Observations allow you to shortly see into a person’s life. From observing people, you can analyze behavior to see what stage of development they are in. In my observation, I will be studying a five-year-old girl I babysit for thirty minutes in her home. She is of Caucasian ethnicity. She has light brown hair and light blue eyes. The setting is her living room/playroom. During this time, I will be examining aspects such as actions, interaction with others, and body language. After the thirty minutes, I will then interpret what I observed.
It was around 8:30 p.m. and she was jumping around singing along to her favorite movie’s soundtrack. She decides to put on her pajamas to match the movie ('Frozen'). She skips to her room and dresses herself, throwing her dirty clothes in her laundry basket. All of this without me telling her anything. This is an example of motor skills/milestones. I could see that for her age she has met the appropriate milestones, maybe even exceeding them. She dresses herself without anyone telling her to and puts her dirty clothes in the laundry basket. In addition to all of this, she skips, hops, and runs. At age five, children should be able to say their name and address, dress themselves, along with being able to skip and hop. It is evident that she is far in her development as far as meeting milestones.
After her pajamas are on, she imagines that the carpet under her feet is ice. She begins to 'skate' with her stuffed animal Olaf. She then calls the rest of her toys to join them and begins to skate with all of them. She tells them: “Be careful!”. She seems genuinely worried that her toys will get hurt on the 'ice'. She continues to pretend she is Elsa from the movie. She sings and dances along what she imagines to be ice. From observing these five minutes of playtime, I connected this with Piaget’s cognitive stages of development. She had so much fun talking and skating with her toys in the snow. When in reality, she was only in her Frozen pajamas and in her living room. From these observations, I could infer she was in the preoperational stage. This is the second stage of Piaget’s cognitive stages of development. In this stage, children believe that objects are actually alive. Anything she saw in the movie 'Frozen' she believed was real. At this age, her imagination takes her anywhere. This is very important as developing imagination allows them to develop language along with complex thoughts.
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Furthermore, during playtime with her toys, I observed some of the things she would say. She would tell her toys, “Don’t go faster than me!”. She would also say, “Make sure you follow me, okay?”. She was very in control of her toys and made sure they did what she wanted them to do. This behavior correlates with Erikson’s psychosocial stage. She is in her early childhood and the initiative vs. guilt stage. Children in this stage are developing a sense of initiative. She has the freedom to play and come up with anything her imagination allows her to. During this play, she takes some sort of control. This is a very important stage because children who do not develop a sense of initiative may grow up scared of attempting new things. This is where the guilt aspect comes in. If children are kept from developing leadership, they could establish a feeling of guilt. From observing her play, I could construe that she was definitely developing initiative rather than guilt.
Lastly, this observation was late at night, minutes before her mother got home. She was cuddled up on the couch while watching her favorite movie. She was playful and content the whole time. Her mother walked in and she was excited to see her. Her mother left something in her car, so she stepped out for a moment. The girl searched and asked for her mom, but was still content playing with her toys and watching the movie. Once her mother stepped back in, she was excited to greet her again. This small observation led me to Ainsworth’s attachment style. From this encounter, I can tell she sees her mother as someone who brings her comfort and protection. She was not in any kind of intense distress when she stepped out for a moment. She did search for her, but she knew she was coming back. There are many different kinds of attachment characteristics. Children who are ambivalent and attached are usually very wary around strangers and have great distress when their parents leave. I was a stranger to her, and she seemed herself around me. In addition to that, she was not in intense distress when her mother stepped out for a moment. So, I knew this was not the case with her. Kids with avoidant attachment characteristics usually avoid their parents and do not seek comfort. She ran and greeted her mother as soon as she walked through the door. Therefore, she could not have this kind of attachment either. Disorganized attachment characteristics in children consist of resistant and avoidant behavior. Children are usually confused and with a mix of behaviors. Evidently, she did not demonstrate any of these. Secure attachment characteristics include children being able to seek comfort from their parents, greet parents, and are okay if they are separated from their parents. Based on these observations, I concluded that the five-year-old has a secure attachment to her mother.
To sum it all up, I observed a five-year-old in her home for a total amount of thirty minutes and analyzed her behavior. Based on these observations I concluded that she has met the appropriate milestones for her age. I also inferred that she is in the preoperational stage of her development, which is a part of Piaget’s cognitive stages of development. As well as observing that she was developing initiative and rather than finding a sense of guilt, she was developing a sense of power and independence. Lastly, I analyzed that she has a secure attachment to her mother. In just thirty minutes of observing the behavior of this five-year-old girl, I learned so much about her development. While I only observed a short moment of her life, from observations I was able to evaluate where she was in her development.
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