How do you evaluate a toddler?

[rosiev]

I just had our little one attend an evaluation/monitoring session as part of the process for trying to get into a school. He is only 19 months old and going through a phase where he is afraid of strangers - normally he is very social and outgoing, but at this time he is not. However, I was wondering what the evaluator might look for - I mean he is still an unpredictable baby afterall - the process seems a little too pressured unless I am reading this entire thing wrong... Any thoughts?

[1stwahine]

Uhhhhh...I like say sumting but I scared....cause you called me COMBATIVE before.

(Runs and hide....):o

Auntie Lynn

[MyopicJoe]

the process seems a little too pressured unless I am reading this entire thing wrong

As if being a parent wasn't stressful enough! :p

I would hope any school worth its salt will not judge a 19 month old too harshly. Our kids are going to public elementary school, so I've got no advice or insight for you. Just a supportive post.

I'm sure experienced folks will chime in soon :_)

[scrivener]

I would hope any school worth its salt will not judge a 19 month old too harshly. Our kids are going to public elementary school, so I've got no advice or insight for you. Just a supportive post.
"Judge" is probably too strong a word. I like "evaluate" as it's used in the title of this post much better. Listen: Those people know kids. All they're looking for is whether or not the kid is going to fit in well and succeed at their school. They get shy kids all the time, so don't worry about that. If your kid is not accepted there, you should consider it a blessing, because it means (in all likelihood) that your kid would have had difficulty there or that those teachers wouldn't know how to work with your kid. You want your kid to go to the school that wants him. Just relax.

[MyopicJoe]

"Judge" is probably too strong a word.

You make a good point, Scrivener.

As a parent facing such an experience for the first time, intellectually I may know it's just an evaluation, but emotionally I'd feel like my child, and hence myself, were being judged.

Come middle school time we may consider private school. I'll try to keep your advice in mind and just relax. :o


You want your kid to go to the school that wants him.So true! It also applies to jobs and relationships.

Unfortunately we're under a lot of pressure from outside sources telling us what they think is the right job, the right spouse, the right school is.


Anywho, sorry for slightly derailing the topic. Looking forward to what others have to say about the OT.

[rosiev]

exactly - it wasn't as if someone had explained to us the entire purpose of this or what he or she was looking for. However, someone made a great point which is that it is for the best if my little one didn't get into a school where he wouldn't fit in.

[Leo Lakio]

Listen: Those people know kids. All they're looking for is whether or not the kid is going to fit in well and succeed at their school.They can "evaluate" that much at 19 months of age??? I'd be worried about too much labeling and pigeonholing of someone that young - they still have several years of personality development ahead of them.

[craigwatanabe]

Each child care facility typically will have their own brand of eval/assessment tests they will administer. There is no one cut and dry method of assessment but the single most important assessment is one of how that toddler will integrate with other children in a group setting.

Social skills are very important at that age where school readiness is the main concern, so how a child adapts to a group setting is very critical.

Other areas of concern during any kind of assessment or evaluation include language skills, that is how that child uses his/her words in a conflict situation instead of resorting to physical means of resolution. Biting and spitting are common ways children of that age express their discontent with their surroundings.

Another is self help skills. Can your toddler pull up their own pants, do they show some level of understanding regarding toileting such as letting you know when they need to go to the bathroom.

How independant is that child. Child care providers will observe how a child will adapt from their parent to another child care provider during that transition period

At 19-months the key issues of any evaluation will focus on self-help/independance skills.

These are areas of concern regarding the child.

The other very important area is the socio-economic status of the school. Some pre-schools like to have a good mix of families from various socio-economic backgrounds to provide a well-balanced group.

There are probably other areas but academic aptitude isn't ranked high on most asssessments or evaluations at that age level. Academic skills come later when that toddler has developed their cognative abilities to the point where they can recognize and differentiate between patterns, shapes, colors and quantity.

[craigwatanabe]

Each child care facility typically will have their own brand of eval/assessment tests they will administer. There is no one cut and dry method of assessment but the single most important assessment is one of how that toddler will integrate with other children in a group setting.

Social skills are very important at that age where school readiness is the main concern, so how a child adapts to a group setting is very critical.

Other areas of concern during any kind of assessment or evaluation include language skills, that is how that child uses his/her words in a conflict situation instead of resorting to physical means of resolution. Biting and spitting are common ways children of that age express their discontent with their surroundings.

