However, they shouldn’t expect a 10-year-old’s emotional or behavioral control. Their behavior should reinforce, challenge and support his behavior in that domain. For Stevie, his parents can expect him to use the language of a 10-year-old. CHRONOLOGICAL AGE IN MONTHS HOW TOI often coach parents on how to think about their child’s developmental age in different domains. Parents and professionals should work together to identify what areas correlate to the child’s chronological and developmental ages. What can parents do? Think in different domains. Adults get more angry as his skills continue to fall behind.Stevie starts viewing himself as “broken” or “dumb” and stops trying.Stevie gets frustrated that, despite his attempts, he continues to fail and get punished.They get angry at him for not meeting that expectation.Adults expect 10-year-old behavior when he legitimately cannot give it in all ways.This potentially creates a problematic cycle: Often, adults and other kids expect Stevie to “act his age” because they see a 10-year-old and expect 10-year-old behavior. Stevie is going to have a challenging time in school and in making friends. While he has the vocabulary and memory of a typical 10-year-old, his ability to read body language and control impulses (such as interrupting people or angry outbursts) is more typical for a 6-year-old. Let’s consider 10-year-old “Stevie,” who has a diagnosis of autism spectrum disorder. Recognizing that a child’s developmental and chronological ages can be different is an important first step. However, it can be a problem when the two don’t match. If a person’s developmental and chronological ages match, we tend to not notice because it’s expected. Consider behaviors and learning tasks that a typical 1st grader displays: learning to read, basic addition, cooperative play and taking turns. Developmental age measures someone’s behavioral, cognitive and physical development in contrast to the typical person in the same age range. Determining a child’s developmental age is trickier. When a small child holds up her fingers and says, “I’m this many old,” she is telling us her chronological age (if she’s right, of course). But how are they important to parents? Chronological age is pretty straightforward: it is simply how physically old your child is. She emphasized how important they would be in all of our future careers-she was right. A psychologist at my first internship rotation hammered into all the students who would cross her path the concepts of developmental age and chronological age.
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