Understanding Child Development

From Growing Up Again by Jean I. Clarke


Growing Up Again: Parenting Ourselves, Parenting Our Children
by Jean I. Clarke

Book Description
As time-tested as it is timely, the expert advice in this book has helped thousands of readers improve on their parenting practices. Now, substantially revised and expanded, Growing Up Again offers further guidance on providing children with the structure and nurturing that are so critical to their healthy development -- and to our own. Jean Illsley Clarke and Connie Dawson provide the information every adult caring for children should know -- about ages and stages of development, ways to nurture our children and ourselves, and tools for personal and family growth. This new edition also addresses the special demands of parenting adopted children and the problem of overindulgence; a recognition and exploration of prenatal life and our final days as unique life stages; new examples of nurturing, structuring, and discounting, as well as concise ways to identify them; help for handling parenting conflicts in blended families, and guidelines on supporting children's spiritual growth.

About the Author
Connie Dawson is a therapist who uses an attachment-oriented perspective in her work with adoptees and adoptive families. She sees clients at the Attachment Center Northwest in Kirkland, Washington, a facility which specializes in the treatment of children who are adopted following their first parents' failure to parent adequately, including many who are adopted internationally. She also does adoption coaching, consults with agencies and treatment facilities, presents workshops, and teaches for several universities.She was a member of the Counselor Education faculty at Portland State for five years and is co-author with Jean Illsley Clarke of Growing Up Again: Parenting Ourselves, Parenting Our Children. Early in her career, she taught fifth and sixth grade and was a member of the consultation and training department of The Johnson Institute in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Jean Illsley Clarke recently authored two books, Connections: The Threads That Strengthen Families and Time-In: When Time-Out Doesnt Work, which received a Parents Choice Award. She is a parent educator and a trainer of parent educators. She holds a Master of Arts degree in Human Development and was awarded an honorary Doctor of Human Services by Sierra University. She is a teaching and supervising member of the International Transactional Analysis Association and a Nationally Certified Family Life Educator. Last year she was named Distinguished Alumna of the Year by the College of Human Ecology at the University of Minnesota.


Stage One - Being
From birth to about 6 Months

The first stage is about deciding to be, to live, to thrive, to trust, to call out to have needs met, to expect to have needs met, to be joyful. These decisions are important to nourish and amplify throughout our whole lives.

1. Job of the child (developmental tasks)

• To call for care.
• To cry or otherwise signal to get needs met.
• To accept touch.
• To accept Nurture.
• To bond emotionally, to learn to trust caring adults and self.
• To decide to live, to be.

2. Typical behaviours of the child

• Cries or fusses to make needs known.
• Cuddles.
• Makes lots of sounds.
• Looks at and responds to faces, especially eyes.
• Imitates.

3. Affirmations for being

• I'm glad you are alive.
• You belong here.
• What you need is important to me.
• I'm glad you are you.
• You can grow at your own pace.
• You can feel all of your feelings.
• I love you and I care for you willingly.

4. Helpful parent behaviours

• Affirm the child for doing developmental tasks.
• Provide loving, consistent care.
• Respond to infant's needs.
• Think for the baby.
• Hold and look at baby while feeding.
• Nurture by touching, looking, talking, and singing.
• Get help when unsure of how to care for baby.
• Be reliable and trustworthy.
• Get others to nurture you.

5. Unhelpful parent behaviours

• Not responding to the baby's signals.
• Not touching or holding enough.
• Rigid, angry, agitated responses.
• Feeding before baby signals.
• Punishment.
• Lack of healthy physical environment.
• Lack of protection, including from older siblings.
• Criticizing child for anything.
• Discounting.

6. Clues to a need for adults to grow up again

• Not trusting others.
• Wanting others to know what you need without your asking.
• Not knowing what you need.
• Not needing anything. Feeling numb.
• Believing others needs are more important than yours.
• Not trusting others to come through for you.
• Not wanting to be touc hed, or either compulsive touching or joyless sexual touching.
• Unwillingness to disclose information about self, especially negative information.

