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Most of us in the mental health field have been influenced by the great thinkers and researchers on human development: Freud, Erickson, Piaget, Kohlberg, Gilligan, Bowlby, to name a few superstars. They all have one thing in common; they see human development as unfolding in stages and proceed to define what is normal or typical for each stage. Progress is determined by the level of conformity to these “normal” checkpoints or milestones.
While stages are helpful in comparing people to each other, they are limited when we try to examine the uniqueness and actual needs of individuals. If we adhere too strictly, we focus on what’s normal instead of what’s normal for this person at this point in time. We concern ourselves with the benchmarks that may tell us how far they need to go, but not what they need to overcome, or how much time they need to get there.
My Asynchronous Development Model is a window into the complexity of older youth and young adult development. It can inform our thinking and augment our approach to assessing and helping them. The main idea is that human development is uneven and individual. Each person grows at their own rate in several key developmental areas. These mainly include Physical, Emotional, Cognitive, Academic, Social, Sexual, Moral, and Career.
Understanding the asynchronous aspect of human development is a step in shifting the focus onto the individual and understanding the specific pressures they feel as well as the resulting behaviors.
When an adolescent or young adult perceives they are higher or lower (asynchronous) in their development compared to their peers it can create pressure. The same can be true if they are comparing themselves to an idealized self. The greater the asynchrony, the greater the pressure.
If the gap seems insurmountable, they may give up. If it’s substantial but they underestimate the task, they may try to catch up by taking short cuts. If they feel behind but have a realistic idea about what it would take to reach synchrony, they may step up by planning incremental changes, or seeking the guidance of a mentor or counselor.
Adolescent and young adult development is especially difficult to evaluate because change is inherent in this phase of life and it’s a hodgepodge of developmental challenges. Of course, younger children are changing rapidly in several ways too, but they are less able to be catalysts or obstacles to their own growth. With more freedom and mobility, teens and twenty-somethings can radically change their trajectory into adult status by the choices they make. With this element of autonomy and self-determination in older youth, we can help them assume more agency in their own growth.
The Asynchronous Development Model does just that. For example, a student who shows delays in social development and accelerated cognitive development is often assigned to the autism spectrum. Sometimes this is necessary to get treatment or accommodations in school, but it doesn’t necessarily address the problem. Enrolling them in advanced classes or “gifted” curricula may only “normalize” their social deficits. They need a glide path into the larger world because many people will not recognize nor meet their special needs.
One student I worked with was a junior in college. He had been in special ed classes throughout high school. He was extremely well-prepared for college academically, but his social skills were so limited he couldn’t make a phone call or initiate a conversation. When I asked him to rate himself on a scale of 1 – 10 in all the main eight areas above, he was very aware of the huge discrepancy between his academic and social development. He also knew he needed to bridge the gap because his career development was ahead of many college students and he was certain he wanted to be a biology teacher.
He was a good candidate for “stepping up” because he knew he needed help and was highly motivated. He joined my social skills group and participated in activities that became increasingly more socially demanding. After he completed the group, I didn’t see him until a couple of years later. We met in a hallway on campus and I asked him how he was doing and what he was up to. To my delight, he informed me he was in grad school and in his role as a Graduate Assistant, he was teaching a biology class!
Asynchrony takes many forms. Some youth are more physically developed and mature earlier. Others mature later and look younger than peers. These differences matter because they can affect the experiences of youth. Research on early-maturing girls (Blumenthal, et al) shows they are more likely to associate with older boys and thus are exposed to alcohol, sex, etc. at a younger age. They may get into more situations for which they aren’t ready. Late maturing boys and girls may be victims of teasing or bullying or may become bullies themselves to compensate or prove something.
Youth still often engage in what Festinger called “social comparison” back in the 1950s. Today this is commonly known as peer pressure, but Laurence Steinberg recently renamed it the “peer effect” and his work with others suggests (Weigard, et al) that this peer effect can be internalized, and that peers do not need to be physically present to influence behavior. We often think that underage youth drink alcoholic beverages simply because their friends do it, or to rebel, or as a rite of passage. However, these shortcuts to adulthood may result from feeling behind or inferior in other respects — developmental delays that overwhelm them. Sometimes drinking or using drugs can be an aid to quick and superficial “adulting” if one feels like a failure in school or in other ways.
Teaching youth these ideas — that normal human development is asynchronous, that they engage in social comparison, and they aspire to an ego ideal — is useful for promoting self-understanding, which leads to making better choices. To do effective prevention work we need to respect the intelligence and autonomy of older youth. In some ways, cognitive development peaks by the mid-twenties and we should consider that as we provide guidance. They respond better if they understand what’s happening to them and why.
I once met with a mother and daughter after the mother called and expressed concern about her daughter failing her classes. During the interview the daughter said at least three times she had been having thoughts about hurting herself. The mother ignored (or just wasn’t ready to hear) the comments. At that point, I asked the student to leave the room and I posed this question to the mother: “Don’t you think it would be a good idea for your daughter to decide she wants to live before we concern ourselves with her GPA?”
This student was depressed but mostly due to her situation. Looking at this distressed student through a developmental lens, she was not emotionally ready for the stress of college, even though she had the cognitive and academic ability. We can assume there are other students who have similar profiles, and if they understood why they were having difficulty coping, they could address this as a problem to be solved and skills to be learned as opposed to an external overwhelming force or personal failure.
Another student arrived at my office in tears. She had been “popular” in her previous school but had made no friends after several weeks in college. By zooming in on different aspects of her social development, we were able to discover that she was good at maintaining relationships but had never had to start new relationships because she had the same friends during the entire span of her primary and secondary education. With this new self-awareness and because she was well-developed cognitively, she was able to figure out what to do on her own and she improved her situation dramatically within two weeks.
The Asynchrony Model minimizes resistance and saves time because the model doesn’t diagnose pathology or judge people. We set the tone by telling the youth that asynchrony is normal and everyone shows it at some point in their lives. Practically speaking, we can do this as a part of a life education curriculum. Ultimately, my goal is to persuade high schools and colleges to embed developmental education across their entire curriculum. The model can be applied in virtually any situation where youth are being served.
References
Blumenthal, H., Leen-Feldner, E. W., Babson, K. A., Gahr, J. L., Trainor, C. D., & Frala, J. L. (2011). Elevated social anxiety among early maturing girls. Developmental Psychology, 47(4), 1133-1140.
Weigard, A., Chein, J., Albert, D., Smith, A., & Steinberg, L. (2014). Effects of anonymous peer observation on adolescents’ preference for immediate rewards. Developmental Science, 17(1), 71–78. https://doi.org/10.1111/desc.12099
