Essay Sample - The Behaviors of the Children

For this experiment, a six-month-old baby was used. In terms of perception, the child showed improvement in sight and an understanding of the activities that they go through daily. The child was able to differentiate between colors and could see further without becoming cross-eyed in the process. Secondly, the motor skills of the child are much improved, with the ability to roll from their back to their stomach being achieved. They can also roll back from their stomach and to their back. Slight ability to propel them on the floor is also there, with pushing themselves on the floor using their stomach being the way that they move around. The cognitive development of the child is apparent. The ability to differentiate different sizes was the most noticeable development, as well as the ability to know the people who they interact with most and becoming friendly towards them. The child was also able to differentiate the sizes of objects and distances.

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There was also the development of a language or communication pattern. The child tried to communicate through using crude communication skills such as squealing, yelling to get attention, and growling when they are not happy. I also notice the production of vocal patterns that changed every week, and that involved changing vowel patterns. Socially, the baby showed development in terms of being aware of familiar and unfamiliar people and reacting by being friendly to the people that they are familiar with and with coldness towards people that they are unfamiliar with. I also noticed the ability of the child to participate in social games such as peek a boo, and this also showed the cognitive development that they had undergone.

Emotionally, the child has developed basic ways of expressing their emotions. For example, I noticed their ability to cry when they felt discomfort or fear, and laugh to express their happiness. Additionally, the baby showed their excitement by moving their arms and legs and could understand when the people around them were happy or angry with them. The temperamental development displayed by the baby was the distractability level. This way, the child was unable to remain attentive for more than a few minutes, and the differences in the surroundings made their attention change rapidly. The ability to self-regulate was not there since the baby mainly acted on their emotions and thoughts with the inability to stop or control themselves. Therefore, the baby displayed irritability and the inability to express patience in their activities or behaviors.

Integration

Through observing the child, I was able to understand their developmental perspective and link their behaviors to the developmental milestones that they displayed. For example, I was able to link the child’s cognitive development to the social skills and the temperament expressed. Therefore, I linked the development of the ability to understand the emotions and reactions of people to the way that the baby reacted around these people. The child was also able to link people with the emotions that they felt when they were around, smiling when they around the people that make them happy and being grumpy around the people that make them unhappy. Additionally, the development of motor skills also meant that the baby could explore their environments and the other factors concerning their environments, such that they could move towards places where exciting sounds came from and could use their body to express their emotions.

The strengths displayed by the child’s developmental milestones include the ability to be social around most people. This ability to show and remain happy around people in their vicinity helped the children to have fewer instances of tantrums and cries, therefore meaning that the parent could leave the child in the care of other people as they attended to other activities. Also, the child’s development displayed the strength of curiosity. Through curiosity, the possibility of the child developing their cognitive skills and social skills even faster was improved. However, these traits also proved to bring weaknesses to the child, since the curiosity in the child could bring them in harm’s way. For example, the possibility of the child moving towards the things that seem appealing due to their motor skills could lead to harm to the child’s bodily health. Also, the possibility of the child being unable to express their other emotions and temperaments due to being too social is a possibility, and this could make the parents unable to realize when the child is under discomfort or other dangers such as ill-health.

The child’s temperament of distractability and is due to the development of cognitive, motor, and other skills. Therefore, when a child can move, they can move from one location to another whenever they feel like there are more exciting things going on there. Also, through the ability to see further, the baby was able to see their environments better and could, therefore, could explore their surroundings through their newly-acquired motor skills. Therefore, their temperaments could be attributed to their ability to react to them.

Reflection

Going into this experiment, I expected to successfully observe a six-month-old baby in their natural environment and doing the activities that they do. Through the observation, I expected to establish the child’s development in essential and observable factors such as their perception, motor skills, and cognitive development. I also wanted to establish the milestones achieved through the development of communication and social skills. Also, I expected to observe the development of emotional, temperamental, and self-regulation skills. I also expected to be able to establish a connection between the development milestones achieved and temperamental development and make sense of them. I was successful in this observation since the child was not aware that they were under observation. Therefore I was able to capture their natural behavior for scientific application and research successfully.

There were few difficulties in the observation project since the child was not aware that they were under observation, and therefore the observations recorded were true and accurate. However, the observation process needed the consent of the baby’s parents, and it took a while for them to accept that their child is a subject of scientific observation. However, once this was overcome, the rest of the exercise was quite straightforward and easy to conduct. This project is crucial since it offers raw data on the behaviors of the children who are six months old, and provides more recent data on their development on the different aspects that were investigated in this study. I was also able to establish the connection between the levels of development in a baby and the temperament that they develop. This was an eye-opener since I had not previously known that there existed a connection between the temperaments and the milestones of development in children.