Journal Entry 1: Infant physical and cognitive development
Raise your child to the age of 2½ years, then select one of the following questions to respond to in your journal. Make sure you reference different events in your child’s life, using your textbook and other reliable sources for support.
How does your baby’s eating, sleeping, and motor development compare to the typical developmental patterns in the first 8 months?
Is your child delayed or advanced in any area of development according to the 19-month developmental examiner’s report? Based on what you have studied, do you think this is most likely a result of specific biological or environmental factors?
Describe and give examples of changes in your child’s exploratory or problem solving behavior from 8 through 18 months and categorize them according to Piagetian and information processing theories.
Describe your child’s communication and language development in the first 18 months. Is your child developing at a typical or atypical rate?
8 MONTHS
You notice that Theodora seems to have little goals that involve two steps of planning ahead, so you encourage these cognitive advances by encouraging Theodora to pronounce a syllable of word in order to the toy she wants.
You want Theodora to establish a regular bed-time and sleep through the night. You think she’s almost there, so…
You try the object permanence test. Theodora is able to find a hidden object, as long as you don’t wait too long or distract her in the middle of the search. Theodora really likes this hiding game and shows by her interest that she wants it repeated. However, if you hide the object in the same place repeatedly, and then change the hiding place, Theodora has a strong tendency to look in the old hiding place, and then get confused about where the object is, or forget about it. This curious error was first discovered by Piaget, but researchers have some new explanations for the error.
hold Theodora and allow her to warm-up slowly to new situations and people, but don’t force anything on her.
Theodora is advanced in her gross and fine motor skills and enjoys crawling, pulling up to stand and manipulating objects.
Theodora is cautious and shy in most new situations or with new people. With you present, she will eventually explore, but rarely warms up completely to the strange situation or person.
Theodora has typical emotional reactions for her age, such as fear of total strangers, separation anxiety and a quick, loud cry when upset or in pain.
Based on your report, Theodora is physically healthy. The doctor recommends a greater variety of baby food and ground up fruits and vegetables.
Theodora has an obvious attachment to your partner and prefers your partner over other people, but seems to have fun playing with you. She was cautious at first with the nurse and doctor, a normal reaction to strangers at this age.
How does your baby’s eating, sleeping and motor development compare to the typical developmental patterns?
Theo eats normally and has a regular sleep schedule and pattern. She is crawling and exploring her world. She reacts for and plays with objects. She has object permanence. Theo has typical developmental patterns.
At 8 months of age was your child an “easy”, “slow-to-warm-up”, or “difficult” baby in terms of Thomas and Chess’s classic temperamental categories? On what do you base this judgement?
How is your child’s attachment to you and your partner developing? What is happening at the 3-month and 8-month periods that might affect attachment security according to Bowlby and Ainsworth, and various research studies?
At three months, me and my spouse’s decision to enroll her into daycare can influence her attachment. At eight months Theo is typically nervous around new people and surroundings but will warm up with encouragement from her parents. At 8 months Theodora favors her mother over me.
19-month Developmental Testing
The preschool that you are considering for Theodora offers low-priced developmental assessments. Theodora is able to enroll when she becomes reasonably well potty-trained. She is 19 months old now. Just to find out how Theodora’s development compares to other children of her age at this point, you have an assessment done. The early childhood specialist observes Theodora in free play with other kids and does a little testing of cognitive skills. She reports the following:
After she got warmed up, Theodora seemed to get along very well with the other kids, and was unusually cooperative for a child of her age. The examiner thought that Theodora would adapt well to the preschool environment.
Theodora was advanced in her gross motor skills. The examiner recommended that you expose Theodora to a variety of indoor and outdoor activities and let her interests be the guide as to what to pursue.
The specialist thought that Theodora was slow to warm up to new situations with adults, but that if you gave her time, she usually came around.
The specialist said it was clear that Theodora had a strong and secure attachment to your partner and was beginning to develop such an attachment to you. She recommended “keep doing whatever you are doing” and don’t be afraid to be involved more in day to day care, feeding, etc.
The examiner commented that Theodora was able to concentrate on activities for 10-15 minutes, which was age-appropriate. Theodora was coming along fine, but she still recommended trying to engage Theodora’s attention in something really interesting for longer and longer periods of time, to gradually build up her tolerance for preschool-type activities. She also recommended getting Theodora to follow simple directions at home, gradually increasing the complexity and length of the directions.
Theodora was age-appropriate on tasks such as building a block tower to model one made by the examiner and other spatial skills such as copying shapes, coloring within the lines and solving picture puzzles.
Theodora was generally in a positive mood during the play sessions, but occasionally could be irritable or impatient when things did not go her way.
Theodora scored above average in all aspects of language development, and is ready to be read aloud to more frequently, as she can follow typical story lines. The examiner also noted that her memory was pretty good and recommended that you frequently ask Theodora to recount experiences as a way of encouraging more language growth.
2 ½ Years Old
Theodora is going to be starting a preschool program soon, so you take advantage of the fact that a friend of yours is an early childhood development specialist. You ask her to evaluate Theodora, who is 2 1/2 years old. The specialist evaluates Theodora’s language, motor and cognitive skills using some developmental scales, and observes Theodora interacting with other children in a toddler play group. This is her report:
Theodora was generally not very aggressive with the other kids, but would sometimes say “Mine!” if there was a toy both children wanted. However, Theodora would usually smile and give up the toy a few moments later and seek out a different toy. The specialist said that Theodora was ready for preschool already in terms of aggressive behavior.
Theodora was above average on nearly all gross motor skills, such as climbing, throwing and catching a ball, balancing, and skipping and enjoyed these activities quite a bit. The advice was to continue these activities, emphasizing Theodora’s interests and focusing on having fun with them.
Theodora tackled challenging tasks readily and with a positive attitude. The examiner commented that she was unusually persistent in the face of failure for her age.
Theodora was able to focus on the tasks posed by the examiner, but her attention began to wander after about 20 minutes. The examiner said this was typical for the age, and took a short play break. She recommended that you involve Theodora in preparation for scripted activities such as bath and meal time to help enhance her ability to listen to and follow directions.
She is in the average range in copying shapes with a pencil, working with picture puzzles and constructing things out of blocks. The specialist recommended offering Theodora a range of these activities to choose from and to go with the ones that seemed of most interest to her.
Theodora scored in the above average range on tests of language comprehension and production, and provided unusually complete and grammatically mature sentences in a conversation the examiner and she had about a picture. She recommended several appropriate activities that might interest Theodora such as going through a book without pictures and making up a story, or going to a children’s museum and talking about the things that interested Theodora there.
Theodora is above average in solving problems with more than two steps, and grouping objects together in categories. The specialist recommended that you respond to Theodora’s interests, whether it be building things, learning about animals, going to the children’s science museum, etc, and that you encourage Theodora to think about things by asking questions (e.g., at the zoo, you could ask “what is the monkey doing”, to get Theodora to focus on and talk about the animal’s behavior).
Theodora was somewhat hesitant in the group of children and spent a few minutes watching them before joining in. After a while she latched on to a couple of the other children and had a good time. By the end of the session they were smiling and imitating each other.
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