7. Activities that support growing up again

• Use and adapt this stage's "Helpful parent behaviours" to care for your inner child.
• Take a warm bath and get a therapeutic massage.
• Sing lullabies to the little child in you.
• Get more hugs.
• Close your eyes. Visualize yourself as a child. If the all-perfect mother or father could
see this child right now, what would she or he do? What would she or he say? Do those
things and say those things to yourself or ask someone who loves you to do or say those
things for you.
• Do something to make your house more comfortable.
• Get therapy if you need it.

8. Growing up again affirmations for being (when you feel ready)

• I'm glad I am alive.
• I belong here.
• What I need is important.
• I'm glad I am me.
• I grow at my own pace.
• I feel all of my feelings.
• I love and care for myself and willingly accept love and care from others.


Stage Two - Doing
From about 6 to about 18 months.

Stage Two - the "doing" stage is a powerful time when it is important for the child to decide to
trust others, that it is safe and wonderful to explore, to trust his senses, to know what he knows,
to be creative and active, and to get support while doing all these things.

1. Job of the child (developmental tasks)

• To explore and experience the environment.
• To develop sensory awareness by using all senses.
• To signal needs; to trust others and self.
• To continue forming secure attachments with parents.
• To get help in times of stress.
• To start to learn that there are options and not all problems are easily solved.
• To develop initiative.
• To continue tasks from Stage One.

2. Typical behaviours of the child

• Tests all senses by exploring the environment.
• Is curious.
• Is easily distracted.
• Wants to explore on own but be able to retrieve caregiver at will.
• Starts patty-cake and peek-a-boo.
• Starts using words during middle or latter part of stage.

3. Affirmations for doing

• You can explore and experiment and I will support and protect you.
• You can use all of your senses when you explore.
• You can do things as many times as you need to.
• You can know what you know.
• You can be interested in everything.
• I like to watch you initiate and grow and learn.
• I love you when you are active and when you are quiet.

4. Helpful parent behaviours

• Affirm child for doing developmental tasks.
• Continue to offer love, safety, and protection.
• Provide a safe environment.
• Protect child from harm.
• Continue to provide food, nurturing touch, and encouragement.
• Say two yeses for every no.
• Provide a variety of things for the child to experience.
• Refrain from interrupting child when possible.
• Refrain from interpreting the child's behaviour. "You like looking at yourself in the
mirror."
• Instead, report the child's behaviour. "Judy is looking in the mirror."
• Respond when child initiates play.
• Take care of own needs.

5. Unhelpful parent behaviours

• Fails to provide protection.
• Restricts mobility.
• Criticizes or shames child for exploring or for anything.
• Discipline or punishment.
• Expects child not to touch "precious" objects.
• Expects toilet training.
• Discounting.

6. Clues to a need for adults to grow up again

• Boredom.
• Reluctance to initiate.
• Being overactive or over quiet.
• Avoiding doing things unless you can do them perfectly.
• Being compulsively neat.
• Not knowing what you know.
• Thinking it is okay not to be safe, supported, protected.

7. Activities that support growing up again

• Use and adapt this stage's "Helpful parent behaviours" to care for your inner child.
• Explore your house on your hands and knees. Notice how different things look.
• Ask a friend to take you some place you have never been before.
• Explore some safe objects. Shake, smell, taste, look at, listen to, stack the objects. Pay
close attention to the objects. Think how you feel when you devote yourself to learning
about familiar things in a new way.
• Explore new talents, foods, activities, and cultures.
• Drive to work a different way.
• Get therapy if you need it.

8. Growing up again affirmations for exploring (when you feel ready)

• I explore and experiment and I get support and protection while I do.
• I use all of my senses when I explore.
• I do things as many times as I need to.
• I know what I know.
• I am interested in everything.
• I like to initiate and grow and learn.
• I love and accept myself when I am active and when I am quiet.


Stage Three
Thinking from about 18 months to about 3 years.
In order to separate from parents, children must learn to think and solve problems. Learning to
express and handle feelings is also important. These lessons are the focus of Stage Three - the
"thinking" stage.

1. Job of the child (developmental tasks)

• To establish ability to think for self.
• To test reality, to push against boundaries and other people.
• To learn to think and solve problems with cause and effect thinking.
• To start to follow simple commands.
• To express anger and other feelings.
• To separate from parents without losing their love.
• To start to give up beliefs about being the centre of the universe.
• To continue tasks from earlier stages.

