Stages of Development and Successful Adult Response Styles

Stage 1: Responding to the environment with pleasure (Age 2)

Stage 2: Responding to the environment with success (Age 6)

Stage 3: Learning the skills for successful group participation (Age 9)

Stage 4: Investing in the group process (Age 12)

Stage 5: Applying individual and group skills in new situations (Age 16)

Assumptions of the Developmental Model: Self-esteem and personal identity must develop within a social context.It is the skills and attitudes of the adults and what they believe in that make the difference between successful and failed intervention.If a child fails to master what is socially/emotionally necessary at any given stage, global delays in all domains will become evident- language, cognition, motor skills, behavior, academic skills.

The last newsletter reviewed stages 1-3, here are 4 and 5:

Stage 4: Investing in the group process

Central Concern: getting approval from adults and peers, belonging

Motivation: developing personal qualities that are approved by others

Anxiety: conflict over dependence vs. independenceApproach to problems: to conform or not, responsibility to self

Authority source: others expectations and approval

Needs from adults: supportive, approves, facilitates

Effective strategies: positive feedback, interpretation

Activities and content themes: real-life experiences, successes with peers, recognition from adults and peers

Students in stage 4 need help from adults interpreting their feelings behind their behavior. They need help noticing the behaviors and poor choices that result in rejection. This can be a painful process as they confront the fact that their personal choices result sometimes in negative feedback from peers and adults. Adults need to provide limits and boundaries but it is important that students in this stage be involved in the decision making process.

This is the age of gaining insight into your own motivations behind your mistakes; they need to learn to guage the separate feelings and motivations of others and make adjustments in thier own behavior based on feedback and prediction.Failure to perceive acceptance from the group can result in withdrawal, isolation, anger, depression, and blaring defiance.

Stage 5: Applying individual and group skills to new situations"Who am I and what will I become?"

Central concern: being valued by others while being oneself

Motivation: justice, individual rights, freedom to choose, obligations of friendship

Anxiety: self-doubt, identity, multiple value systems and rolesApproach to problems: finding one's own solutions through experimentation

Authority source: others' expectations and approval, values of right and wrong

Adult needed: counselor, adviser, role model of desired attributes

Effective Strategies: analysis of salient events and qualities in both universal and personal context, exploration of values that guide conduct, interpretation, positive feedback and recognition

Activities and themes: behavior and communication styles in pluralistic society, regulation of people by institutions such as government, church, school, family, social groups, employers, sports.

My LPC supervisor, Michael Sliwa, having been in private practice for 23 years and weathered 4 teenagers, made the following comment to me, scary as it sounds. "When one of my kids proposes an action they want to try to me that I think may not work out for them very well, I say, "That sounds like a good idea, why don't you try that out and let me know how it works out for you.'" At this stage, peer influence typically becomes more important than parent influence.

When children in this stage think their parents are over-controlling and untrusting, and do not allow the teen to have input into rules and exceptions to rules, the teens often rebel and become defiant, refusing to perform household chores and participate in the family with helpful contributions. They keep their problems and distress to themselves and no longer request parental advice for problem solving. Often they seed advice from freinds or develop an "emotional parent," a coach or a teacher or another freind's parent, with whom they become close, seek, and often follow advice.

•Source:Wood, M., Davis, K., Swindle, F., Quirk, C.(1996) Developmental Therapy-Developmental Teaching: Fostering Social-Emotional Competence in Troubled Children and Youth, Third Edition. Austin, Tx: Pro-Ed.

Oppositional-defiant behavior can also result when a child feels that adults only notice what they do wrong. You can not win a power struggle with a child who is being ODD, they win every time by not doing. And you can't make them. And they don't care what you are taking away from them. The smart approach to this type of behavior is to get control over the things this kid enjoys, and sell them the time with what they like based on how well they do at meeting adult expectations. Then you don't get the explosions when you punish and take things away, you wait and encourage them to do well so you can celebrate their success with them by sharing some of what they want from you. This also allows you to keep your intereaction positive instead of negative and draining.