September 16, 2011
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Day 4
I also did college papers on my little brother. I didn’t even change his name.
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My field experience assignment is about John, four years old. John is an active boy that runs out of steam right after lunch, when he takes a nap. While has been able to make it through the day without one, he is more cheerful and content after a one to two hour nap. There was no lack of observing John run, throw, jump, hop, and catch. He is a bundle of energy that his mother finds hard to keep up with. John rides his tricycle over grass, stones, and sidewalk with ease.
John has mastered the use of scissors recently, as he had cut papers up all over the floor. He loves to draw, and often draws people. The last picture I saw was a self-portrait that included his knees being all dirty from playing in the mud. He can distinguish from writing and non-writing, as he clearly knows what he creates with letters, though they may not form an actual word.
John has mastered dual representation with the ability to make a gun out of food items, sticks, blocks, legos, and etcetera. He knows his mother does not like it, so after “shooting,” he will quickly say, “But mom, it is just a stick (etcetera)!” John spends a lot of time playing with his train set and legos. His creativity is unlimited. His thinking is very logical, and he often takes things apart to see how they work.
John does not make up silly explanations, but shows causality in familiar situations. I asked him if food magically came into the refrigerator for us to eat and he said that the food came from the store. He told me that he was going to sit in the bathtub until all his mosquito bites fell off into the water, but this deduction came from his father telling him that a bath would make the bites feel better.
John enjoys classifying objects hierarchically, as long as it is not putting up his toys in the right place. I found him organizing his “desk for school” and putting all the papers in one place, the pens in another, and the crayons in another. He often plays alone, but most of the speech involved is different notices like shooting or car motors or train whistles, rather than private speech. Perhaps this is a boy thing.
John is learning to sit still at the table and at group functions for a more sustained time. He often visits to the zoo and uses script to recall and retell what animals he saw and what they did. He likes to make books of his favorite memories, “writing” pages and adding pictures and telling the same story over and over.
John sometimes has a difficulty with lying. When he knows he will be disciplined, he often states that he did not do what was just observed. Also, when asked, “John, did you know that it was wrong to do that?” and he sometimes responds with, “Yes, but I wanted to do it anyway.”
John can recognize his name and the letters in his name in any word. He also has other words memorized such as cat, dog, mom, dad, and Anna (his sister’s name). He normally uses these letters in varied combinations to make up any other word he wants to write. He cannot sound out words yet, but he is very quick to find words of things he likes such as trains, trucks, ice cream, McDonalds, and so on.
John knows his numbers and with the aid of fingers can add them. He understands cardinality as he will often count and then on the last number say, “So I have ___blocks!” John is a very good talker, and often does not know where to stop. His sentence structures are simple, but he combines them with an “And…and…and then…” as he continues to think of more things he desires to say without stopping for breath. He treats boys and girls the same, which often gets him in trouble.
He relates to each family member differently. He knows that he cannot get away with misbehavior with his father, but can at times with his mother. He can play and goof off with his (younger) older sister, and often treats her as an equal even though she is 12 years older than him. He knows that his older sister will do fun activities with him, but only if he has a good attitude, and so generally strives to have one.
John’s self-regulation is astounding if he is promised a good reward for good behavior. He has sat quietly for over an hour with the promise of future candy before him. John’s instrumental aggression has decreased since he can communicate his desires better, but he has started saying “I don’t love you anymore” when he does not get his ways, trying to hurt the person’s feelings.
Overall, John is friendly and cheerful. He told me about his first friendships–Seth, Petey, McKayla, and so on—and their different adventures and falling-outs: “Lillie does not like me anymore.” Once, when he was playing with dinosaurs with another little boy, the other boy was hitting another dinosaur and John asked him to stop. John ended up hitting the other boy to make him stop because John was so upset that the boy was not being nice to the dinosaur. John knew what was morally right, even though he did not handle the situation correctly.
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It goes on. Conclusion: the book of milestones for John’s age (4) says he is normal. That is nice to know.
