How do you know your childs mental age?

[shazzarooney999]

I have an eight year old, nearly 9, but he does things a lot of things that are not age appropriate, he will talk like a baby, he will bark like a dog, he will act like a toddler, ive heard people say well yes shes 14 but mentally she is an 8 year old, how do you know this??? does that make sense?

I don't think any of us are one age tbh

Mental age seems to be a descriptor favoured by the media, because it makes it nice and easy to demonstrate that someone is vulnerable/incapable etc

Imo people are a combination of developmental stages and experience - so a 4 year old child may developmentally be at a 8-20 month in receptive language, birth-11 month expressive speech, 36-50 physically (as in what they can do) etc - but they have still lived for 4 years and have 4 years worth of life experience.

I also use specifics such as emotionally and cognitively etc as I find it makes people understand just a little better. Sadly not much more than that.

So i say DS has the emotional and social development of an 8 yo when explaining why he struggles in school and can't connect with his peers.

I tend to use "broadly functioning as" when I try to explain the extent of DS2's disabilities to people, so I might say that he's broadly functioning as a child less than half his age. It's as a ballpark figure. It tells people that this 10 year old is not a budding Sheldon, he's not just a bit timid, he needs a lot of care and you can't expect him to sit and do an activity the same as a typical 10 year old.

I agree that "mental age" is not helpful. It can't be assessed, anyway, particularly in a child with severe language deficits.

I often describe ds as having a developmental age of about 2 as opposed to his chronological age of 4. It makes it easier for other people to "get" him. Otherwise they don't really understand where he is developmentally and in terms of awareness / danger etc.

For me this is made easier by his nursery using Tapestry learning journal where they make little assessments every time they post something and most of his are around the 16-30 months age.

I tend to think of it in terms of emotional development. Chronologically he's 10 emotional he's 6, or 7 hence the difficulty connecting with his peers. Intellectually and physically he's 10 yet silly noises and 'fart' jokes r hysterical!

Ive used it to explain why DS relationship with his peers is strained and very shallow. I say emotionally and socially he's around 8yo. He's in a school with 11-16yo. Yes, he can communicate on some level around shared interests - computers! - but he acts and they behave towards him as if he's an annoying younger sibling. But that in fact to his peers, he probably does resemble that persona as many of them will have siblings of that age.
But outside of school life 8yo and 11/12 yo are different groups of people - and you cannot expect or fail to comprehend that just because it's in the school environment the natural relationship between the 2 developmental age groups will be different.