Milestones of a child’s life
I have a new grand-nephew and I was thinking about some important post-birth milestones. These are from the parents’ point of view, since the first two are not milestones the child recognizes in any conscious way:
- Starts sleeping through the night
- Able to feed self
- Potty trained, diapers discontinued
- Able to dress self
- Able to pick out clothes to wear
- Starts school
- Able to read books for own entertainment
- Able to write for own entertainment (e.g., diary)
- Able to cook and prepare meals
- Able to select good food at the market (e.g., produce, fruit)
- Puberty
- Gets driver’s license (optional in some locales)
- Starts voting (in locales that allow it, assuming vote not suppressed)
- Self-supporting
- Has children, repeating cycle (optional)
Obviously this sort of list varies by culture and often by sex (cf. touch typing, smartphone acquisition and skills, bar/bat mitzvah, christening, first communion, quinceañera, first recital, first speaking part on-stage, various graduations, et al.).
What would you add?
Your milestones of a child’s life reminded me of another, similar, list that the late Audrey Sutherland created to guide the raising of her children. It included some thirty-one skills that every child should be able to manage by age sixteen. They started with “swim 400 yards, easily” and concluded with “do your own laundry”. In between were items as diverse as “cook a simple meal”, “clean a fish and dress a chicken”, “dance with any age” and “change a diaper, change a tire”.
She was an interesting woman: https://www.patagonia.ca/stories/go-simple-go-solo-go-now-the-life-of-audrey-sutherland/story-17793.html
Owen
29 June 2020 at 9:22 pm
Excellent! Many thanks. At one point in my life I noted (in the context of a school at which I taught) that there was the expectation/hope that children would master skills (specifically, in this case, touch typing) without being taught the skills. If you want a person to have a skill, it seems prudent to teach the skills.
LeisureGuy
29 June 2020 at 9:45 pm