It's Nobody's Fault Read Online Free Page A

develop empathy at about this time; if a child hears a baby crying, for example, he’ll say that the baby’s hungry or hurt. By the time a child is two, he’ll be comfortable around strangers with his parents nearby and capable of parallel play: two or more children playing in the same room at the sametime but not together. The kids may not speak or otherwise interact as they go about their tasks. Most two-year-olds have a hundred words in their vocabulary and speak in sentences of two words, such as “Big boy,” “More food,” or “Come here.” Girls usually have a more advanced verbal ability than boys, so a two-year-old girl probably will have a much more extensive vocabulary than a hundred words.
    At around age
three
most children are toilet-trained, and they have a thousand-word vocabulary. They move on to reciprocal play, building sand castles together or engaging in some other mutually enjoyable activity. With reciprocal play there’s a connection between children, even if it
is
a fight. At three kids can sit for 20 minutes of story time or some other activity. By the age
of four
they stop wetting their beds at night and use complex grammatically correct sentences. At four a child can separate comfortably from his parents; he’ll be able to stay at a birthday party for an hour without his mother in the room. He will also be able to share toys, follow the rules of a game, and function in a group with minimal aggression. A four-year-old might be afraid of the dark or of animals, but that fear is usually transient.
    At five years old
children like to hear stories read repeatedly and enjoy rituals throughout the day, such as having a snack as soon as they get home from school, playing with certain toys in the bath, and sleeping with the same teddy bear every night. At
six
kids have a vocabulary of about 10,000 words, and they learn to read. They frequently start to collect things—rocks, dolls, basketball cards, and so on—and may become fond of superheroes. At
seven
they may develop superstitions and rituals: step on a crack, break your mother’s back.
    From age eight through adolescence, children focus on school performance. Competition and ambition become more important in their lives. Boys and girls begin to develop a value system based largely on the beliefs learned from their family. Their social sphere widens, and friendships begin to take on greater meaning.
    The developmental milestones associated with adolescence are less specific in terms of age; there are basically five
developmental tasks
that must be accomplished by a youngster between puberty—approximately age 11 for girls and 12 or 13 for boys—and the end of adolescence, about age 22. There are enormous physical changes that take place during adolescence, especially hormonal fluctuations, and brain chemistry goes through changes as well.
    The first task youngsters must accomplish is to
separate
from their parents. Naturally, this separation process doesn’t happen all at once; it comes about gradually, in steps, such as flirting with ideas that are different from those of their parents or favoring music and wearing clothes that adults hate. By age 22 a young person should be completely comfortable about being separate from his folks, regardless of geography. The second task that faces an adolescent is the
development of a network of friends.
At age 13 or 14 a child begins to find his peer group important. The greatest influences in his life remain Mom and Dad, but he’s influenced by his friends and shares intimacy with them. The third task is
sexual orientation.
Sexual fantasies usually start at puberty; by the age of 22 a young person, even one who is not sexually active yet, should know which gender arouses him sexually. Task number four is the
setting of educational and vocational goals.
At age 12 that means finishing a math project or learning the history of Syria. When a youngster is 17 or 18, his goal may be to get into college or