Everyone claims to be a child-development expert

By Betty Ellison-Harpole

Contributing Writer

I find it very interesting to hear and read how people discuss, evaluate and analyze our children based on their little or no experience, training or education in childhood development. Many of them have learned and heard catchy phrases about our children and repeat them as the certainties.

Some make claims based upon little more than their limited experiences with their own children or their friend’s children without understanding that all children are not alike in their development and/or correlating circumstances. I find these declarations are in many cases harmful as we tend to fit the same shoe on every child’s foot.

I hear persons from all kinds of disciplines, i.e. engineering, marketing, and banking CEOs, politicians, lawyers, etc. suddenly become child-development experts.

All of us have perhaps some experience with children but need to be cautious of becoming the expert spokesman of a subject which is out of our range and depth of intelligence.

Intelligence is knowing what we don’t know as well as what we do know!

Betty Ellison-Harpole is a resident of Minneapolis.