“Every essential part of a system can affect the performance of the whole but cannot do so independently of other essential parts. Therefore, in changing performance of any essential part, its effect on the system as a whole should be taken into account.” – Russell Ackoff, Jamshid Gharajedaghi

“We need to see the child as a continually changing whole system operating in conjunction and cooperation with other changing systems.” – Shlomo Chaim

Post #1 in category. We recommend reading posts in numerical order.

Just as the child and their dedicated adult mediators are interactive synthetic* systems, Parallel Assessment and Parallel Development are wholly integrated synthetic systems.

Synthetic vs. Analytic Thinking

Russel Ackoff discusses synthetic thinking vs. analytic thinking. Analytic thinking breaks things down into individual parts to try to discover origins and difficulties. Synthetic thinking involves more of a design or architectural approach, which emphasizes putting things together, rather than taking them apart.

Interactive Synthetic Systems

Solutions for learning and development problems for children with special needs cannot be addressed by simply pinpointing the isolated parts, their fragmented, delayed, disordered skills, relationships or understandings. Parents, teachers and therapists need to address the child as an entire system, an integrated whole person embedded in even larger systems.

Many educational and treatment approaches fall short. They are not as successful as they could be because they consider the child, and assess, teach and treat the child, as though the child was made up of patchy and isolated parts and disconnected independent domains. As though the mind and the body were not connected. As though the child was not affected by changing internal and external contexts.

When we isolate a part, such as some localized behavior, in order to improve it, there may be some change, but too often the changes are ineffective, limited, impractical, and ungeneralizable to other behaviors or to higher learning, and may have negative unintended consequences.

A fragmented learning process interferes with interpersonal learning relationships and the learning of later, more complex human cognitive, emotional, social and sensorimotor processes. We see the child as a whole system, operating in conjunction and cooperation with other systems.

Our assessments of children with developmental delays and the improvement of their learning and advancement involve understanding the entire integrated and dynamic organism, which is the whole child. We want to better understand how all the interconnected parts can work together more successfully.

A human child is an open, interactive, integrated system, a continually changing, cohesive whole. The child is constantly rebuilding, restructuring themselves with each new experience, connecting and reconnecting parts and wholes, all aspects, all domains of mind and development. The child synthesizes each previous experience with every new physical or mental challenge. This combining and recombining can be helpful and adaptive, or it can be inflexible and non-adaptive.

Human beings function as interactive, dynamic systems, continually changing, continually forming elements into nested systems. They are not engineered mechanical clocks or digital computers made of rigid parts that either fit together and function properly or are defective. A child’s learning and development are not like repaired machines. Children’s minds are nurtured and inspired and organically grown.

Human beings, the human brain, the human mind, and our interpersonal relationships and human learning and developmental processes are complex networks of countless changing relationships and combinations.

Human beings are not Robots

Human beings are not robots. They are not mechanistic, deterministic machines. All developing human beings have feelings and empathy, make choices and engage in purposeful, meaningful behaviors. Children learn from their choices and can learn to make better choices.

Human beings learn to form willing, cooperative, collaborative interpersonal relationships. They can change their minds. Human beings are complex, adaptive, thinking and feeling social animals. To live fulfilling lives, human beings need to make increasingly successful adaptive choices. Increasing skills, understanding, freedoms and opportunities define what it is to be human.

Repeatedly making choices without the prerequisite skills, understanding, intentions, and evaluation results in errors, confusion, insecurity, frustration, anxiety, anger, and often in avoidance or conflict.

Errors, impediments, and frustration increase the child’s confusion, and with increasing confusion come more errors and frustration. A history of dysfunctional interpersonal exchanges, negative feedback cycles, unsuccessful learning experiences, fears, avoidance, or anger makes change, adaptation, learning, and development even more difficult.

Years of Confusion, Frustration and Failure

Accompanying years of confusion and failure are feelings of helplessness and hopelessness, leading to even more limited opportunities, less freedom, and fewer available choices. This child requires continual supervision and direction. Left on their own, their daily routine remains isolated and repetitive, not leading to exploration, or to novel, or more complex, more meaningful, more interesting and more purposeful activities or ideas.  

Fragmentation and lack of positive interactions between the elements and functional systems interfere with the acquisition of communication, play, exploration and problem-solving, and learning that leads to greater self-reliance. If the person does not feel capable, does not feel whole or centered, they won’t believe in themselves or in their caregiver’s ability to help them progress. They feel they do not have the will or the means to change, and neither do their adult evaluators.

Development is a life-long, continuous process of organization, re-organization, and self-renewal made possible by sensitive ongoing Parallel Assessments and informed mediated communication and learning relationships.

