Adaptive skills relate to daily habits and routines. The adaptive or self-help skills that children develop in the early years are essential in their overall development during the elementary and high-school years. Developing these skills is important for children because they may influence a person’s quality of life. Here are a few examples:
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Toilet training is an area of development that many parents struggle with. Although we would like to see our children get toilet trained early and quickly, each child has their own timetable with regards to when they are ready to be toilet trained. The ability to hold one’s bowel and bladder is largely a biological/physiological function (see full Glossary) and cannot be rushed. It’s therefore important not to force a child to sit on a potty or a toilet seat before they are ready. Children are also more likely to be toilet trained quickly when they receive praise when they do use the toilet, rather than being criticized when they have a toileting accident. Most children are usually not ready to be toilet trained until they are two years of age or older. Parents who wait until after the second year of life to toilet train their children are usually able to do so much faster and with fewer accidents than parents who choose to start earlier.
In order to develop good toileting skills, children usually go through the following:
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Children go through specific stages in the development of their feeding skills. Although completely dependent on others at first, they quickly learn to eat and drink on their own, first with baby materials (e.g. baby bottles and sippy cups) then with grown-up materials (e.g. spoons and chopsticks).
Most children develop feeding patterns and skills in this order:
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It’s important to note that some children may go through stages of “food refusal.” This is a typical part of development. Food refusal usually happens when a child is starting to develop a sense of self. They are learning how to talk and communicate and want to let others know that they are the “boss.” They may decide to refuse a certain type of food that they were willing to eat the week before. Parents and those who work with young children should not force children to eat what they do not want to eat. Instead, we should realize that this is a part of growing up and a food that is refused today may be eaten in a few weeks’ time. We should let children exercise a little bit of control with regards to what they want to eat, and reintroduce the refused food a few weeks later. This shows children they can make their own decisions and that they can have a say in what happens to them.
Newborns spend a good portion of their time sleeping. As months go by, they spend more hours awake. However, sleep and rest continue to be essential for the healthy physical and emotional development of infants, toddlers and older children. Recent research has also connected good sleep patterns to cognitive skills development. In fact, those children with poor sleeping habits who do not get the minimum 10 hour sleep per night may experience stunted growth and development in children in preschool ages. These children may also be more irritable and cranky when they are awake―very much like adults who have difficulties with their sleep!
Sleep habits and a family’s’ cultural background and beliefs are connected. Different families hold different views of nighttime sleep. They can also hold different views on the “correct” way a baby is put to sleep, where they sleep and for how long they are left asleep.
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Night waking happens at different stages. It’s important for parents to realize there are different reasons a baby may wake up during the night. Parents react and respond differently to night waking based on why the infant or child is up.
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By the time they between 6 and 9 months old, most babies are not hungry when they wake up during the night. At this stage, the recommendation from experts in baby sleep is for parents to give baby a chance to calm themselves down before picking them up, unless the parents learn, through the baby’s cry, that they might be in pain or discomfort. For babies who are not hungry, in pain or discomfort, self-soothing and self-regulation are important skills they need to develop early in life. These skills will help them be able to take good care of themselves when they are older. For some children, it could be more difficult to learn this type of independence if they are not given the opportunity to calm themselves down when they are babies. Giving the baby a gentle pat on the back or singing to them after a couple of minutes of cry generally help babies to calm down. At the same time, parents may want to pick the baby up if crying persists and gets louder. Between 9 and 12 months, most babies are sleeping through the night, or an average of six to eight hours, non-stop.
As babies and toddlers grow older, they may require less continuous sleep. Most babies will benefit from one or two naps per day. As they enter the early childhood years, they may need just one nap (or no naps at all) during the day.
It’s important not to force a baby to eat or play when they are tired or sleepy. Babies will most likely not enjoy these activities and may end up associating these activities with “feeling cranky or tired”, which may cause them to avoid these activities in the future.
Difficulties with sleep have also been linked somewhat to the baby’s temperament. Babies with predominantly “difficult temperament” may have difficulty with regular/irregular feeding or changing habits.
Adaptive skills and behaviors are the skills needed to do everyday tasks. These skills are tools adults use to live independently within our community norms. They include dressing and undressing, bathing and hygiene, toileting, and later cleaning, cooking and maintaining a household.
Like all areas of development, the successful development of adaptive skills relies heavily on the successful development of other skills.
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Like other developmental areas for most typically developing children, the development of adaptive skills follows a predictable order. Learning “simpler” skills is crucial to the development of the more complex skills that are learned later on.
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When developing dressing and undressing skills, children usually go through the following sequence of skills:
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