Developmental Milestones - Questions & Understandings

My blog is based on the online readings and the in class activity, since I have not received my copy of Yardsticks. Hopefully it will be in today!
After finishing the Back to School Night activity, and analyzing some of the milestones, I had a few lurking questions that I included in my journal. We are given the tools from the readings and Yardsticks to understand our students better at their different stages. These tools are helpful for planning our curriculum, classroom environment, lessons, communication styles and more. I wondered, "what do I do if I have a student who is not developmentally up to par? What if I go to their parents, and they are defensive and do not accept the issue? What if I don't have any programs for special education or instructional assistants available at my school to help these children? How can I help a student who isn't emotionally relating to other students and cannot make friends?" I wondered about these things, and how I as a teacher will be able to address these issues effectively on top of teaching the students each and every day. It made me realize that understanding these milestones is crucial, and taking into account the different places students may be at within their domain, and then finding ways to help them grow at each stage emotionally, cognitively, socially and physically will be a challenge.
I agree with several other posts from our Cohort that the milestones are a useful resource for educators. As someone that has already worked with children somewhat, in different capacities and different ages, I enjoy reading through the milestones and most just seemed to click. They made sense, and I could think of examples of children to illustrate these ideas. On the other hand, there are ages of children I have not worked with as much as others, and it has been helpful to review and practice analyzing these ages like we did for Back to School Night as well as using our observations to illustrate examples during the double circle activity.