We don’t form healthy relationships with machines. We program computers and robots, not children. We connect with the child and together both learn the processes of collaborative cooperation, of learning and of self-organization.

We do not assess the child to “train” children, program them, or manipulate them to blindly follow commands. We form a two-way reciprocal relationship with the child. We work and play on projects and problem-solving activities with the child, learning who the child is and learning how to better mediate, and how we can both enjoy our interactions.

We Learn What we Need to Change, and How we can Change

We learn what we need to change, and how we can change, so the child can learn to think more independently, to make more considered, meaningful, intentional choices. Not merely temporary, forced changes according to external commands or to meaningless manipulations and shallow external reinforcements.  

Through the mediated learning relationship, we learn how to help the child manage their own feelings and thinking, their social interactions, their curiosity, exploration and play, their own growth and development; how to have more fulfilling interpersonal relationships and meaningful interests in their daily lives; to have more self-confidence, more opportunities, more life experiences, more possibilities, more choices, better judgment, greater safety and independence.

For learning and development to advance, children need to learn with appropriate contextual flexibility within limits. They learn to adapt to changing situations while still maintaining stability, consistency, continuity, and coherence, with self-worth, with value and pride, as well as with consideration, kindness, and respect for others.

Coherence

Coherence involves a harmonious relationship between the parts, and between the parts and the whole. There is an integrity of the whole, not merely a gathering of parts. Coherence influences the quality and disposition of the whole child and of the interpersonal connection.

Coherence in the assessment process and in the parenting, teaching, mediation, and therapeutic treatments produces a unity of mind, of character, of thinking, of feeling, and of acting.

Coherence of mind involves parts, elements, systems that are interconnected, which communicate, which are reciprocally interacting, and are influencing each other and the larger systems beyond.

Coherence is a process that results in connectedness in the mind of the child and the mind of the child’s adult mediator. It shapes a practical and functional connectedness to the real world, and to the child’s and the adult mediator’s purpose and responsibilities in the world. An ongoing parallel assessment informs a cohesive parallel development.

Designing a Flexible, Coherent, and Practical Development Plan

Adults should not harshly or rigidly define the structure of their interactions with the child, not in the ongoing parallel assessment process or in the parenting, mediation and treatment processes. There should be order, reason, and organization in the interactions, in the goals and strategies, and at the same time, there must also be room for flexible, spontaneous adjustments, always considering changing contexts, changing relationships, and happy accidents.

Flexibility comes with time and increasing understanding of the child and of ourselves, and of the communication, connection and learning processes that are most helpful with this particular child at this particular time and place.

The ongoing Parallel Assessment process helps mediators better understand the child’s interests and needs, how to practically help meet those interests and needs; to better understand the changing nature of the interpersonal relationship, which is a principal vehicle for growth and development, and how to create experiences and activities which help the child to communicate and to learn.

With time and learning, the interactions and the activities increase in complexity and difficulty, but they also become more enriching and satisfying for the child and for their mediators.

Human development involves change and the emergence of more successful, more fully functioning and fulfilled individuals. Transformations take place without losing the essential core of the person’s being and becoming. The continuity of the person in relation to other persons and to their own personal development is maintained as changes and progress is taking place.

Ongoing Parallel Assessment involves a recombining of insights, information, or elements in order to form a new whole; ever more coherent, deeper understandings. There is a synthesis, a reciprocal co-development, a synontology occurring between the child and their adult mediators.

We increasingly experience the child and ourselves as integrated dynamic wholes, as continually changing and advancing systems developing in relation to the increasingly successful and more balanced integration of all elements, domains, experiences and interactions.

Parallel Assessment and Parallel Development address each child’s real-life circumstances at the present time and take into account what will help build a better future for the child and for their families.

Parallel Assessment continually informs the planning and implementation of specific goals, priorities, prerequisites, strategies and progress evaluation for this unique child, and for their dedicated adult mediators.

* NOTE: “The analytic/synthetic distinction” refers to a distinction between two kinds of truth. Synthetic truths are true both because of what they mean and because of the way the world is, whereas analytic truths are true in virtue of meaning alone. “Snow is white,” for example, is synthetic, because it is true partly because of what it means and partly because snow has a certain color. “All bachelors are unmarried,” by contrast, is often claimed to be true regardless of the way the world is; it is “true in virtue of meaning,” or analytic.” – Gillian Russel, Oxford Bibliographies

 NOTE: “Synthetic philosophy is the enterprise of bringing together insights, knowledge, and arguments from the special sciences with the aim to offer a theoretically (reasonably) unified, coherent account of complex systems and connect these to a wider culture or other philosophical projects (or both). It may, in turn, generate new research in the special sciences or a new science connected to the framework adopted in the synthetic philosophy.” – Eric Schliesser

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