2. Typical behaviours of the child

• Begins cause and effect thinking.
• Starts parallel play.
• Starts to be orderly, even compulsive.
• Sometimes follows simple commands, sometimes resists.
• Tests behaviours: "No, I won't, and you can't make me."
• Some try out the use of tantrums.

3. Affirmations for thinking

• I'm glad you are starting to think for yourself.
• It's okay for you to be angry, and I won't let you hurt yourself or others.
• You can say no and push and test limits as much as you need to.
• You can learn to think for yourself and I will think for myself.
• You can think and feel at the same time.
• You can know what you need and ask for help.
• You can become separate from me and I will continue to love you.

4. Helpful parent behaviours

• Affirm the child for doing developmental tasks.
• Continue to offer cuddling, love, safety, and protection.
• Celebrate the child's new thinking ability.
• Encourage cause and effect thinking.
• Provide reasons, how to's, and other information.
• Accept positive and negative expression of feelings.
• Teach options for expressing feelings instead of hitting or biting.
• Set reasonable limits and enforce them.
• Remain constant in face of child's outbursts; neither give in nor overpower.
• Provide time and space for child to organize thinking.
• Give simple, clear directions child can follow; encourage and praise achievement.
• Expect child to think about own feelings and start to think about other's feelings.
• Think of and refer to child as a "Terrific Two."
• Take care of own needs.

5. Unhelpful parent behaviours

• Using too many don'ts and not enough do's.
• Getting caught in power struggles.
• Trying to appear to be a good parent by having a compliant child.
• Referring to the child as a "terrible two."
• Refusing to set limits or expectations.
• Setting too high expectations.
• Expecting child to play "with" other children before learning to play "near" others.
• Refusing to use discipline for not thinking.
• Shaming the child.
• Discounting.

6. Clues to a need for adults to grow up again

• Inappropriate rebelliousness (chip on shoulder).
• Rather be right than successful.
• Think the world revolves around self.
• Fear of anger in self or others.
• Saying no or yes without thinking.
• Scared to say no and allows others to dominate.
• Passive-aggressive behaviours.

7. Activities that support growing up again

• Use and adapt this stage's "Helpful parent behaviours" to care for your inner child.
• Make a "No List" of things it is important for you to say no to and say no to them.
• Get a new recipe or something to assemble. Follow directions exactly. Get three people
to tell you how well you did.
• Do something to improve your memory. Learn about memory, read a book, take a
workshop, practice. Pick seven things it is important for you to remember and remember
them.
• Learn to use a Fuss Box. (See "The Fuss Box, "Appendix A.)
• Get therapy if you need it.

8. Growing up again affirmations for thinking (when you feel ready)

• I think for myself and I let others think for themselves.
• It's okay for me to be angry, and when I am, I express it in a way that helps solve
problems and does not hurt myself and others.
• I say no whenever I need to say no.
• I can think and feel at the same time; I use my feelings to help me think clearly about
what to do.
• I know what I need and I ask for help whenever I need it.


Stage Four - Identity and Power
From about 3 to about 6 Years
The tasks of this stage focus on learning and activities that help the person establish an individual
identity, learn skills, and figure out role and power relationships with others.

1. Job of the child (developmental tasks)

• To assert an identity separate from others.
• To acquire information about the world, himself, his body, his sex role.
• To learn that behaviours have consequences.
• To discover his effect on others and his place in groups.
• To learn to exert power to affect relationships.
• To practice socially appropriate behaviour.
• To separate fantasy from reality.
• To learn what he has power over and what he does not have power over.
• To continue learning earlier developmental tasks.

2. Typical behaviours of the child

• Engages in fantasy play, possibly with imaginary companions.
• Gathers information: how, why, when, how long, et cetera.
• Tries on different identity roles by role-playing.
• Starts learning about power relationships by watching and setting up power struggles.
• Practices behaviours for sex role identification.
• Starts cooperative play.
• Practices socially appropriate behaviour.
• Begins interest in games and rules.

3. Affirmations for identity and power

• You can explore who you are and find out who other people are.
• You can be powerful and ask for help at the same time.
• You can try out different roles and ways of being powerful.
• You can learn the results of your behaviour.
• All of your feelings are okay with me.
• You can learn what is pretend and what is real.
• I love who you are.

