Developmental Delay: What Is Offered By Developmental Service Providers?

By: Rodger Bailey

None of the training programs generally available for children with developmental issues have success at addressing the gaps in their developmental process. Most training programs focus on teaching as many skills as possible to someone who will be an grownup with those developmental issues.

Teaching the un-teachable child

Most training programs assume that children with developmental issues will always have those developmental issues. So, they have stopped hoping that the movement through the developmental stages can be fixed. They have stopped searching for ways to complete the gaps in their developmental process.

Instead, they have settled for teaching the un-teachable child as their frame-of-reference. They select a series of skills that they think an adult with developmental issues will need. They struggle for weeks or months or years to teach those skills to their un-teachable students. Of course, the workers in these training programs are very respectful of the special children with whom they work. They just assume these children will never be able to lose their symptoms.

It is in the diagnosis

There is an attitude that there is no solution built into the diagnostic process and even in the definitions of all of the individual issue diagnoses. Everyone involved assumes that this present-tense statement also includes the future as well. There is no solution is thought to also mean that there will never be a solution.

This presents an interesting dilemma. If someone found a solution, it could not be proved. The definition (for example) of LD includes an item that there is no solution (with the un-written understanding that there will never be a solution). If professionals try to use a pre and post diagnosis testing in their research, the post-test (diagnosis) would indicate that the test subject continues with that developmental issue, because the subject obtained that diagnosis in the pre-test. Depending on the treatment, the research could certainly show that the symptoms have changed (maybe even gone away), but the diagnostic process does not include the possibility of solution.

If your child has one of these developmental issues, and receives a diagnosis for that problem, the child will continue with that diagnosis even if the child loses all of the symptoms of that diagnosis. Even when a child stops having that problem, the diagnosis continues. That is an interesting condition. Investigation to prove that the solution has been found cannot prove it, because the definition does not permit that possibility.

So, what can you expect?

Even if the solution was discovered today, it would be many years before there is enough research to overcome the definitions, diagnostic specifications, and the diagnostic prejudice in existence today. This frame-of-reference that there is no solution is so pervasive that little effort is being spent on searching for that solution or expecting a solution to come soon. Parents should not expect the solution to be announced before their own child has grandchildren with developmental issues (don't expect it for decades).

No medical, psychological, or educational service provider has available, or will send you to, a service that offers a solution. And, the training programs they send you to will have the paradigm that they are teaching an un-teachable child. Parents should not expect the mainstream medical, psychological, or educational programs to provide a solution. They have no experience in that possibility.

If parents want to find anything close to a solution for their children with developmental issues, they should not look for that in the mainstream training programs. It is simply not there. They have to look at alternative programs.

If parents want their child to surpass their developmental issues, they should search for programs which work with the movement through the developmental stages. Our method kindles the dormant tendency for growing up. And, we get children to complete the gaps in their developmental process.

Article Source: http://appliedhealtharticles.com

RC Bailey has degrees in Social Science and Counseling. He provides Developmental Discovery System™ consulting for families, (English & Spanish), which kindles the dormant tendency for growing up. Checkout his Developmental Discovery Blog and his free Developmental Checklist.

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