Functional Development Definition

Introduction - About Child Development

Anyone who has ever witnessed a child lifting his or her head for the first time, rolling over, or struggling to take his or her first steps is undoubtedly struck with the amazing innate capacity of the developing child. Development most often occurs in rather predictable stages. Although every child develops in a unique way, all children are expected to interact with their environment at an age appropriate level.

Looking at a child's functional development involves observing whether or not the child has mastered certain developmental milestones and expectations for his or her age. For example, according to the American Academy of Pediatrics, by the end of seven months an infant should be able to roll from front to back and from back to front, use sounds to show pleasure and displeasure, find an object that is partially hidden, and enjoy social play. With this understanding of typical child development, a child may have a special need when he or she has a delay in one or more areas of development listed below:

1. Body Movement: Physical Development and Motor Skills

   When a child turns over, or pulls him or herself to a standing position for the first time, we see physical and motor development in action. This area of maturity involves the growth and development of the body and brain and how they interact with one another. Milestones such as reaching, sitting, crawling, walking, running and jumping are part of a child's mastered skills.

2. Thinking and Learning: Cognitive Development Skills

   Cognitive Development involves the mental and intellectual growth of the child. Like with other areas of development, cognitive development occurs in stages. From the very early sensorimotor stage in early infancy where a baby learns about his or her environment through the senses, to the capacity for abstract thinking found in the formal operational stage of adolescence and adulthood, children progress through these stages depending on level of maturity, experience, and other factors such as interaction with caregivers. Mastery in various tasks of learning, memory, reasoning and problem solving are evidence that a child's cognitive development may be on target.

3. Communication: Language Development Skills

   Language is the means by which we communicate our thoughts, feelings, needs and wants with one another. It is our most human characteristic, essential to all human relationships. There are many different ways that people use language to communicate. Speech, gesturing, sign language and writing are a few. Technically, language is the code made up of a set of rules that include what gestures, utterances, or words mean and how to combine these to express thoughts or desires. The ability to communicate begins early in a newborn's life and like other areas of development, follows predictable patterns. From early cries to indicate needs, to the development of babbling, then single words and ultimately complex sentences, human beings are designed to communicate with others.

4. The Senses: Vision, Hearing and Touch (Including Sensory Integration)

   Infants and young children first learn about the external and internal world through their senses of sight, sound, touch, taste and smell as sensory information is transmitted to the brain. Sensory Integration involves the ability to take in the information gathered through the senses from the internal and external world and put it together in a meaningful way. The complex interplay between the various senses is necessary as the child learns about, acts and responds to the environment in appropriate ways. For example, a baby's sense of sight will help him or her reach out for a rattle on the table. The sense of touch will enable him to feel for and grab the rattle and to determine how much pressure to exert to hold and shake the rattle. The sense of hearing will allow the baby to distinguish the sound made by the shaking rattle. As all of this sensory information is processed, the child learns how to interpret and respond to various environmental cues.

5. Relating to Self and Others: Social Development Skills and Emotional Development Skills

   Donald W. Winnicott, the renowned British psychoanalyst, once said 'A baby can't exist alone, but is essentially part of a relationship.' (D.W. Winnicott; The Child, the Family and the Outside World.) Human beings need relationships in order to survive and grow. A baby's first relationship is the relationship with his or her primary caregiver, most often the mother. It is in the context of this environment that the infant's social development and emotional development occur. In a good enough relationship, the primary caregiver and baby learn to respond to one another. The infant coos. The mother coos back. The baby smiles. The mother smiles and talks to her child in response. The baby giggles in delight. They hold each other's gaze in a playful exchange of mutual pleasure. As the child matures, the exchange becomes more sophisticated. The child imitates the mother as she talks on the phone and offers hugs of affection. With the help of the mother's attuned response, the young child begins to put his or her emotions to words. The tightness in the tummy is understood as feeling scared. Laughter becomes associated with feeling happy. What were once only known and felt as bodily sensations, now become understandable feelings. This is the development of affect.

