Developmental Time and Parent’s Future Imaginations: Overcoming the Incongruence

Abstract

Individual development rests on biological as well as social opportunities. Understanding the biological-social mechanisms of the developmental trajectory also points to potentialities and how the development of a child with disabilities can be supported. The major theme in this chapter will be how parents and professionals are co-creators of the children’s development through their active involvement in the child’s developmental conditions. Through parents and professionals’ motives and through the demands they place on the child and on each other, they co-create the child’s developmental conditions at home and in the other practices in which the child’s development also takes place. As it will be argued in this chapter, parents and other adults need to take developmental time seriously. The developmental trajectory of the child must be managed in relation to age-graded demands and the trajectory of peers. If the child is unable to keep up a cultural-typical developmental speed, this needs to be addressed rather than waiting passive for the child’s biological maturation or growth into difficulties. The most important goal for negotiations between parents and professionals is to ensure adequate support of the child’s social agency, whatever form it may take. Parents and professionals must cultivate ongoing openness to the child’s perspective and align the child’s motives for activity with their mature knowledge about what type of social agency will be valuable for the child in the future.