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Developmentally Appropriate Practice

Last edited October, 2003, Last reviewed September 2007

Common to much of the bad parenting and poor educational policy ideas of late is a disregard for the fairly well understood stages of child development. More specifically, many folks just plain forget that, for example, what is appropriate for a toddler is not appropriate for a child in grammar school. What is spot-on for a junior in high school is not a good idea for a first grader. Let's look at some specifics for parents and for educational policy makers.

Parenting is difficult enough as it is, but when your child is maturing mentally, emotionally and physically you face the added difficulty of hitting a moving target. Everybody knows of a "Mommas boy", but how did he become that way? More often than not, Momma didn't recognize that her boy was maturing in stages and that she should alter her methods of communication, discipline, and physical safeguarding in order to allow for his growth during each of those stages. Instead, she continued to treat her boy as a fragile small child and the boy learned to respond to this type of interaction even as he got older and even as his emotional growth became stunted. Children mature in stages that are loosely but not directly related to physical age. Only by constantly monitoring and reevaluating can a parent modify their own behavior in a way that supports the maturation of their child.

Lets look at a brief timeline of how parental discipline should change in relation to emotional maturation. An infant requires unvarying attention. Discipline of any sort is clearly inappropriate certainly for the first couple of years. Infants simply do not have the capacity to comprehend what you might want them to do or to understand. Instead, jumping to a baby's every cry helps him learn that Mom and Dad will be there when he needs them. As the baby transforms into a toddler, he is likely to become more demanding and less adaptable but he lacks the communication skills to make himself understood. This is a critical period during which parents must change their outlook and develop methods of gentle persuasion such as using distraction, reorganization or anticipation of issues in order to avoid problems. Many parents today fail to make this transition properly. Either they continue to jump at every demand of the child, or sometimes they immediately skip to discipline methods that are too old for this stage, such as reasoning or yelling. Even parents who do make the transition successfully will often become stuck in this stage and will continue to use methods like distraction for far too long.

As the toddler becomes a young child, new techniques are required in order to promote emotional growth. During the "terrible twos" and upward, methods such as limiting available choices, using set routines, and simplifying the child's life are effective. There is even room to pick your battles during this stage; since the child's emotional balance can be tipsy. During the later part of this stage, though, the meaning of "no" must be introduced in no uncertain terms. Learning to say "no" in a quiet and utterly consistent manner is meaningful for the child usually during the ages of 3 to 5. Consistency in this regard is crucial, because the child will test the parent at every turn. Saying "no" and not following through will quickly doom future efforts at discipline.

During the Kindergarten years and onward, discipline methods that stress parental expectations, praise and rewards for meeting expectations, and simple prevention of troublesome circumstances work best. Punishment, if necessary, should be calmly meted out. Ignoring emotional outbursts allows parents to stay above petty arguments and not be drawn into a battle. In fact, if the parent is drawn into a battle with the child, the child has already won. If the meaning of "no" was established during the previous stage, this stage will not be all that difficult.

As the child matures through the grammar school years, stages of strong demands, impatience, self-absorption, indifference, and devotion to peer-group standards can drive a parent up a wall. Using techniques such as pre-reminders of important tasks, motivators such as money or attention, and reasonable expectations are effective. Toward the end of this stage the child's own ability to distinguish right from wrong can be the parent's best ally. As the child moves through the high school years and into adulthood, discipline handled in a developmentally appropriate manner through childhood will now serve as a base for making good choices. Behavioral limits will be easy to set while still allowing for the space a teen needs in order to widen their own style and personality. For the children whose parents became stuck in one stage or another or who used disciplinary techniques too soon, high school and early adulthood will be confusing and dangerous without the base of expectations set earlier in life. Drugs, alcohol, depression, violence, caving to peer pressure, failure in school, and other outcomes are far more likely when a child does not have the strong emotional bond with parents and the intuitive grasp of right and wrong created by parents who were in tune with the stages of emotional growth.

Educational policy is also infused with a lack of developmental understanding. When the talking heads on your favorite television show discuss homework, assessment methods, discipline, curriculum, or a host of other issues, invariably there is not a word about developmentally appropriate practice. Instead, children of all ages and all developmental stages are lumped into the same composite student unit. Children are not composite units; they are individuals with different abilities, different experiences, and different stages of development. Children of the identical age can and often do act on opposite ends of the developmental scale. Failing to recognize this often leads to poor policy and unhappy kids who turn into unhappy adults.

Take a very simple example. Early elementary teachers frequently use a practice known as "inventive spelling" when teaching writing. The practice encourages young children to invent the spelling of words they don't know as they write. Most often, the invented spelling is incorrect. The teachers do this for a very important reason. At that age and that developmental stage, it is FAR more important to help the child focus on the joy of writing and the process of getting thoughts on paper than on spelling correctly. Insisting on proper spelling would squash the elementary child's imagination and excitement for no reason other than an adult's whim. However, every elementary teacher using this practice will tell you that they have parents upset over their child's poor spelling and the apparent disregard for accurate work held by the teacher. This is so because these parents have a composite unit in their minds for a characteristic student. Since they left school as a young adult, this composite student unit probably reflects their experience as a young adult in school. But their child is not a young adult. The elementary teacher knows that proper spelling will be gradually introduced as the child develops as a writer in later grades. As the child matures, so will his writing. The first trick is to get the child hooked on the joy of writing.

The composite student unit syndrome is apparent in many other misguided policies too. An unyielding desire for student assessment in the form of letter and number grades prevents teachers from using more informative assessment methods. Portfolios of student work that show progress over time are far more effective at identifying strengths and weaknesses for younger children. However, Mom and Dad and their local politician would often rather just compare Johnny's "B+" to the "B" for the boy next door, or to some State percentile, or to some school in Northwest Japan. Portfolio assessment is the best method for understanding an individual student's progress through developmental stages. It is the best method for teachers and parents to catch and correct problems before they harm a student in the long term. However, the developmentally inappropriate standardized tests fostered in large part by Federal and State government continue to be administered to younger and younger children. Such tests, along with letter and number grades, not only tell little about an individual student but they can be harmful to lower elementary students by creating an atmosphere of stress, fear and self-doubt. In this case, we have traded a valuable understanding of an individual student's progress through developmental stages for an essentially meaningless number or letter that we can compare to a set of other numbers or letters.

Whatever the example used, understanding the developmental stages of children is critical if parents and educators are to raise happy, healthy adults.

To cite this article:

Painter, John. Developmentally Appropriate Practice. (October 2003). Retrieved month x, 2xxx, from

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