Another is self help skills. Can your toddler pull up their own pants, do they show some level of understanding regarding toileting such as letting you know when they need to go to the bathroom.

How independant is that child. Child care providers will observe how a child will adapt from their parent to another child care provider during that transition period

At 19-months the key issues of any evaluation will focus on self-help/independance skills.

These are areas of concern regarding the child.

The other very important area is the socio-economic status of the school. Some pre-schools like to have a good mix of families from various socio-economic backgrounds to provide a well-balanced group.

There are probably other areas but academic aptitude isn't ranked high on most asssessments or evaluations at that age level. Academic skills come later when that toddler has developed their cognative abilities to the point where they can recognize and differentiate between patterns, shapes, colors and quantity.

[scrivener]

They can "evaluate" that much at 19 months of age??? I'd be worried about too much labeling and pigeonholing of someone that young - they still have several years of personality development ahead of them.
Craig's got it right. We're not talking about pigeonholing anyone: We're talking about whether or not that kid will fit in and get along at that school at that time. It's not an evaluation for life! It's an evaluation for now.

I haven't seen these evaluations at that level, but at the kindergarten level, it's often stuff like, "can you line these bunnies up from smallest to largest?" "can you point to the green bunny?" "can you make the blue bunny lie down?" I would imagine that for a one-and-a-half-year-old, we'd be talking about stuff like, "can you sit on the carpet?" "can you walk to the sink and wash your hands?"

[Amati]

The best evaluation of a 19 month old is how the child responds to a morning hug from mommy, a mid day romp with a playmate, a happy smile when awakening from a nap, how loud the giggle when tossing bread crumbs to birds in the park at lunch, and the delight of seeing daddy come home from work. [The caregivers are interchangable, but the theme remains the same - moms, dads, tutus, aunties, foster parents, etc - family is irreplaceable in the life of a child.]

Yes, some of us think infants and toddlers do best at home, not dropped off in daycare (call daycare what you want, it isn't home!). Ok, blast away.

[SusieMisajon]

Poor little kid....only nineteen months old and already the parents are freaking that he'll fail to gain a place at university...oops, kindergarden.

[sinjin]

Yes, some of us think infants and toddlers do best at home, not dropped off in daycare (call daycare what you want, it isn't home!). Ok, blast away.And some of us don't have a choice unless we intend to leave the city. I also happen to think that preschool can be far more stimulating than mommy.

[Karen]

I would hope....that "evaluate" at this age would mean to simply "take note" of what type of personality the little person has, like are they more vocal or quiet, do they talk with their hands and/or expressions? do they seem more like the quiet, thoughtful type or an artist type....silly as I may sound, I think somone trained in what to look for might be able to realize the likelihood of these things in young kids.

One child at that age may stand back and study people, another may want to sing and dance a lot, another may prefer to draw.

Maybe "evaluate" at that age also means to see who is more emotionally expressive and who is not, who is terribly shy and who is not.

I then wonder if the various schools look for things in the children/evaluations that are very different, school to school.

My parents sent me and my two sisters to public school our entire schooling-lives. If I were evaluated, they should have discovered that I was the kid that was more quiet and serious, was born to analyze, wonder, question and.....the perfect example of this is that when I was only 5yrs. old, I got our new Comptons encyclopedias out, and found what I had suspected, that Santa Claus was not real, he had different names and customs that accompanied belief in him, in the various countries. I took that to Mom, me as the youngest of her three daughters, and showed her that I had found the truth for myself. LOL...

[Leo Lakio]

Rosiev - I hope you're spending more time evaluating the schools than the schools are evaluating your child. It can't be easy - good luck to you.

[craigwatanabe]

The best evaluation of a 19 month old is how the child responds to a morning hug from mommy, a mid day romp with a playmate, a happy smile when awakening from a nap, how loud the giggle when tossing bread crumbs to birds in the park at lunch, and the delight of seeing daddy come home from work. [The caregivers are interchangable, but the theme remains the same - moms, dads, tutus, aunties, foster parents, etc - family is irreplaceable in the life of a child.]

Yes, some of us think infants and toddlers do best at home, not dropped off in daycare (call daycare what you want, it isn't home!). Ok, blast away.

I hardly call a preschool a daycare. Yes infants need the stimulus of the immediate family but as they grow into a toddler, their brains are developing to the point where social stimuli is very important. How do you teach a child to interact with others with different emotional needs by keeping them at home?

