Is my child behind? Why every person levels up on their own timeline.

This morning my five-year-old was listening to The Reading Bugs, a story podcast she loves, and somewhere in the middle of an episode she pulled out paper and markers and started drawing. Not scribbling. Drawing. She drew the character from the story, the little story bug, and the bookbag the characters carried, and she stopped between each one to choose a color.

I stood in the kitchen doorway and watched her pick up a marker, put it down, and pick up a different one. And I got a little emotional, because I remember a very different picture.

The kid who never stopped moving

When my older daughter was little, she was the most active kid I had ever met. And I meet a lot of kids. She started walking at ten months. She bounced off the walls, literally and figuratively. When we played with kids two or three years older than her, they would get tired first, and she would get bored.

What she was not especially drawn to was art. She didn't make up long games on her own, and she wasn't the kid quietly drawing in the corner. At three, she colored her coloring books with one color, in big fast scribbles, racing to the end of the page. Impulse control was, and honestly still is, not her strongest area.

I'll confess something: I'm a completionist. Watching her speed-scribble through a page, outside the lines, one crayon, done, was genuinely hard for me. Part of me wanted to slow her hand down and say, let's fill it in properly.

So this morning, watching her slow down and think about which color belonged where, I wasn't just seeing a nice drawing. I was seeing growth that had happened on its own timeline, not mine. It was a reminder that every child develops differently, and that the skills we worry about often show up in their own time.

Development isn't a ladder. It's a character sheet.

The way I've started to think about this comes from video games.

In a lot of role-playing games, you start by picking a character: a fighter, a mage, a healer. Each one begins with different stats. The fighter starts with high strength and stamina. The mage starts with high intelligence and magic, but not much armor. The healer can keep the whole team alive but won't win a fistfight. Nobody thinks the mage is "behind" because her strength is low. That's just her starting sheet.

Then, as the character levels up, two things happen. Some stats rise on their own with experience. And you earn skill points that you get to decide where to spend. Do you pour them into the thing your character is already great at? Or do you put a few into the stat that started out low?

That is so much like how people actually grow. Our kids, and we ourselves, start at different levels for each skill. Child development experts sometimes call this uneven or asynchronous development: a child can be well ahead in one area (like gross motor skills, the big-body movement my daughter was born loving) and right on time, or a little behind, in another (like sustained attention, fine motor detail, or pausing before acting). That's not a flaw in the child. That's the sheet they were dealt.

A high-energy kid might start with maxed-out movement and stamina and just a couple of points in slowing down. As she levels up, the new points can go either way.

Spending skill points on purpose

Here's the part of the metaphor I find most hopeful: as parents, we get some say in where the points go. Not total control, but some.

For an already athletic kid like mine, I could choose to keep building her movement skills: climbing, swimming, sports, all the big-body play she craves. That's a completely valid choice. Strengths deserve investment, and a kid who feels competent in her body carries that confidence everywhere.

Or I could choose to put some points into a quieter skill, like slowing down to listen, sitting with a task a bit longer, or noticing the small details.

Neither choice is wrong. Most of the time, it's a bit of both.

But the morning with the markers taught me something about how the quieter skills grow. They didn't grow because I made her color inside the lines. If I had pushed that at three, I suspect we would have ended up in a power struggle and she would have decided she "hates coloring." They grew when the right quest showed up. A story she cared about pulled her attention in, and drawing became a way to stay inside that story a little longer. The lower stat leveled up through a door that was already open for her.

That's worth holding onto. When you want to grow a skill that doesn't come naturally to your child, look for the door they already love. A kid who loves movement might practice slowing down through yoga poses held like statues, or a "freeze" game. A kid who loves stories might practice patience by waiting to find out what happens next.

What Dr. Becky Kennedy's approach adds

Much of how I think about this lines up with the work of clinical psychologist Dr. Becky Kennedy, author of Good Inside. A few of her ideas fit right into the skill-tree picture:

• Kids are good inside. In Dr. Becky's framing, a child's hard behavior isn't a verdict on who they are. It's a window into a skill they haven't built yet. My daughter's impulsivity was never a character flaw; it was a stat that started low. That shift, from what's wrong with her to what skill is still growing, changes how I respond.