4. Helpful parent behaviours

• Affirm children for doing developmental tasks.
• Continues to offer love, safety, and protection.
• Is supportive as child continues to explore the world of things, people, ideas, and
feelings.
• Encourages child to enjoy being a boy, or a girl; teaches that both sexes are okay.
• Expects child to express feelings and to connect feelings and thinking.
• Provides information about child’s environment and corrects misinformation.
• Gives answers to questions.
• Provides appropriate positive or negative consequences for actions.
• Uses language that is clear about who is responsible for what. (See “Encouraging
Responsibility through Language,” Appendix A.)
• Encourages child’s fantasies and his separation of fantasy and reality.
• Compliments appropriate behaviour.
• Maintains contact with supportive people who help parent nurture self.
• Responds matter of factly and accurately to child’s curiosity about the human body, and
the differences between boys and girls.
• Resolves their own identity problems that surface.

5. Unhelpful parent behaviours

• Teasing.
• Inconsistency.
• Not expecting child to think for self.
• Unwillingness to answer questions.
• Ridicule for role-playing or fantasies.
• Respond to child’s fantasies as if real.
• Use of fantasy to frighten or confuse child.
• Discounting.

6. Clues to a need for adults to grow up again

• Having to be in a position of power.
• Afraid of or reluctant to use power.
• Feeling driven to achieve.
• Overuse of outlandish dress or behaviour.
• Frequently comparing yourself to others and needing to come off better.
• Wanting or expecting magical solutions or effects.

7. Activities that support growing up again

• Use and adapt this stage’s “Helpful parent behaviours” to care for your inner child.
• Make a list of ten things you would like to do.
• Give or go to a costume party.
• Join a men’s group if you are a man or a women’s group if you are a woman. Talk and
think about your idea of sex roles.
• Find out about a different job or career.
• Write a story starting, “In my next life I will …”
• Learn about appropriate manners to use in another culture.”
• Get therapy if you need it.

8. Growing up again affirmations for identity and power (when you feel ready)

• I continue to explore who I am and I find out who other people are instead of making
assumptions.
• I am powerful and I do ask for help whenever I need it.
• I try out new roles and I learn new ways of being effective and powerful.
• I accept responsibility for the results of my behaviour.
• I feel, accept, and act appropriately on all of my feelings.


Stage Five – Structure
From about 6 to about 12 Years
It’s important at this stage to learn more about Structure and install our own internal Structure.
This includes understanding the need for rules, the freedom that comes from having appropriate
rules, and the relevancy of rules. Examining the values on which our rules are based is important.
Another major task of this stage is acquiring many kinds of skills.

1. Job of the child (developmental tasks)

• To learn skills, learn from mistakes, and decide to be adequate.
• To learn to listen in order to collect information and think.
• To practice thinking and doing.
• To reason about wants and needs.
• To check our family rules and learn about structures outside the family.
• To learn the relevancy of rules.
• To experience the consequences of breaking rules.
• To disagree with others and still be loved.
• To test ideas and values and learn value options beyond the family.
• To develop internal controls.
• To learn what is one's own responsibility and what is others' responsibility.
• To develop the capacity to cooperate.
• To test abilities against others.
• To identify with same sex.
• To continue to learn earlier tasks.

2. Typical behaviours of the child

• Asks questions and gathers information.
• Practices and learns skills.
• Belongs to same sex groups or clubs.
• Compares, tests, disagrees with, sets, breaks, and experiences consequences of rules.
• Challenges parent values, argues, and hassles.
• May be open and affectionate or seem cantankerous, self-contained, or may alternate
among these.

3. Affirmations for structure

• You can think before you say yes or no and learn from your mistakes.
• You can trust your intuition to help you decide what to do.
• You can find a way of doing things that works for you.
• You can learn the rules that help you live with others.
• You can learn when and how to disagree.
• You can think for yourself and get help instead of staying in distress.
• I love you even when we differ; I love growing with you.

