What if your child IS falling behind?

I want to talk a bit more about that phrase we all know and - *cough* - love: falling behind.
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About a year ago, I went into detail (in episode 22 of the podcast) about how unhelpful that concept really is, and how we can think differently about where our children are at. But even after that episode - which was quite reflective and zoomed out - I know many parents still wrestle with the feeling.
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So today (and then more deeply in a Collection episode over the weekend), I want to go a layer further.
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What we really need to understand is that this concept of falling behind isn’t just unhelpful, it’s actively misleading.
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Because the way most formal education defines “progress” has almost nothing to do with how children actually grow. It has almost no basis in child development, neuroscience, developmental psychology, or human physiology, and very little respect for the natural variability in how children think, learn, and mature.
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And yet, we’re all asked to carry it. We’re all asked to embed this concept deep into our consciousness and never forget it. Even long after we’ve stepped away from the system that made it matter.
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And so, when we step out into a life without school, it...Keeps. Showing. Up.
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Like when your child isn’t reading yet (and they’re, gasp, 9!), or still hates writing, or resists anything that looks like maths. Like when you hear what someone else’s child is doing and think...oh no, we’re not at that level.
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Because there are no measures to tell you how you’re going. No grades. No benchmarks. No official feedback to tell you if your child is “where they should be.”
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It’s just you. Watching. Guessing. Hoping.
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And eventually - if you’ve been conditioned like most of us have - the question gets back under your skin:
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​I know I shouldn’t feel this, I thought I’d shaken it off, but...are we...are we maybe falling behind where we should be by now?
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​Know this: school benchmarks and expectation timelines were never designed around individual readiness. They were designed around logistics. Curriculum pacing. Testing schedules. They exist to help a system move a large number of children through a standard process in a standard timeframe.
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That’s not development. That’s project management.
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And it’s completely at odds with what we know about neuroscience, developmental psychology, and motivation theory.
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Because real child development is uneven. Jagged. Wildly asynchronous. It cannot be timed or tied to a lesson plan.
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Some children read fluently at five. Others not until ten.
Some grasp abstract concepts early, but struggle with emotional regulation.
Some won’t write more than two sentences until something suddenly clicks, and then you can’t stop them.
Some don’t want to write much of anything, at all, ever.
Some can focus for hours on a project they’ve chosen themselves, but can’t sit still through five minutes of a structured ‘lesson’.
Some have vast spoken vocabularies long before they can put their thoughts on paper.
Some understand multiplication intuitively but forget how to tie their shoes.
Some need movement to think clearly. Others need silence.
Some talk constantly, processing everything out loud. Others listen, quietly absorbing.
Some can explain how a combustion engine works, but still need help regulating their frustration when their toast breaks in half.
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None of these are signs that a child is behind.
They’re signs that a child is human.
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And it’s ONLY when we stop treating school-built timelines as the default that we can start seeing something else:
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A child who is curious, even if they’re not 'quick'.
A child who shows persistence, even if they haven’t hit a benchmark.
A child who’s learning how to think, not just how to comply.
A child who asks “why?” more than they answer correctly.
A child who makes connections you didn’t teach them.
A child who returns to something hard - not because they have to, but because they want to get it.
A child who still plays imaginatively long after others have 'aged out' of it.
A child who is learning to recognise their emotions, not just their letters.
A child who deeply explores ideas sideways - through art, or story, or building - even though they’ve never sat long enough to get through a single worksheet.
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​These are the signs of growing up well.
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And the irony?
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So many of the qualities that grow from this kind of childhood are the qualities that matter most in adulthood - adaptability, problem-solving, emotional intelligence, creativity. Qualities that are actively suppressed by racing to meet someone else’s timeline.
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These qualities are built slowly.
Through real-life experiences.
Through struggle that means something.
Through work that feels purposeful.
Through relationships that are safe enough to risk failure in.
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Readiness in those areas doesn’t follow a schedule, and the formal education system just cannot make space for them. But we can.
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So back to the question - is your child falling behind? Well, no, almost certainly not.
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But it’s up to us to understand what that actually means, and why. Because only then will we be able to truly support our child’s natural development (and that’s the only thing that can banish this nagging feeling for you forever).