Post #2 in category. We recommend reading posts in numerical order.

Many developmental assessments attempt to measure “What can this child do?”  They measure skills, milestones, strengths, challenges, and compare the child’s functioning with that of other children. Other children are considered the “norm,” or are compared with children of the same age, or with the same diagnosis. These comparisons may not be accurate, may not be relevant, and only tell part of the child’s story.

Parallel Assessment focuses on other questions including: Who is this child? How does this child perceive the world? How does this child experience themselves, and how do they experience us? What do the child’s caregivers, siblings, teachers, therapists, and peers feel and think about this child?

Parallel Assessment wants to know what helps and what interferes with this child’s interpersonal relationships, their learning, their interest, curiosity and participation, their communication, and their emotional understanding and regulation? How can we increase this child’s trust, skills, understanding and self-confidence? How can we better connect with this child? What do we need to understand about ourselves to help?

Parallel Assessment is concerned with the ongoing interaction between the child and the people who care for, teach and support them. It recognizes that children learn through mediated interpersonal relationships. Their feelings, emotions, motivations and expectations are continuously shaped by their interactions with parents, siblings, teachers, therapists, peers and many others.

Parallel Assessment involves an ongoing awareness of how both information and emotional energy are being processed and integrated by the child and by the adults around them. We seek to understand not only what the child is feeling and why, but also how our own emotional states may be helping or hindering the interpersonal interaction.

This essay introduces several foundational aspects of the Parallel Assessment of feelings, emotions and motivations. Later essays will examine these and other related topics involving the child’s affective functioning in everyday life in more detail.

Feelings, Emotions and Motivations as Integrated Processes

Feelings, emotions and motivations are not separate from development. They are woven into every aspect of it and are connected to all other developmental domains. Kenneth Dodge described emotion as the energy that drives, organizes, amplifies, and attenuates cognitive activity. Emotion is not something added onto thinking. It shapes what we notice, what we remember, what we avoid, what we pursue, and what we learn.

A child who appears inattentive during a therapy session may actually be anxious. A child who refuses to participate in a classroom activity may be confused rather than oppositional. A child who avoids peers on the playground may be overwhelmed by noise, uncertain about social rules, or fearful of failure and of being teased or excluded. A child who eagerly repeats and practices a difficult skill at home may not be motivated by compliments or food rewards, but by the pleasure of accurate understanding, accurate prediction and mastery.

Similar feelings and behaviors can emerge from very different emotional and motivational processes. Understanding those processes with this particular child in different contexts becomes more insightful and valuable than simply cataloging and categorizing the behavior itself.

For young children and children with neurodevelopmental delays and disabilities, these interactions may be particularly important. Difficulties in language, sensory processing, motor planning, attention, social understanding, or health can significantly influence emotional experiences and motivation. Likewise, emotional experiences can strongly influence performance in every other developmental domain.

Four Foundational Aspects of Emotion

Parallel Assessment examines consciousness and affective processes through four changing dimensions: arousal, orientation, appraisal and attention.

We learn about the child’s feelings and the feelings of persons interacting with the child in different contexts, in real time and as we document longitudinal changes.

Arousal

Arousal refers to the person’s level of energy, activation and alertness.

Is the child’s level of alertness high, low, or appropriate for the situation? Is the adult’s?

We observe breathing patterns, muscle tension, posture, facial expression, eye movements, voice quality, listening behaviors, body movements and verbal comments. We look for signs of excitement, fatigue, anxiety, calmness, frustration, engagement or withdrawal.

A child arriving at the dentist’s office may already show signs of elevated arousal before entering the examination room. Another child may become increasingly activated only when hearing unfamiliar sounds or seeing dental instruments.

A parent accompanying the child may also be anxious, unintentionally transmitting that anxiety through facial expressions, tone of voice or body language. The dentist’s demeanor, stress level and verbal and non-verbal behaviors may also influence the child’s feelings and emotions. The sounds,  smells and tactile sensations of the dentist’s gloved fingers, chemicals and metallic instruments in the child’s mouth certainly influence the child’s arousal levels.

At school, a child may appear unmotivated during certain hours of the day. Closer observation may reveal hunger or exhaustion or digestion or bathroom issues rather than lack of interest. A child may seem hyperactive when actually struggling to regulate excessively high levels of arousal generated by excitement, stress, uncertainty, or sensory overload.

