The stages of growth discussed in an earlier question holds very critical insights for educational milestones and developmental strategies for children.
The first implication of the stages of growth is that by the time a child is adolescent, she must have done well on the developmental milestones of the childhood and juvenile stages. The three more important developmental milestones to achieve during those two stages are:
a. Emotionally happy state at home and school (as reflected in the quality of relationships at home and school)
b. Being a skilled reader in a language (ideally the language of the books and exams) with adequate command over expressing thoughts in the language
c. Being able to propose logical explanations of the more common things observed in the daily routine of things (such as day and night, price and measurements, behaviour of plants and animals)
The second implication, and no less important, is that it is never too late to make up the deficiencies in the attainments of the past stages of growth; it only gets more difficult to fill up the deficiencies with each passing year, yet is not impossible. Many successful people are indeed ‘late bloomers’ and simply work real hard on their developmental gaps with great determination and conviction.
The third implication is to start working on filling up the deficits of childhood or juvenile stages, if any, as soon as possible; steal away at least an hour a day, every day, from other activities to achieve the educational development deficits of the past.
Pertinently, and unique to humans, the peaking of the brain’s development touches the early 20s! One can cover up for all the lost opportunities till the bachelor’s degree (even master’s degree to an extent). The general intelligence and short-term memory (working memory) is the last one to firm up to peak level and keeps a window of opportunity to lay new foundations.
A word of caution for parents – parents often want their children to be the first among their peers to reach every
developmental milestone, but Bjorklund1 points out that earlier is not always better and may sometimes be worse. For instance, abnormally early visual experience in birds disrupts development of the auditory system.
Similarly, in “The Development of Learning in the Rhesus Monkey”, psychologist Harry Harlow2 mentions that the ability of rhesus monkeys to discriminate objects on various dimensions such as shape was impaired by starting the training too early in life—the monkeys who started training at older ages reached higher peak levels of performance.
In a 1977 study by developmental psychologist Hanus Papousek3, human infants who started learning to turn their heads to specific sounds at 31 days of age mastered the task, on average, at 71 days of age, whereas infants who started learning to do so at birth did not master the task, on average, until the age of 128 days.
Thus, the stages of growth should be broadly respected and success comes with attaining the critical developmental goals of each stage.
Source:
1. Bjorklund, David F, “The Adaptive Nature of Cognitive Immaturity,” American Psychologist, 1992.
2. Harlow Harry, “The Development of Learning in the Rhesus Monkey,” American Scientist, 1959
3.http://www.americanscientist.org/bookshelf/pub/the-benefits-of-a-long-childhood
4.http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/handle/2027.42/37682/3_ftp.pdf?sequence=1
5. http://bit.ly/1stctxv
