Developmentally Appropriate Practice (DAP)
What are we really practicing?
As an instructor, I teach a child abuse class to child care providers and teachers and during my session on emotional abuse, we discuss the unreasonable demands that are placed on children, however everyone always think of the parents as the abuser. As we talk about what is emotional abuse and how it frequently occurs as verbal abuse, but can also include the following: rejection, terrorizing, shameful forms of punishment withholding physical and emotional contact; developmentally inappropriate expectations. Emotional abuse is usually not an isolated incident, but instead it is a pattern of behavior that occurs over a period of time.
My "aha" moment reflects on how many educators demonstrates developmentally inappropriate expectations on young children and call it advancement. I encountered early child care educators putting inappropriate demands on children as young as two to write their names, color in the lines, count to 100, and know their alphabets and bragged about it. I am aware that there are some children that could develop a high intellectual level of knowledge, however all children are not alike. When educators tell me that their newly turned two year all could do those things, I can't help to ask the question "what did it take for them to do or know those things"?
Children are being forced to advance into learning levels that are not within their age or capability. I do believe that educators need to provide children opportunities to scaffold into the different learning domains, of physical, cognitive, language, social, and emotional skills only if the child was assists and observed. To some educators, developmentally appropriate practice (DAP) means academics and less play time, on the contrary DAP promotes play into children's daily learning. Educators need to stop using children as their bragging rights and concentrate on the children's emotional well being.
In my blog you will see some early childcare associations and resources that reflects on the importance of implementing developmentally appropriate practice in children's daily learning and developmentally appropriate materials in the childcare environment to provide children with open-ended play.
*What are you practicing in early childhood education and why?
Bredekamp, S. &
Copple, C. (2009). Development
appropriate practice in early childhood programs serving
children from birth through age 8. Washington, DC: National Association for the Education of Young Children