The important question is not simply what the arousal level is, but how it changes over time and what influences those changes.

Orientation

Orientation concerns where the child’s and the adult mediator’s attention and awareness are directed.

What is capturing the child’s interest? What is capturing the adult’s interest?

Is attention directed toward the activity, the relationship, the environment, an internal discomfort, a sensory experience, a worry or a distraction?

A teacher may present a lesson while a child is oriented toward the buzzing and flickering fluorescent lights. A therapist may be focused on completing a task while the child is preoccupied with uncertainty, confusion or stress. A parent may be worried about having the child get dressed so they can drive to their appointment on time, while the child is completely focused on their video game. Transitions and changes can be very difficult.

Children with developmental delays, and their adult mediators, may both experience difficulty identifying which aspects of a complex situation are most important. Some become overwhelmed by the sheer volume of information or the speed in which it is conveyed and received. Others become locked onto a single detail and struggle to see the bigger picture and to shift attention when needed.

Orientation may be misdirected, and/or overly static, or it can move too quickly and too often, interfering with the person’s awareness and processing of feelings and information.   

Appraisal

Appraisal refers to the personal, subjective meaning and value assigned to an experience.

Is the child or their adult mediators experiencing the situation as safe or threatening? Interesting or boring? Familiar or confusing? Achievable or impossible?

Two children may enter the same playground and respond very differently. One sees opportunities for exploration and social interaction. Another sees uncertainty, unpredictability and risk.

A child entering a play situation or a classroom lesson or a therapy session may evaluate a new activity as an interesting, exciting experience or challenge. Another child may view the same activity as failure and embarrassment. are certain. The child’s parent, caregiver, teacher or therapist may also view the experience, activity or communication with the child with hesitation and lack of confidence.

Emotional, cognitive, communicational and behavioral difficulties emerge when appraisal systems are biased toward threat, confusion or hopelessness. These biases may develop from previous experiences involving failure, misunderstanding, discomfort, unpredictability or overwhelming demands.

Investigating appraisal involves asking what the situation might mean to the child at deeper levels and more examined nuances rather than merely observing behaviors and assigning them to dichotomous categories of “feeling good” or “feeling bad.” And it requires asking ourselves what the situation means to us.

Attention

Attention refers to the ability to sustain, shift, and regulate interest, focus, and engagement.

How long can the child remain engaged? Under what conditions? With whom? In which environments? Attention is not simply a matter of duration. It also involves flexibility and selectivity. Some children may attend to too little. Others attend to too much. Others jump back and forth depending on their wellness, their feelings, their interests, understandings, competencies and distractions at the time.

A child in a classroom may hear every pencil tap, conversation or movement of another child, and every hallway sound. Another child may focus so intensely on one aspect of an activity that important information is missed in the broader activity or in the wider environment.

Alison Gopnik wrote, “When we say that children have trouble paying attention, what we really mean is that they have trouble not paying attention. Their attention is more like a lantern, going out and taking everything in the world, rather than a spotlight just illuminating one specific thing.” Neither view is better than the other. They serve different purposes in different situations. The child and their adult mediators need to learn to use the most appropriate attentional perspective at the right time.

The quality of attention often depends on emotional and motivational factors. When children feel safe, interested, competent and connected, valued and supported, attention frequently improves. When they feel threatened, confused, overwhelmed or discouraged, their attention deteriorates.

The Importance of Assessing Ourselves

Parallel Assessment recognizes that the same dimensions for review and analysis that we apply to better understand the child should be applied to ourselves and all of the child’s adult mediators.  

A therapist whose arousal level rises during a difficult session may become less flexible and less observant. A parent who has had a stressful day may interpret their child’s behavior differently than when the parent was feeling calmer and more relaxed. A teacher feeling frustrated and discouraged may communicate disbelief, or distrust in the child, and lack of control or confidence in themselves.  

Children are often highly sensitive observers of behaviors, gestures, movements, words, prosody and emotional states in others. Many children, especially those who depend heavily on nonverbal information, respond more strongly to feeling states, facial expressions, posture, timing, tone of voice and the unspoken evaluations and expectations of others.

An assessment that examines only the child’s emotional state while ignoring the bigger picture of interconnected developmental domains and the past and current emotional states of their adult mediators provides an incomplete picture. Feelings, motivations, learning, and development occur within interpersonal relationships. The quality of connection and coordination between two nervous systems, two personalities, two sets of expectations generally matters more than the activity itself.

