More on Maturity

Some large child care centers are able to provide individual classroom environments for children whose chronological ages closely approximate each another. Although accommodating children of the same age, teachers recognize that these children may possess a wide range of developmental skills. Nevertheless, these classroom environments contain a fairly uniform or homogeneous group of children. Such a classroom provides many advantages for care givers in their ability to provide children with quality care including; providing age-appropriate materials and creating schedules and routines that meet most children's requirements for learning and play. However, for other child care programs, a lack of resources often require that children of disparate or diverse age groups be served in the same classroom. This creates additional challenges for teachers as they endeavor to meet the needs of children whose range of skills and abilities are broad and far-reaching. To their credit, teachers do a tremendous job coping with these challenges and providing for the unique needs of their children.

These situations often occur when children "graduate" from one classroom to another. The transitions that a two-year-old makes moving to a three-year-old classroom can be particularly difficult. We often address this as a "maturity" issue regarding children who are no longer appropriate to be served in their previous classroom but whose social, emotional, communication or cognitive skills leave them unprepared for the expectations that accompany their new learning environment. If the transition proves particularly difficult or is protracted over a long period of time, questions may also arise whether the problems children encounter are the result of immaturity or may due to a developmental delay. Because it may be difficult to determine what the basis of the problem may be, seeking additional assistance and support to assess the situation is always recommended.

When children are under stress or feeling anxious, it is not unusual for them to act immaturely or regress to behaviors that they had outgrown including; thumb sucking, nightmares, bed-wetting or "baby-talk". In addition, other indicators associated with immature behavior such as; increased activity levels, impulsivity and inattention may be pronounced when children are anxious or stressed. For suggestions regarding managing these behaviors, refer to my posts on anxiety and basic needs.

Maturity

Recently, I received several phone calls from child care providers regarding children who were having difficulty participating and cooperating in typical classroom activities. They reported active or impulsive behavior and difficulty interacting with other children . . . sometimes accompanied by hitting, pushing or other types of aggression. In each of these instances, the underlying issue appeared to be related to the child's maturity, or lack thereof.

Maturity is difficult to measure in young children. We know that children's chronological age contributes to maturity and that children should possess greater levels of maturity as they grow older. In addition, we observe that gender can also play a role with maturity and that girls often appear to mature earlier than boys. However, if I was to consider what attributes children possess that correspond to maturity, I might offer an oversimplified analogy to the baking of a cake. We would substitute our basic ingredients of flour, sugar and water with three new components; social skills acquisition, emotional development and cognitive ability. These components represent children's mastery of the principles that govern social interaction; the ability to identify and, to some degree, regulate emotion and, finally; thinking, reasoning and problem solving skills. Having assembled these ingredients and mixed them together, one final step is required before the mixture is transformed into a cake. Traditionally, the recipe calls for a baking process that requires the application of temperature over time and results in our ingredients melding together into a delicious dessert. With our cake, however, the process requires temperament and time. Temperament describes children's inclination or predisposition to modify their behavior and apply self-control, particularly in challenging situations. As you know, children can possess social, emotional and cognitive skills but still lack the inclination to modify their behavior when needed in the course of normal daily activities (sounds like a great description of a two-year-old). Time and effort are required to support children in making mature decisions regarding their behavior when their inclination may prove otherwise. Our efforts may often result in a pancake or an up-side down cake before we can successfully bake an angel food cake. Be patient, focus on your mixture of basic ingredients and allow children the flexibility to develop and grow according to their individual abilities. You won't be disappointed.