• The most generous interpretation. Dr. Becky encourages parents to look for the most generous explanation of a child's behavior. The scribbling three-year-old wasn't being careless. She was a kid whose body was built to go fast, doing what her body was built to do.

• Two things can be true. I can want her to slow down, and I can deeply appreciate the energy that makes her who she is. Holding both keeps me from trying to turn a fighter into a mage.

• Sturdy leadership. Dr. Becky talks about parents being the calm, confident leader in the family. In game terms, we help decide where some of the skill points go, especially when kids are young, while still giving them a real voice as they grow.

• Repair. I won't always get this right. There were definitely days I sighed at a speed-scribbled page. Going back and reconnecting ("I think I was frustrated about the coloring, and that wasn't fair to you. I love how fast you are.") is a skill too, and it's one we model for our kids.

There's one more piece I had to admit to myself: my reaction to her scribbling said as much about my character sheet as hers. My completionist stat is very high. That's useful in a lot of places in my life, and less useful when I'm watching a three-year-old color. Noticing that was the first step in not putting my stats onto her.

Grown-ups have skill trees too (especially men)

This is where the metaphor gets personal for a lot of the adults I work with, and especially for men.

Many men I sit with have maxed out certain stats. Problem-solving. Pushing through. Providing. Staying calm under pressure. Being the competent one. Those stats got points, year after year, because the game they were playing rewarded them: at school, in sports, at work, and often at home.

Other skills showed up on the screen much later, sometimes not until a partner, a new baby, or a hard season of life brought them into view:

• Naming what they're feeling, beyond "fine" or "stressed"

• Asking for help before they hit empty

• Staying with a partner's feelings without jumping in to fix them

• Slowing down enough to actually play with their kids

• Letting someone see them struggle

Not having many points in these skills doesn't mean a man is cold, or broken, or bad at relationships. It usually means nobody ever told him those skills were part of the game, or the people around him put their points elsewhere too. In many families, including a lot of East Asian and immigrant families I work with, the stats that got rewarded were achievement, endurance, and duty. Those are real strengths. They just aren't the whole sheet.

The good news is the same news as for kids: stats can still grow. Adults level up more slowly than five-year-olds, and it can feel awkward to put points into a skill you're not good at yet. But it's real, and it often starts the same way my daughter's drawing did: through a door that's already open. For a lot of men, that door is their kids. Wanting to be a different kind of dad can be the quest that finally makes the emotional skills feel worth the effort.

Try it: make your own character sheet

You can do this for your child, for yourself, or side by side with a partner. Grab a piece of paper and jot down your answers.

For your child

• What are three stats your child started out high in? (Think energy, curiosity, bravery, empathy, focus, humor.)

• What are two or three that started lower?

• Which lower stat has quietly leveled up in the last year without you pushing it?

• What "door" does your child already love (stories, movement, building, animals, music) that could become a path into a quieter skill?

• Is there a stat of yours that makes it hard to watch one of their low stats?

For yourself

• Which stats did your family, school, or culture reward most when you were growing up?

• Which skills only showed up on your screen as an adult?

• If you earned three skill points this year, where would you want to spend them?

• Who in your life is already strong in the skill you want to grow?

There are no wrong answers. The goal is simply to see yourself, and the people you love, with a little more curiosity and a little less judgment.

When leveling up feels stuck

I want to be honest: seeing the skill tree clearly doesn't make growing it easy. Old patterns are sticky. Stress, exhaustion, a new baby, tension in your relationship, or the way you were parented yourself can all make it hard to spend points where you want to. Sometimes you know exactly which skill you want to build and still find yourself back in the same reaction, again and again. That's not a failure of willpower. It's usually a sign the skill needs more support than a worksheet can give.

And if you have questions about your child's development, whether attention, impulse control, motor skills, or anything that worries you, your pediatrician is a great first stop. Uneven development is normal, and it's also okay to get a second set of eyes.

For adults, this is exactly the kind of work therapy is made for. Starting with individual therapy can make a big difference: it's a space to look at your own character sheet, understand where your stats came from, and practice new skills at your own pace, without needing to bring your partner or family into the room right away. If you'd like support with that, I'd be glad to talk.