Beyond Behaviors

Adi was usually happy and compliant. She liked to participate and genuinely wanted to interact, to share and to learn. But she often struggled to distinguish relevant information from the flood of competing sensory, social and cognitive experiences and information coming from events surrounding her. She had problems attending to, understanding and making sense of information, sequences and complex activities. Faced with overload and anxiety, she often withdrew into a more private, less confused and chaotic world. It was not a general lack of interest or motivation.

Lucio appeared very different. His first response to many requests was an automatic “no,” an angry look, and some curses or aggressive behaviors. Adults interpreted this as Lucio’s “insolent, ”defiant” or “oppositional behavior”. However, closer observation and understanding revealed Lucio’s underlying difficulty was similar to Adi’s.

Lucio’s appraisal system frequently defaulted to feelings of threat before he had sufficient time, judgment, and control to more objectively evaluate the situation. Avoidance and aggression occurred quickly as automatic emotional and motor survival mechanisms before he could make slower, more careful reality-based assessments or ask for help and support.

Although their behaviors looked different, both children struggled with how they processed and interpreted their experiences.

Neither child benefited significantly from repeated reminders to “calm down,” to “pay attention,” to “try harder,” or to threats and punishment.

What proved much more effective were mediators who understood them well enough to anticipate difficulties, to recognize both the child’s and their own emotional and motor patterns, and to intervene at the right moment with strategies tailored for that particular child, and to build the necessary interpersonal relationships, opportunities, skills, and understandings they needed to progress.

Sensory defensiveness does not appear to be a major contributing factor for these two children, but for many other children, sensory defensiveness can profoundly affect emotional experience and motivation and should be carefully investigated.

Building Self-Regulation and Agency

A better understanding of the child’s arousal, orientation, appraisal and attention,  and a clearer awareness of our own may be more enlightening and valuable explanations of feelings, interests, motivations, thinking processes and behaviors than traditional labels such as “autistic, ADHD, cooperative, distracted, under or over-compliant, oppositional, or for the child’s adult mediator, impatient, overly worried, uncaring, distant, unfocused, overly structured, authoritarian, permissive and uninvolved.

The ultimate goal is not to diagnose, to classify, or simply to temporarily calm children during difficult moments, or to coerce, trick or to bribe the child into compliance.

Certainly there are times when immediate support is necessary to ensure safety, to reduce distress or to help a child recover from overwhelming experiences. However, the larger goal is to gradually help children develop their own capacity to evaluate external situations and to evaluate their own subjective feelings, to regulate their energy levels, to direct their attention effectively and to make increasingly more adaptive decisions with the support of informed and empathic adults.

Over time, children can learn to ask themselves questions.

What am I feeling? Why am I feeling it? What is important right now? Is this situation dangerous, unfamiliar, unpleasant, uncomfortable? Is this situation, activity, interpersonal interaction interesting, enjoyable, fulfilling? What makes it so? How can I make things better? What should I do next? What should I think about? What do I want to do, and what do I need to do? How can I do it better and enjoy it more? Do they know what I am thinking and feeling? What should I share or explain to them? Would it be more successful, more enjoyable if we do it together?

This growth develops slowly through hundreds of shared experiences with adults who know the child well and understand themselves well. Two human beings who remain attentive and respectful to the changing interactions and feelings of two human beings who trust and care for each other.

Through successful mediated learning experiences and shared real-life activities, children gradually develop greater self-understanding, make more accurate predictions, and gain increasing confidence, stronger agency, and more adaptive emotional regulation.

Future Essays

Future essays will explore many additional aspects of feelings, emotions and motivations including: emotional development in infancy; attachment and trust; anxiety and fear; frustration tolerance; resilience; self-confidence; sensory influences on emotional experience; emotional communication; motivation and learning; emotional regulation during play; peer relationships; sibling interactions; emotional aspects of caregiving; physician, hospital, and dental visits; school participation; travel, transitions, trauma and chronic stress; emotional development in children with intellectual disabilities, language disorders, sensory processing challenges and other neurodevelopmental conditions.

We will examine how Parallel Assessment can be used to develop individualized Goals, Priorities, Prerequisites, Strategies, and Progress (GPPSP), plans, practices and ongoing evaluations that support both the child and the adults who share in this child’s development journey.

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