The Key Developmental Milestones Your Parents May Have Missed
And what it means for your adult healing journey.
Parenting is one of the greatest responsibilities a person can take on in their lives. You’re not just piecing together a family. You’re bringing another human life into the world, which will be there — long after you’re gone — to affect the lives of other innocent human beings.
Unfortunately, too many of our parents didn’t hold this sacred duty to the standard that they should have. Rather than equipping us to go out into the world as healed and whole adults, they wounded us and damaged us (some intentionally, and some not so intentionally).
Did your parents hit the key milestones in your childhood development? Or did their lack of skill, resources, and knowledge leave you as an adult who is echoing all their bad patterns? The more we learn about childhood development, the more we come to realize about our own upbringing and the damage inflicted there.
The key stages of child development.
We have long known that the child’s brain develops on a number of levels and at a rapid speed. Hundreds of minds have coined just as many “theories of mind” that are meant to explain and reflect these levels of development.
Today we will be working around the Erikson Psychosocial Theory of Development — which assumes that children move through 5 core levels of cognitive development (and then through several more in adulthood).
It’s thought that this development figures into everything from their confidence and skill as an adult, to the very relationships they can build and maintain.
Did your parents meet the delicate milestones contained in these various developmental stages? Or were you a child that was left more to chance than know-how?