As a toddler, maturation is a key developmental stage where social interaction is very important and tools needed to develop those skills are found in preschool settings.

And unfortunately families are replaceable. Bad families can create a negative social environment for toddlers and infants alike allowing for socially disruptable behavior as they grow into juveniles.

Preschools help break that environment at least for the duration of their stay in a preschool setting.

Preschools also serve as a way of screening children for attention deficit disorders and other behavioral abnormalities early in their lives. With proper treatment that child can develop ways to cope with developmental disorders to make them productive citizens of society.

Preschools also serve as a launching point of social awareness as a toddler enters Kindergarden. This awareness helps the child develop social coping skills as they enter another level of interaction with peers.

If this world were all about oneself then coping skills would have no bearing on growing up. But we do live in a world where we need to interact with others. How we do so all stems from our upbringing from infancy to adulthood.

As parents we must do what we can to prepare our children for the eventuality of social interaction. Failure to do so on our part will only make it harder for that child to overcome social awkwardness as they mature in to adults. Failure can take on many faces including reclusiveness to outright lashing out at society because that child could not integrate with the rest of us.

[sinjin]

Excellent analysis CW. I wholly concur.

We regularly watch "Supernanny" and the one thing that stands out to me is the fact that the unruly children featured are never, or were never, in preschool.

An aside - I'd love to hear your thoughts on the growing homeschool movement. Especially since the real standard bearers in this movement are avowed Christian fundamentalists.

[SusieMisajon]

Here in France, you can send a kid to school as soon as they're diaper-trained...at about two and a half. It's expected that you send them at this early age. Legally they don't have to go until six, but I have yet to meet a kid who waited that long, and kids here begin learning to read and write and do math and foreign languages way before six (the homework at age seven is impressionable).

For my eldest, I held out until he was four...but the other three insisted on going at two and a half. My daughter asked to go at just two, and when I explained that she had to be 'clean', she thought about it for a minue and then removed her diaper and said 'Voila, I'm ready', and she was.

I once knew of a woman that had a two year old that she wanted to put in school, and the kid wasn't diaper trained, so she went and asked the principal of the school what to do about it...she was told to stick a suppository up the kid's bottom when he woke up and that he'd have pooped by the time school began in the morning, so he'd then be 'clean'.

Having said all that....my kid who began school at the ripe old age of four is the one that's the most reasonable and the one that never really picked up on the bad habits in the schoolyard, and I put it down to staying at home and learning family values for a longer period of time.

[Pua'i Mana'o]

Interesting thoughts on this thread. Our experience with preschool (all being PunanaLeo) was that our children were not chosen/evaluated as much as the prospective family as a whole unit. Would we be committed? Attempt to do our part to learn about the school's educational theory and the age-appropriate development of the child wrt language development? Would we make every effort to make Hawaiian language a living language of our home, meaning to learn and speak it ourselves? Or will the family insist that results are directly tied to the monthly tuition payment?

From the get-go the school insists that its family+school together. Expectations of family involvement are quite high. Unlike KS preschool which seemed to follow a standard school schedule (9mo/yr, 8-2p, summers off), PL was 11mo long and a full day, which mattered to folks like me who need "daycare" hours.

[Karen]

Sinjin, I can give you so many thoughts about homeschooling that I may put you to sleep. I was a homeschooling mom for over 12 yrs, most of it here on Oahu but I started in Northern California.

I'm slammed for time today but will try to peek back at this thread and share some if you have more specific questions or something. Otherwise....you're in danger of :D being "edith bunkered" till your eyes glaze over, lol.

[sinjin]

Sinjin, I can give you so many thoughts about homeschooling that I may put you to sleep. I was a homeschooling mom for over 12 yrs, most of it here on Oahu but I started in Northern California.

I'm slammed for time today but will try to peek back at this thread and share some if you have more specific questions or something. Otherwise....you're in danger of :D being "edith bunkered" till your eyes glaze over, lol.Why did you choose to homeschool?

[craigwatanabe]

Excellent analysis CW. I wholly concur.

We regularly watch "Supernanny" and the one thing that stands out to me is the fact that the unruly children featured are never, or were never, in preschool.

An aside - I'd love to hear your thoughts on the growing homeschool movement. Especially since the real standard bearers in this movement are avowed Christian fundamentalists.


