Question

should parents and caregivers encourage infants and toddlers to attain developmental milestones at a younger age than the norm? if yes, what are some precautions necessary to ensure that infants are not “pushed” to achieve? if not why do you think that children should not be encouraged to attain those milestones earlier in life? give specific examples in your answer

Answer 1

Each person born in the world is unique thus each infant born in the world is also unique. This means all the individuals won’t achieve the development milestones at the same time as this would be influenced by different factors such as parenting, family, socio-economic status etc. Infants, if they are physically healthy would achieve certain milestones such as turning, crawling, standing, walking, running, talking etc. Parents can help the infants if they are struggling with their development but if the parents force the infants to attain certain developmental milestones, it would affect the children in various ways because they would be forced to learn, perform and act according to the expectations of the parents or caregivers. This would steal the independency of the infants and toddlers because they would be constantly animated to the next stage. Toddlers who would be forced to do the next level tasks wouldn’t be able to enjoy their present stage completely. Later in life, they would become very disappointed and feel stressed out due to the high expectations.

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