Page 74 - Meeting with Children Manual

Section 5 P a ge | 72

CHILD AND YOUTH READINESS SCALE

The Child Readiness Scale is a 9 item 5-point scale for use for practitioners working
with children of divorce. The scale is a non-standardized tool intended to assist
practitioners who meet with children to identify a child’s potential readiness to
provide direct or indirect input to their parents. The scale is designed to identify
ratings from low to high. Higher overall ratings may indicate a child’s current ability to
provide his/her voice in more direct ways with his/her parents. Low scores may
indicate a lack of current ability or interest in providing higher levels of input.

ITEM 1. Child’s/Youth’s Verbal Ability/Willingness to Directly Express Self
Children have varying degrees of ability to express their thoughts and feelings verbally.
This item is related to the degree of ability of a particular child to express things about
him/her self and others such as family members in words. Is the child willing or able
to say something to you in a direct manner?

If you meet with children between 6 and 10 years of age, you would likely expect the
child to speak and sound a lot like a small adult. In fact, by the time a child is 5 years
of age, he/she will generally have the ability to descriptively speak about his/her
everyday life and use language that sounds mature.

Children and adults do not, however, “speak the same language” (Walker 2013). Child
not only do not speak the same linguistically as adults (this evolves over time) but they
communicate in many ways without words.

When children experience stress, their ability to organize a narrative about their life
and family circumstances may diminish. The 6-10 year olds do not yet work in high-
level abstract concepts. Children in this age group may not have the internal cognitive
emotional schemas (internal cognitive organization) to talk about things related to
stressful family circumstances. You may ask a child to try an activity or for instance,
draw a picture of his/her family. This request may be met with refusal or the child may
comply with your request but he/she may not be willing or able to answer any of your
inquiry questions. This not likely due to the child’s inability to use words and sentences
to describe their family picture, but it may have to do with the point that what you are
asking him/her to do is too much for him/her to emotionally focus on and the
proximity to the topic is too upsetting or stressful. A child will rate low on the scale if
you observe the following:
 You ask the child if he/she could draw a picture of his/her family “doing something”
and the child refuses or ignores your invitation
 The child complies with your suggestion but then moves away and does not finish
the drawing and will not engage in any discussion about re-engaging with the
drawing
 The child completes a drawing but will not say anything about it

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