Homeschooling offers an alternative for parents who want to educate their children themselves as well as offer an alternative for those children that have been kicked out of public/private schools with no other place to go.

Personally I wouldn't use homeschooling unless I have to because I don't have the patience or discipline to offer an environment for my kids on a regular basis to learn academics.

One of my cousin's has homeschooled all of her seven children (yeah she beat me). All have turned out academically ahead of their peers. However one of my second cousins told me that he missed out on a lot of things when he was finished such as high school sports. He's also socially awkward. I expected that to happen despite his enrollment into various extracurricullar activities such as sports and clubs. His brothers and sisters also displayed similar awkwardness' as they matured into adults and teenagers. Otherwise they are very respectful children, always listening to their mother and father as well as treating his cousins with a lot of maturity.

All that said they are quiet respectful people. Is that a good thing? Yes I believe so. As long as they continued this homeschooling from K-12 there was no issues. First year in college was a bit tough for the eldest child but he soon adapted as peer pressure isn't so great as it is in high school or junior high.


And Pua'i Mana'o your family probably wasn't chosen for screening probably because there wasn't any problems observed with your children as they interacted with others in their preschool during the first few days of observation.

KS does do an evaluation called a PPT or Picture Peabody Test (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peabody_Picture_Vocabulary_Test)
Which essentially is administered conditionally as part of their enrollment process. The test is used as a special needs assessment to determine if that child will have any difficulty in their preschool environment. This is a widely used test used in many preschools (not only KSBE).

The PPT requires the tester to take classes on proper adminstering of the PPT so there is no prepositioning or suggestion of a desired outcome from the child's answer or behavior during the testing. The child's answer and behavior during the testing tells the tester a lot about that child's disposition regarding their social, emotional and cognative development.

[Karen]

Howdy, Sinjin,

I/we didn't choose homeschooling for any one reason, but there were a couple of incidents that pushed us to finally say "enough!" I had friends in the 'burbs of San Antone that homeschooled in the seventies when it was generally unheard of. I loved everything I heard and learned about it.

Then, Gilroy California became more and more obnoxious about even forty seconds after the last bell rang, in the mornings. Didn't matter if I was literally caught by the train that was just blocks across from the school, if my Mom phoned to say someone died or if I had a stomach virus....they didn't allow the teacher to just seat the student even in first grade but then forced ME to go to the office, explain why I was late (barely) and then dared to be unfriendly and the lady handed me a piece of paper saying "unexcused." That did it!

That....after my daughter's precious teacher telling me she could not stop her two "partners in crime" a couple of brats, one the daughter of a district superintendent...to leave my daughter alone. The two literally followed her, walking behind her asking why she wore denim boots, why she was so tall, etc....the teacher even told me our child was THE brightest in the class and she thought the other girls were jealous, stuff like that but that the teacher couldn't stop the BS, so we said "we can" and we did.

We started homeschooling in Gilroy and never looked back nor regretted it. However, I had a lot more reasons for doing it, as it freed us from being enslaved to the school schedule, not just by the hours but the days. We could do five days of school work in four, if we wished and have three days weekends, we could fly anywhere we wanted and did fly free on Southwest airlines to Texas many times, we could school them anywhere, anytime.

We had two families of friends that observed us and our kids and started homeschooling theirs, too. We all had varying reasons but mine were christian reasons, too, you bet. I was not going to stand by and allow the government to change my kids' values, ya know that old program from the seventies called "Values Clarification." Yeah right....clarification my butt.....just subtle "change agent" crap.

We moved to Hawaii and by late '97 our house went online, and soon to have two computers with printers, etc....set up in one room and we discovered the world of homeschooling with the internet. The computers were in our large family room and the girls weren't alone with it, and they were allowed plenty of "fun time" on the computers.

Fast forward to our now 23 yr. old, as she was about to turn 19 she moved back to California and worked for a dot.com as webmaster for their commercial websites. She didn't apply for the job, but was offered it, first job of her life at 15 bucks an hour, didn't even have her diploma yet cuz she hadn't tested for it, and it was offered to her when the owner of the company saw what she could do because he was a friend of the family she was living with.

