Kehl - understanding child development

The more that we understand about children, about how they develop, and how their development impacts their behaviour, the better that we can support children. And so I’ll use this as an example: if you’re working with a young infant, say, between six and eight months old, who’s sitting in a high chair and is dropping toys off of their high chair. If you don’t understand why they’re doing that, that might seem like a frustrating behaviour. When you start to understand the cause and effect and the developmental thinking that’s going on in this brilliant little brain, you have a whole new awakening of how you support that child. Because what that child is doing is, they’re learning about object permanence. They’re understanding cause and effect, what happens when I do this. And so when you can start to understand and observe children in the prime of their development, the work that you do becomes so much more impactful, and you can support it in such a different way.