Child Development

The basic objective of the development of your child is to enable them in the beginning years of their lives to become deeply involved and self-directive in their learning. This requires first a positive image as a person, since there is a 'circular process' of interaction between learning and personality development. Each child's development is judged by their intellectual functioning, their ego strength, their inventiveness, their relatedness to peers and adults, and their capacity to cope with new events that cross their path each day within their social life.

This observation took place at a friends' house, and for the observation I used her, almost, 2 year old daughter Kathy. Kathy is Caucasian, born in Syria, but her parents are both from the United Kingdom. During the observation only the mother was present.

I started the observation at 4 pm on a Thursday afternoon. Before I started I explained to the mother what the purpose was of my observation and that she had to interact with Kathy as she normally would and that she should not make Kathy aware that she was being observed.

The observation was as follows:

4.00 PM - Kathy sits in a big chair in front of the television ready to watch Teletubbies.

4.02 PM - Kathy makes herself more comfortable by taking a pillow from another chair and lay-down in the chair in which she already sat. She is restless, looks a few times in my directions but decides that the Teletubbies are more interesting at this particular point.

4.05 PM - Kathy asks her mother for a drink by saying 'drink, please'.

4.06 PM - Kathy receives the drink from her mother, then 'demands' a biscuit with her drink. Her mother tells her to ask nicely. Kathy is quiet for a while and than...