I didn't know a thing about html or the other two computer languages she was studying. she had taught herself how to make websites at free places like geocities, and learned it so well that this fun hobby became a job. I am convinced had we kept her in public school that she'd have come home every afternoon or evening and been so loaded with homework that she'd have never taught herself this profession and so well. She did get sick of it after a couple of years...said doing hours of html gets mindnumbing, but she has something to "fall back on" anytime. She also worked parttime retail in some a quaint toy shop, also was offered that job because the people knew friends in Ca.

Our younger daughter, 20 now did graduate homeschooling here in Hawaii and works two parttime jobs for friends here that own their own companies. She does payroll for one, and record keeping for another, along with some type of contacting clients for the owner....I don't give details online and not needed, and this 20yr. old worked fulltime as a receptionist for a professional service until she married recently. She now may go to UH or to LLC, hasn't chosen which but thinks she may attend school for two more years, before she and her new hubby move to the mainland to probably start their own business...will be his second and her first.

Lastly, I don't know, Craig, why your cousins are noticeably "socially inept?" I think I can word it and not be rude. Not only are our girls social butterflies, bubbly, outgoing and dang good in a debate or roundtable, but we did the park days in Mililani area years back and the kids I met for the most part did not even seem shy, of course I didn't get to study all of the same kids a lot of times, just a few regulars I recognized, as the play groups met various places on the island.

The things our daughters have made money at....I barely taught any of it, and the computer stuff not at all. That's another thing I learned by living it, yet I had been told and already believed it likely....it is that if a parent has the time,patience and inclination....to homeschool and apply the curriculum loosely quite often, encourages, not forces the child to learn, research, wonder and question, and to have a hobby or fun activity that requires they be educated to do it......they can and often will blossom and find an interest that they can later turn into a profession.

I was in public school all 12yrs. as my parents had never even, perhaps heard of homeschooling in the sixties, and......I was forced to so much crap, in an uncomfortable and unhappy environment, sitting in hardass chairs and often with some of the most boring and unloving people in the world as teachers, sure had some wonderful ones, but the entire experience of just doing the homework to pass, and cramming for tests in many subjects I could have cared less about......

all of this killed any desire for me to find anything, to just fall into anything that I might later want to make money at....except writing and for some of us writing is pure joy and so easy but the hard thing can be very hard....getting published and actually seeing a profit from it.

Of course homeschooling is not for everyone. It is so cool that what authorities in some states and countries don't want us all to realize is that most.....homeschoolers have proven themselves and made stellar arguments for homeschooling.

Hillary says it takes a village to raise a child, and authorities often want us to think this true. What a lie.....it requires at least one loving, patient adult to raise a child. Sure, helpful, extended family is a huge blessing but no, the government is not needed to RAISE our kids, and they do the poorest job educating them...generally speaking.

[craigwatanabe]

Lastly, I don't know, Craig, why your cousins are noticeably "socially inept?" I think I can word it and not be rude. Not only are our girls social butterflies, bubbly, outgoing and dang good in a debate or roundtable, but we did the park days in Mililani area years back and the kids I met for the most part did not even seem shy, of course I didn't get to study all of the same kids a lot of times, just a few regulars I recognized, as the play groups met various places on the island.


I believe it was the way their mother raised them that led to their awkwardness. They basically had to leave the nest to overcome their mother's disposition.

Play groups are very essential with home-schooled tots, I forgot to mention that in my last post as a suggestion for homeschooling.

[Karen]

Craig, sounds like they are true survivors. I'm glad to hear it.

[craigwatanabe]

Craig, sounds like they are true survivors. I'm glad to hear it.

They are good kids, so is their mom (my cousin).

The mom is the Matriarch in the family and controlled her kids all the way.

My wife's ex husband also has a Matriarchal mother and as a result he and another brother are still living with mom. The sister is just like her mom and the only other brother to flew the nest is the only one that is financially successful, albeit messed up when it came to rearing his fiance's teenage kids.

[Karen]

So, their mom is a controller, but other than that, seriously she's a fine person? We've all got our faults so I sure won't be judging her. I was a control-freak of a newlywed wife almost 30yrs. ago but I'm all "growed up now." Amazingly, as I realized I wasn't god...life got better and better.....

[craigwatanabe]

So, their mom is a controller, but other than that, seriously she's a fine person? We've all got our faults so I sure won't be judging her. I was a control-freak of a newlywed wife almost 30yrs. ago but I'm all "growed up now." Amazingly, as I realized I wasn't god...life got better and better.....