4. Helpful parent behaviours

• Affirm the child for doing developmental tasks.
• Continue to offer love, safety, and protection.
• Affirm children's efforts to learn to do things their own way.
• Give lots of love and lots of positive strokes for learning skills.
• Be a reliable source of information about people, the world, and sex.
• Challenge behaviour and decisions; encourage cause and effect thinking.
• Be clear about who is responsible for what.
• Affirm children's ability to think logically and creatively.
• Offer problem-solving tools.
• Set and enforce needed non-negotiable and negotiable rules.
• Allow children to experience non- hazardous natural consequences for their ways of doing
things.
• Point out that you do continue to care for them even when they disagree with you.
• Encourage the separation of reality from fantasy by encouraging children to report
accurately.
• Be responsible yourself and encourage the children to be responsible for their decisions,
thinking, and feeling. (See "Encouraging Responsibility through Language,"
Appendix A.)

5. Unhelpful parent behaviours

• Uneven enforcement of rules.
• Insisting on perfection.
• Expecting child to learn needed skills without instructions, help, or standards.
• Filling all of the child's time with lessons, teams, and activities so child lacks the
unstructured time to explore interests and learn the relevancy of rules.
• Unwillingness to allow child to feel miserable for brief times.
• Rules and values too rigid or lacking.
• Unwillingness or lack of ability to discuss beliefs and values, to re-evaluate rules, and to
expect the child to develop skills for personal responsibility.
• Discounting.

6. Clues to a need for adults to grow up again

• Having to be part of a "gang."
• Only functioning well as a loner.
• Not understanding the relevance of rules.
• Not understanding the freedom that rules can give.
• Needing to be king or queen of the hill.
• Trusting the thinking of the group more than one's own thinking and intuition.
• Expecting to have to do things without knowing how, find out, or being taught how.
• Being reluctant to learn new things or be productive.

7. Activities that support growing up again

• Use and adapt this stage's "Helpful parent behaviours" to care for your inner child.
• Join a club and figure out what the rules are.
• Watch TV for one evening and list the morals and values presented. Compare the number
of alcoholic drinks, cups of coffee or tea, soft drinks, water, incidents of violence,
incidents of nurturing, et cetera.
• Clean and organize something - closet, drawers, sewing kit, tool kit.
• Learn a new system of organization.
• Learn a new skill.
• Get therapy if you need it.

8. Growing up again affirmations for developing Structure (when you feel ready)

• I think before I say yes or no and I learn from my mistakes.
• I trust my intuition to help me decide what to do.
• I find a way of doing things that works for me.
• I know the rules that help me live with others and I learn new ones in new situations.
• I know when and how to disagree.
• I think for myself and get help instead of staying in distress.
• I am lovable even when I differ with others; I love growing with others.


Stage Six
Identity, Sexuality and Separation
From about 13 to about 19 Years
The tasks of this stage focus on identity, separation, and sexuality.

1. Job of the adolescent (developmental tasks)

• To achieve a clearer separation from family.
• To take more steps toward independence.
• To emerge gradually, as a separate, independent person with own identity and values.
• To be responsible for own needs, feelings, behaviours.
• To integrate sexuality into the earlier developmental tasks.

2. Typical behaviours of the adolescent

Adolescents make some of their identity and separation choices by revisiting or recycling the
tasks of earlier stages - Being, Doing, Thinking, Identity and Power, and Structure - with
new information and with the sometimes confusing pressures of their emerging sexuality.
Therefore, adolescents may act very grown up one moment and immature the next. The
ages at which they usually recycle and incorporate these earlier tasks are as follows:
Onset of puberty or about age thirteen, recycling the Being and the Doing or Exploratory
stages of infancy:

• Sometimes independent and sometimes wanting to be fed and cared for.
• Exploring new areas without necessarily being concerned with standards or finishing.
Age fourteen, recycling two and independent thinking:
• Sometimes reasonable and competent with intermittent rebellious outbursts.
Age fifteen, sixteen, and seventeen, recycling three, four, or five, and Identity and Power:
• Asking questions, "Why?" and "How come?" Working out new role identity with same
sex and opposite sex with both peers and adults. Learning to solve complex problems.
Age sixteen through nineteen, recycling six to twelve years, and Structure.
• Being adult and responsible with sudden short journeys back to earlier rule-testing
behaviours.
• May also break rules as part of separation from parent. 

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