“Ruchie is three and a half and still afraid to use the toilet. I feel like the teacher thinks I’m a horrible parent. But Ruchie just has this fear. We’re working with our pediatrician and I’ve tried everything to help her get over it! What else can I do?”

Ruchie is not on schedule. According to the timetable she’s supposed to be able to use the toilet at school but she can’t. Ruchie’s mom is feeling the pressure; if your child isn’t on schedule there must be something wrong with you as a parent. And yet as most parents notice somewhere along the line children are not controllable. They develop according to their own inner G-d-given agenda. Each child is on his or her own journey physically mentally emotionally and spiritually. Parents are facilitators helping their youngsters move along their courses in the best possible way. They cannot make their kids capable of carrying out developmental tasks that they aren’t ready for. In the same way that a child takes its own time to be born it takes its own time to develop — much as we parents might object to our lack of choice in the matter.

Who Makes the Schedule?

Certain schedules are made by Hashem. It is Hashem for example Who arranges the time that babies will hold their heads up independently sit up crawl walk and talk. However the schedule of development in humans is somewhat flexible. A child may begin speaking at one year old or a year later at two. He may walk at nine months or at nineteen months. He may be dry at night by two years of age or by five. There is room for individuality. Nonetheless it is interesting that parents often take personal credit for the early development of their children. “Yossi already smiles/talks/has a tooth! Isn’t he clever?” (And aren’t we brilliant for having such a precocious baby?) And parents whose children lag behind often feel like failures. Although they won’t necessarily say it out loud they may feel it inside: “Chaim is already thirteen months and he doesn’t walk/have a single tooth — shame on us! We’re late.”

Certain schedules are man-made. WE decide that a child belongs in school all day when he or she is two or three years old. (In the past we decided that kids didn’t have to be in school all day until they were five years of age.) Whatever decision we make this becomes a new schedule in our minds. Therefore if our particular child balks at attending school when she is two years old we may be afraid that she is not on schedule. We compare ourselves to other parents and wonder where we went wrong. We feel judged by onlookers.

Lagging Behind

All throughout the developmental years kids can be off schedule. Sometimes they can be early getting ahead of themselves developmentally. While this may cause parents to worry at times it usually doesn’t provoke as much anxiety as does late development.

The child who is immature and lagging behind his peers may cause his parents to worry about all sorts of things: social performance academic performance school behavior the child’s happiness. In addition to such worries the parents may also experience that nagging feeling of shame — why is our child different? What does this say about us? There are children who simply don’t follow the straight and narrow path with all of its timelines — kids who don’t graduate on time marry on time settle down on time own property on time. There are kids who become adults who don’t have children of their own on time. It’s as if everyone is pointing accusingly at the clock — “Nu? What are you waiting for?”

Coping with Differences

It’s the job of parents to raise the child “according to his way.” The Torah acknowledges that we are individuals each with our own internal clocks. It is the parent’s job to respect her child’s nature and work with it. The child will be ready when the time is right for that child. While it is normal for many children to be on schedule it is equally normal for children to be on their OWN schedule! Any pediatrician will attest to that. It is important for parents to remember that they are not involved in a great race; rather they are involved in the process of nurturing and guiding their youngsters along their own path. A child does not so much lag behind as he “marches to his own drum.” He moves forward in his own time frame according to the dictates of his own soul. Knowing this parents can take the pressure off of themselves and off of their kids to meet other people’s deadlines.