decline prior to acceleration

[Mom2010]

Just something I thought was interesting....   I have noticed that my DD reverts her behavior quite a bit before emerging "anew".  For example, she will go through a period of doing things she knows better than, not using "her words", temper tantrums....then one day she will wake up doing something(s) she never did before...  Usually great "leaps" forward.  Anyone else notice, or have these huge deceleration periods followed by huge progress?  The place my DD goes to now said a term for it, but I can't remember what it was or find anything about it.  I was interested in doing some quick reading on it if anyone knows what it is called...if it is called something....

[LynnS6]

Piaget, I think, termed these periods of "disequilibrium" as the child reorganizes their cognitive system.

[whatsnextmom]

Don't know what it's called but my kids did a bit of that in the early years. I don't know that they'd regress so much as become very sensitive and emotional just before a big intellectual jump. That seemed to stop happening around 6.

[moominmamma]

Originally Posted by whatsnextmom 

That seemed to stop happening around 6.

My older kids have each had about a full year of "in-turning" around age 12/13/14, just prior to bursting forth as ambitious, capable adolescents ready to get on with their lives. 

I'm still seeing it in my 18-year-old, in a manner of speaking. She tends to get needier and seem lazier for a week or two just before she takes some new leap in responsibility, ability, motivation, independence, etc.. I get more phone calls, more poor-me emails and it seems as if she's spinning her wheels a bit ... and then I don't hear from her for a couple of weeks and I discover she's found herself a part-time job, signed up for a French class, got the furnace serviced, started inviting friends over for chamber music jams, applied for scholarships. 

Miranda

[whatsnextmom]

Originally Posted by moominmamma 

My older kids have each had about a full year of "in-turning" around age 12/13/14, just prior to bursting forth as ambitious, capable adolescents ready to get on with their lives. 

Miranda

I'll give you that. For us, it was a different sort of behavior pattern from what we witnessed in those early years but DD did go through a sort "in-turning" from 13.5 to 14.5. It was really a period of "typical teen" behavior. It was just odd to us to see her acting like that as she'd never "been her age" before. I guess it does continue... just for us, it changed how it looked.