Child Development Network

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By now you have written your MaP Plan, have identified and recruited your child's team, and are ready to get underway helping your child.

This document has 6 sections:

1. Who Does What?
2. Strategy
3. Meetings and Other Communication
4. Progress Evaluation
5. Review Cycles
6. Transition Times.

Who Does What?

You have talked about your team in two levels. The DIRECT team are those persons who deal directly with your child. These are the key people your child spends time with day to day. Teachers are the most obvious example, but grandparents, siblings, sports coaches and tutors are all direct influences on your child's development and well-being.

The direct team are the people who do the work. They are the ones who can help your child.

You have two challenges. The first is recruiting and organising these people to work together, on the same issues in the same way, and towards the same goals. That is where your MaP Folder and the setting up process help you.

The second challenge is learning how best to help your child. That is where the indirect, or SUPPORT team come in. The support team not only support you, but also provide information about how to help your child that allows you to do your work more successfully. The support team are your sources of information as well as your strength.

A final word about yourselves. In addition to being a major part of the DIRECT team, as parents you need to take a unique role as coordinators (project managers). To do this successfully, you need the time and energy to manage the team. This may mean giving some of the responsibility for the direct work to others, so you are free to do the necessary coordination work.

Strategy

Strategy is HOW you help your child. It is the techniques and methods you use to work with your child to deal with their anxiety, their learning, or, their social skills.

Strategy comes from many sources. The indirect, or support team, are often people (such as professionals) who have a strong knowledge of how to help children. You should learn from them.

We encourage you to come up with your own ideas, and ask other members of your direct team to do the same. Often the best strategy arises from these people working with your child, through trial and error.

Other sources of information include books and the internet. In general, this information is not specific to your child, so use caution, and be courageous in selecting the pieces and ideas that best suit your situation.

Part of your coordination role is to keep the flow of information going about what works, and what does not work. As people try ideas that succeed (or fail), it is important to share this information amongst your team. Our advanced MaP formalises the processes around documenting strategy for this purpose.

Meetings and Other Communication

The key to managing your child's team is regular communication. It is up to maintain a flow of ideas, strategies, progress, the joy of successes and the struggle of hard work.

If you do not do this, there is a real danger the team will fragment, with everybody doing their own work in increasing isolation.

Meetings are the cornerstone of communication. We discussed meetings in the setup pages. Meetings are important, and there is more information about how to do this in the Advanced MaP information.

We recommend you be clear about how you are going to maintain communication with each member of the team - how often you meet face to face and how you communicate between these meetings.

Progress Evaluation

As you work towards helping your child and achieving the goals, it is good to know how you are going.

If you were on a weight-loss program, for example, there would be regular weigh-in times where you measure progress towards your goal.

Example progress measures may be the number of times per week your child says that they do not want to go to school or the amount of time they spend reading. You may use more formal measures such as reading achievement test results or reading levels.

These progress measures also give you an indication of whether your team is 'on track' to achieving a goal.

For each issue the team is working on, as you progress towards the goal, it is important to consider:

• How are we going to measure progress?
• How are we going to know if we are 'on track'?

If you do measure progress, it then allows you to feed back encouragement to the team (if you are going well), or problem solve (if you are not going well).

Review Cycles

When you set goals, these should be anchored against a point in time (such as the end of the year). Once you reach that point in time, it is important to pause and reflect.

We suggest you do this as a formal process. It may be a time with you and your partner, or a consultation with your child's paediatrician.

At this review meeting, look at the issues and goals, and reflect on the journey. Did you achieve what you wanted to? If you didn't, what was different? What happened?

If you did achieve the goals it is important to pause and allow yourself the pleasure of success.

If your child is old enough, you should include them in this discussion, particularly if the journey to this point has been a successful one.

Share your achievements with the team.

Bribes and inducements are strongly encouraged as tokens of your appreciation. Remember they are working to help your child.

The final part of the review cycle is to set new goals, and build the next stage of your child's journey.

Transition Times

There are important times in your child's developmental journey that need to be considered in special terms. It is beyond the scope of this document to examine these in detail, but they need to be incorporated into your planning.

From Early Intervention to School

Early intervention is a time where progress is measured against the child themselves (Personal Best). Once your child begins school, there is a framework of curriculum and other children which your child will be measured against. You need to understand the shift from child-referenced progress to peer and curriculum-referenced thinking. It is a major shift.

Mid Primary

Early primary is about learning the craft tools of learning. Around grades 3 and 4, the curriculum begins to use these tools to achieve academic goals, such as writing tasks or solving problems. Many children struggle at this transition.

Late Primary

Late primary is the key time when children develop self awareness, beliefs about themselves and the self esteem that builds on these beliefs. What your child incorporates into their sense of self during this time has a profound influence on their later development. It is a very important time in child development.

Primary to High

The transition here is an obvious one - single teacher to multiple teachers, small school to large school and so on. It is scary for children with special needs. It is very hard for those with poor organisation and weak social skills.

Mid to Senior High

Moving to grades 10, 11 and 12 is a shift from learning from curriculum, to learning as preparation for life after school. Some children go in a direction of academic learning, others take a more vocational course. It is the time where you are thinking where you want to get to after school.

After High School

In child development, this is probably the final time point where we look into the future. What will the child be like as they transition into adult life?

Our recommended thinking is that the Mental Health and Resilience goals are more important than the developmental goals for most children. If your child is happy, feels positive about themselves and the future, accepts their special needs and knows how to manage, they are ready for adult life. It does not matter so much if they are struggling with reading or maths - these are skills they can build as an adult.

By comparison, if your child is depressed, has poor self esteem, does not understand or accept themselves, and is adapting to life through avoidance, drugs and alcohol, they are clearly in poor shape to manage adult life.

Short Term and Long Term Goals.

We believe it is important to set short term goals (e.g. 6 monthly), but retain a sense of the long term goal, or vision of the future.

Picture your child as an adult.

What kind of adult would you like them to be? What is most important for you to achieve?

If, for example, their long term happiness is the most important, you need to be talking about, and working on, the foundations of happiness now.

 

Good Luck!