Focus Area 2: Youth Development
1. The Process of Youth Development

When you’re working with a six-year-old, you expect to see different behaviors, skills, attitudes, and physical characteristics than when you’re working with a sixteen-year-old. That’s obvious.

What is less obvious is all that goes into those differences and the different ways each individual youth may progress along the developmental continuum.

All young people move through human development at their own pace and there is not a specific standard to measure a youth against. Over time, different frameworks of the developmental process have been developed by psychologists that prescribe parameters to measure progress and to provide common language that helps facilitate a better understanding of this complex process.

DEVELOPMENTAL STAGES

The good news for your learning is that most theories, frameworks, and research about human development identify stages that are associated with a young person’s physical stature, societal expectations, and brain development. All models of human development agree that stages become more sophisticated and nuanced as people age and each stage builds on the mastery of earlier stages.

DEVELOPMENTAL CHANNELS

Each developmental model identifies categories within stages that are sometimes referred to as channels. Channels are mostly related to the following categories of development: cognitive, social, emotional, and physical. And, channels can have varied levels of significance at different development stages.

DEVELOPMENTAL TASKS AND MILESTONES

Throughout stages of development, youth have a set of tasks to master before they move on to the next stage. Developmental psychologists identify milestones that can be thought of as markers for development and as a means to measure a youth’s development stage. Most developmental models agree that until milestones are reached, young people remain at a current stage, despite what is expected as “typical” given their physical age.

Youth development is a complex process that moves pretty rapidly considering all that has to be mastered in the first eighteen years of life. Because of the complexity, and the different perspectives applied to the study of youth development, it can be a complicated topic to learn.

For your purposes as a youth worker, we’re just going to take it at a high level; a broad overview that will help you understand what a young person is experiencing at different stages of development and what you can do to best support them.

Being aware of the nuances of developmental stages is important in your work with youth. Adults often see youth just for their age and have predetermined expectations or biases based on that number. For example, think about ‘the terrible twos’ or the ‘temperamental teen.’

As with any generalization, there is some basis in fact. But the truth is, generalizations can be harmful to a young person who may be ahead or behind the curve of development for their age.

Although we talk about “typical” development at a particular age, it is important to remember:

• Regardless of age, youth develop at different rates and in different ways
• A youth may progress faster on one developmental channel than on another developmental channel

If a youth is “behind” on a channel for their age:

• Pay attention to this lag
• Remember that some youth are late bloomers. You can probably recall someone you know who developed later physically, socially, emotionally, etc.

Conversely, being an early bloomer does not guarantee being exceptional later in life. For example, we all know someone who was large for their age but later (when their peers had also grown) ended up being of average size. 

The information in this section is intended as a guide. Regardless of age, if you are worried about a youth’s development or if a youth’s development is very different from others of the same age, talk it over with your supervisor. If there is a problem, getting help early on is best. If there isn't a problem, the reassurance will save you some worry.