Far too often, children with developmental disorders are diagnosed solely on the basis of their observable behavior, slotted into broad diagnostic pigeonholes and provided generalized treatments that may not always meet their specific needs.
I think we live in an era without a predictable career path. Everybody's doing more, doing more at the same time, doing more faster. As such, individual projects can have wildly different developmental trajectories.
I'm afraid the parenting advice to come out of developmental psychology is very boring: pay attention to your kids and love them.
Being a developmental psychologist didn't make me any better at dealing with my own children, no. I muddled through, and, believe me, fretted and worried with the best of them.
Developmental scientists like me explore the basic science of learning by designing controlled experiments.
Putting together philosophy and children would have been difficult for most of history. But very fortunately for me, when I started graduate school there was a real scientific revolution taking place in developmental psychology.
If a candidate at the MLA or chief ministerial level gets an advantage of belonging to a particular caste while fighting polls, that is one thing. But after having been elected, if you only look after the developmental needs of a particular caste or community, that is a different matter altogether. The BJP has never done that.
It's a mistake to try to use play to deliberately foster developmental progress.
When my parents were arrested, I was a year old. And like so many children with incarcerated parents, I experienced a range of traumas connected to the separation. I was angry. I was ashamed. I had developmental delays, behavioral problems.
Because like so many people who were victimized directly or indirectly by crime, I blamed myself. If I hadn't been able to find closure, I never would have overcome those early developmental challenges.