Child Observation of Children Development

The way I decided to observe this child was through a naturalistic observation. He is three and a half years old, small blue eyed blonde haired boy, I met him through a friend of mine who is constantly around children through home care services, such as nannying, and through working at park districts. Either way, my friend was able to find someone who was comfortable with letting me observe their child for school purposes. I observed the child at his own home for two hours. Concerning the ethnic background, the child and his parents are all Caucasian. His parents are married, and are considerably wealthy as they have two other children and pay for private tennis, swim, and piano lessons. Overall, the child I observed is in a stable home, where he has what he needs. My goal conducting this project was to learn more about the way children in his particular age group think, and how they act towards other children their age, as well as grown adults. Reason for that is because children have always been curious, and very open minded, in the sense that they are so young, the world hasn’t corrupted them in any way. They’re pure.

When it comes to the development of children of his age group 3-5 years, they become much more coordinated with running or going up and down the stairs. By the end of the preschool years, the child should have no problem with catching a ball, kicking a ball, hopping, or standing on one foot. Around the age of three, they are especially active, in terms of finding them running around the room, with their arms spread out to indicate flying instead of actually using their words to talk about it. The child's ability to concentrate also allows them to use their fine motor skills, which are small muscle movements occurring in the hands, fingers, feet, toes, and lastly wrists. In terms of the child observed, he demonstrated gross motor skills, which involve movement and coordination within the legs, arms, and other large body parts. This was done through the use of his legs to climb onto a slide, and being able to hold himself up once he got to the top. He further used his legs by jumping onto one of the steps. Once he was done with the slide, he moved on to building a wall of Legos which indicates the use of fine motor skills by having the small muscle control in his hands and fingers to hold the Lego pieces, and place them on top of one another. Later on in the observation he started to draw a picture of his family, and him being able to hold the crayon is another example of his fine motor skills. The behavior for a child of his age was appropriate because as previously mentioned, children at this age start to further develop their fine and gross motor skills, so everything the child was doing indicated normal development.

In terms of cognitive development, the child demonstrated over regularization, which is part of the language learning process where children tend to add regular grammatical patterns to irregular words. At one point during the observation, the child came up to me to ask me what I was working on, and said, “mommy goed to the store”. Adding the “ed” instead of saying his mother went to the store is an example of over regularization. Most children of his age group overgeneralize as they haven’t learned a lot of new words. Centration, is having the tendency to focus on one part of a situation regardless of others, which while observing the child, he stated that his daddy is only a father and not a brother. This indicates that he isn’t able to see the father being anything else but “his”. Animism is believing that inanimate objects, such as a teddy bear or any toy have human feelings, and human like intentions. During the time when the child was playing alongside his brother, he decided to throw a hot wheel across the room, at which point the child being observed started to cry, and said sorry to the car, because it hurt him, and by saying “him” he meant the car. Private speech is speech that one uses to communicate with themselves for self-guidance and behavior. When the child was playing alone, he would grab some cars and speak to himself, as if there was another person next to him. The preoperational stage is the second stage in Piaget’s theory of cognitive development. This particular stage begins around the age of two and lasts up to about age seven. Children begin to engage in symbolic play and learn how to manipulate symbols. The child engaged in symbolic play when he played alongside his siblings.

When it comes to the social and emotional development of the child, sociodramatic play was observed, which is a form of symbolic play where the child pretends to take on the role of someone else and starts to mimic the actions and speech from earlier situations. Preschool Behavior is having the intent to benefit others in terms of sharing, helping, or volunteering, but for the sole purpose of helping other people. During Erik Erkinson’s second stage of development, Autonomy vs. Shame and Doubt or Initiative vs. Guilt is when children start to focus on having a greater sense of control, and is typically something they start to development between eighteen months and two-three years of age. The Parenting styles which consist of authoritarian, authoritative, permissive and uninvolved, the child falls within the category of having both a permissive and authoritative parent. When it was time for snack time, the father indicated it was time to stop playing, and eat some crackers and juice. The child responded by saying no multiple times, and after some arguing between the father and the child, the father eventually let his son play for 15 minutes longer. Throughout the time spent at the child home, the father stated how his mother would have never let that happen, but would never have yelled at him. The father is indicating a permissive parenting style which means while they love their children, they have a difficult time saying no to them, set little to no rules/discipline, and oftentimes tries to be the child’s friend instead of parent. While the mother on the other hand has authoritative parenting style, which is someone who is warm, nurturing, listens to their child, but someone who does set clear limits on behavior while being positive instead of blinding demanding the child does everything they are told to do.

To conclude, the child is developed for his age group, likes to communicate with adults and other children. He is emotional, active, and curious. He is able to imitate simple actions of adults, and understand what is asked of him. His fine and gross motor skills are well developed by being able to walk, bend, turn, throw a ball, and grasp objects with his hands and fingers. The child’s cognitive skills are appropriate for his age. This is a time in which children his age use magical thinking to solve problems and explain their thinking. In terms of their emotional development, this is a time for role playing which is a practice for the future, they start to become aware of how other families do things, which could lead to request for some sort of privileges, such as more play time, or some new toys.