6. Self-Care and Daily Living Skills: Adaptive Development

   Adaptive development refers to the ability of the developing child to care for him or herself in age appropriate ways. Mastered skills progress in the area of feeding, for example, from feeding self through scooping up food to using two fingers pinched together to pick up food, and later using a spoon or fork. Later the child acquires more sophisticated self-care skills such as teeth brushing or being able to prepare simple snacks.

The Advantage of Using a Functional Developmental Approach

The advantage of using a functional developmental approach to defining children with Special Needs, and to evaluating and treating them, is that it is consistent with the reality that every child is a unique individual with specific strengths and weaknesses. No two children are alike, even children with specific known disorders. For example, Adam and Katrina, both four years old, have been diagnosed with an Autistic Spectrum Disorder. Adam has now developed age appropriate verbal skills, but he has trouble holding a crayon and copying shapes. He falls often when he plays. Katrina is mostly non-verbal, yet she has no trouble running around the playground and she loves to draw pictures. She can copy almost any design with apparent ease.

By defining these children on the basis of exactly what they currently can and cannot do and basing intervention on their functional development would take their individual differences into consideration, rather than simply providing the same generic treatments for both of these children with an autistic spectrum disorder. The team of professionals who are assigned to helping Katrina would create an individualized treatment plan for her that emphasizes the development of language. While Adam's treatment would focus more on his fine motor skills and gross motor skills. As such, each child's areas of strengths can be enhanced and their unique difficulties and challenges can be addressed with specific treatments and services.

Another advantage of defining children with special needs in this manner and evaluating children this way is that it leaves room for improvement in all areas of functional development. A diagnosis is often viewed as a permanent condition with little change expected. Yet, children grow and change, even a child with special needs. With the appropriate individualized services, Katrina can improve her language skills that will enable her to communicate more effectively with the world. Adam can strengthen his fine and gross motor skills so he can learn to write legibly and move about freely on the playground, thus enhancing his success in school.

Seeing the unique functioning of each child helps parents and professionals to tailor a program to help get their development back on track. In doing so, each child has the opportunity to reach his or her full potential through a specially tailored program and in many cases a child may even outgrow being identified as a child with special needs.

A description of a child with special needs who was helped by professionals who used this Functional Developmental Approach is Stephanie's Story.

Stephanie's Story: A Child with Delays in Functional Development

Two and a half year old Stephanie is perhaps the most beautiful child I have ever known, with wide brown eyes and rich chestnut hair that brushes her shoulders with gentle curls. The friends and family who know her think she should be a child model, because she naturally embodies that irresistible charm and innocence that make people break into a spontaneous smile of delight and want to pick her up and hold her. Yet, paired with the gift of her natural beauty is a child with special needs.

Stephanie was slower than average to achieve various developmental milestones such as turning over, crawling and walking. She still walks with an awkward gait and falls often. She has a difficult time holding a crayon and frequently drops things. Stephanie began speaking later than most children her age. Because of the difficulty she had expressing her needs, she had frequent and intense temper tantrums and fits of rage. And when all attempts at communication failed, she retreated into a world of her own. Now, at two and a half years old she has a vocabulary of 50 -100 words but she still doesn't speak in 3 word sentences, typical for children her age. Her father, a lawyer, and her mother, a schoolteacher, are both very concerned about some of the unusual behaviors they notice, yet, each child develops at a different pace, they have said as they try to reassure themselves. Most of all they want the best for their daughter and they have tried to accept Stephanie's unique way of being in the world.

Her introduction to preschool was a challenge with the requirements to interact with peers, follow instructions and focus in a group setting. She was fortunate to have a teacher who accepted her and yet recognized her need to be tested. Although Stephanie was never given a specific diagnosis, a local psychologist determined that she had developmental delays in language and motor development. She was given an IFSP, The Individual Family Service Plan by the Early Head Start Intervention Program, complete with services to help her to reach her potential.