How many commands have we offered? And a toddler isn't capable of receiving that whole message. And so instead? Saying all right, time to clean, shoes in the closet. And then you leave it at that. And then once that task has been accomplished, alright, blanket on the bed. Perfect. Right. And so you're chunking it down into these small and simple steps that they can understand and that developmentally they can grasp, you know, you think about how many times have we been frustrated as a parent? And we've told our child to do something and they don't do it. And then we walk back in and we're like, come, you're not listening to me. And it's maybe because they don't, they don't have the skills in order to receive all of that content all at once. It's not that they don't want to help us, it's just that they don't have that capability yet.
Jen: Yeah. Or maybe they're like me. I'm an old lady who walks into a messy room and I'm overwhelmed and I have no idea where to start, so I just walk out of the room. And I'd say I'll tackle that another day. Yes, but. I'm just thinking of those words. 3 words if they're three years old and I'm just thinking to myself, that takes a lot of time and effort, but I promise, I always promise parents, the more we put in, the more time and effort we put in when they're young. The less time we'll have to do it when they're older because we've taken that time. I remember colleague as well that she had a son that wanted to play trucks with her. Just one, you know, right before dinner. And she's like, I've got to do dinner. I've, you know, I'm running late, and he kept asking, and she'd say no. And he then ended up having a tantrum. And then she was putting him in his room and shutting the door and holding the door shut and. It dawned on her, finally, that I've just spent an hour with this tantrum. If I would have just spent 5 minutes playing trucks with him. I could have gotten back to dinner and I think it's the same concept with anything that we're teaching our kids of we put in the effort now and later it'll pay off.
Hilary: The rest of the article talks about, you know, the glorious thing about ages and stages in child development is that there is a lot of information out there about it and so, you know, being able to educate yourself in this area I think is really the biggest action item that we want to give parents is that we know that it's important to know what our child. Both can and should, and typically is doing at a certain stage. So let's educate ourselves on what that looks like and so like we've mentioned, a pediatrician is a great starting point, getting that information from that pediatrician. But you know, Jen mentioned another resource. You googled developmental ages and stages and you're going to come up with oodles of websites. Just to make sure that those are reputable, reputable websites, but I think that's the beauty of understanding this topic is that there tends to be a lot of content and information and workshops and resources to provide parents with this because it is such an important concept of development,
Jen: Yeah, the thing that I liked about in one of the articles was that it was like searching for helpful books and making sure that you are getting those books where they are an expert and just not. Another individual that's sharing their opinion in a book, and not that they're bad because they're sharing their opinion, but we also want things that have come from reputable places that they aren't expert in the field so. We have the most accurate information, Harvard University has great information on developmental skills. Lots of universities have family life or child development to where you can go and look on their websites to get that information. So universities are always a great place to get good information.
Hilary: Yeah. And I think even things like it lists on here, the American Academy of Pediatrics, that's always a good, reputable site. And even I know a lot of individuals have heard of programs like zero to three or up to three. There would be another resource that you would want to seek out. That chances are you would have an agency, hopefully close to you, and if not, hopefully we'll be able to provide some virtual resources. So we'll put all of this information in our showing up so that you guys have it. But if you are seeking additional information. Please reach out to us at the family place and we are happy to guide you through a process of helping you find this information for yourself.
Jen: Yeah, they were also talking about a lot of communities have 211 where you just dial that number and it'll connect you to someone that where they will then be able to give you resources of reputable places to where you can. Get good information and good help.
Hilary: And I think just lastly, one thing that I would want to say is that if you do come to the conclusion or awareness that your child may be lagging in a certain area of development. That's OK, right? I mean it, it's it can be scary, it can be a little bit overwhelming, but know that there are resources out there that have been created to help for that very reason. And so if you do come to that, if you do have that situation in your life. There are people that are there to help and so seek out that medical attention that you need and have them help you to connect to them, connect you to those nonprofit resources, yeah.
Jen: Absolutely. Well, I feel like. I could go on and on and on and talk about development and the importance of understanding it and brain development because it's just so fascinating, but we won't bore our listeners with my ramblings on and my little develop little nerdy brain coming out that I can talk about forever, so hopefully this allowed our listeners. At least some good information, but also a starting point that if they do have questions where they can go, what they can do. And also give them some Peace of Mind that this is it's OK if it's going to be OK and just slow down, don't worry. Know that there's, you know, room on both sides, and if there is something that is a real concern, there are plenty of resources out there that do. Do help families, so hopefully you've learned something and have something that you can take away. We encourage you to learn. You know, don't take get a book and learn from zero to, you know, 18. Get a book that you're going to. OK, what do I expect at one? What can we do to help encourage those developmental skills. So don't do it all in one big chunk. Do it in little chunks. And we thank you for coming and listening today. And remind you to be calm and patient with yourselves and we will see you next week.
Thank you for listening to the Parents Place podcast. If you would like reach us you can at parents at the family place utah.org or you can reach Jen on Facebook. Jen Daly – The Family Place. Please check out our show notes for any additional information. Our website is thefamilyplace utah.org. If you're interested in any of our upcoming virtual classes. We'd love to see you there.
Episode Resources:
1. Ages and Stages: https://agesandstages.com/
2. CDC's Milestones: https://www.cdc.gov/ncbddd/actearly/milestones/index.html
3. Parent's as Teachers Program: https://parentsasteachers.org/program-locator/
Contact us:
-Email us questions or topic ideas: parents@thefamilyplaceutah.org
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