What I mean was she doesn't beat up on her kids or demean them with insults or vile words. Basically she's not a candidate for CPS :D

[Karen]

LOL Craig, oh mercy...how did I sound to you that made you think I didn't discern that, from you. I know...I get it....but hey, maybe I don't "get" how I sometimes "come across" to people. :D

[MyopicJoe]

maybe I don't "get" how I sometimes "come across" to people. :D

Without being able to see someone's body language or hear the tone of their voice, it's easy to misread what people write. Hence prodigious usage of smiley faces. :D

[Karen]

MyopicJoe, you just said many mouthfuls! Oh man, posting with people we usually don't know can be a landmine of misunderstandings. It is true, no body language, facial expressions, tone of voice, what words of each sentence given emphasis is void.....I dig reminding people I post with that we may often be misreading each other, to say the least.

It's a lesser miracle we don't have more wars of words when posting, debating and having roundtable talks.

I say we all pat ourselves on the back, or southern-style get someone to hug us, LOL man did that sound dumb, don't care, I'm leavin it. :eek: :D :rolleyes:

Now, I think this software is about to tell me I can't use that many faces. LOL...is nonsense fun, or what??

[Leo Lakio]

Now, I think this software is about to tell me I can't use that many faces. Well, Admin is not a big fan of the faces, he has noted - I use them from time to time, but sometimes I make the effort to get my point across as clearly as possible without them. But we can't completely control how others will read us, something that can be affected by the kind of day the reader is having, for example.

[buzz1941]

Easily. My kids are geniuses and gorgeous, every other child in the world is a horrid sprat. Simple as that.

[Karen]

Buzz, LOL. Amen...

Leolakio, thanks for expanding on how many reasons we can have word wars on these forums. It is true that the reader filters all we type through not only their mood of the day and hour but through their perceptions because of their past experience with others, people in their 3D world that have possibly spoken just like us, but from a different vantage point.

We that post regularly anywhere on the net without the hangups should pat ourselves on the back. we rock~

[Karen]

deleting....computer hiccuped cuz of the virus protection....

[Menehune Man]

I just had our little one attend an evaluation/monitoring session as part of the process for trying to get into a school. He is only 19 months old and going through a phase where he is afraid of strangers - normally he is very social and outgoing, but at this time he is not. However, I was wondering what the evaluator might look for - I mean he is still an unpredictable baby afterall - the process seems a little too pressured unless I am reading this entire thing wrong... Any thoughts?

We're all individuals and there's something considered the 'norm' for all levels of life.
All I can say is... encourage everyone's strong points, be it artistic, autistic or otherwise.

It's the odd/strong ones who stand out anyways. ;)

Sure'd be nice to accept me for me and you for you. Know what I mean?

[Karen]

Rosiev, I came upon this when I was surfing the net for various other things. It's what I would expect an evaluation of toddlers to be. This link is the actual eval. form that is used by some schools, and this one in Culver City, CA.

http://www.ehs.pvt.k12.ca.us/admissions/downloads/preSchoolEval.pdf

Hope this is of use to you. I sure have found it interesting.

[Bob P]

They are good kids, so is their mom (my cousin).

The mom is the Matriarch in the family and controlled her kids all the way.

My wife's ex husband also has a Matriarchal mother and as a result he and another brother are still living with mom. The sister is just like her mom and the only other brother to flew the nest is the only one that is financially successful, albeit messed up when it came to rearing his fiance's teenage kids.

I had an aunt like that. Wonderful woman but kept her kids and their families on a very short string.

[Karen]

I have a neighbor that lives with his mom and he's not in his thirties anymore, but can't guess just what his age is. He yells at her and can't seem to tolerate her much of the time and yet is right under her wing, her house and world. I don't get it, the "still living with" a controlling parent.

[craigwatanabe]

I don't get it, the "still living with" a controlling parent.

Mama's boy plain and simple.

[Karen]

Craig, I suspect that many a controlling mama has a love/hate relationship with her kids. Of course that would go for fathers, too, not being biased here.

I found great satisfaction in standing back and letting our daughters have their space as much as safe and possible at any give age they were at. What it did was to make them then move closer and we had,and still have a very close relationship. Don't get me wrong...I have plenty of faults and am not in denial that I was no perfect parent, while I can say that if I were to die today that my daughters would truly have lost one of their best friends. (their hubbies being their very best, in both cases)