Sometimes parents expect too much. Sometimes they expect too little.
The conditions in which children grew for most of human history strongly supported exploration, practical participation and a sense of effectiveness. Children learned within the life of a group and gradually contributed to it. In these areas, modern adults may underestimate what children are motivated and able to do when the environment genuinely includes them.
In other areas, expectations run ahead of development — especially during infancy.
Regulation comes through relationship
Adults sometimes assume that a baby can learn to comfort itself simply because no one responds to its crying. But young babies depend heavily on caregivers to regulate distress. Expecting mature self-soothing from an immature nervous system asks for a capacity that is still being built.
The same problem appears around sleep. Sleeping for an uninterrupted adult-length night is often treated as evidence of maturity. Yet infant sleep developed under different demands.
During a phase of extraordinarily rapid brain growth, breastfed children commonly take in milk at night as well as during the day. Young children naturally have a more lightly organized pattern of sleep, something sleep laboratories can observe. Night waking well into early childhood is therefore not, by itself, a sign that a child is immature or that parents have done something wrong.
Better expectations begin with development
An evolutionary view does not ask parents to lower every expectation. It helps place expectations where children can use them:
- more patience with immature regulation, separation and sleep;
- more confidence in children’s curiosity, participation and growing competence;
- less pressure to meet milestones designed around adult convenience.
Understanding the difference can replace both unnecessary anxiety and unnecessary limitation with a more accurate respect for development. See where else this perspective can help.