Observation Paper

Observation Paper

Jennifer R. Moore

Liberty University

The world of a child is an amazing experience to learn about. Children have such a sense of optimism and excitement about the world that most adults just do not have. I really enjoyed this assignment. For this assignment I chose to observe my five year old nephew. Although he lives with me, I never just sit and watch him. For the intent and purpose of this paper, I observed his behavior in his natural setting for an hour. I did not alert him to the fact that I was formally observing him because if I had, he would have given me more of a show than I needed.

        I would like to take a moment to give a brief background of the child I observed. He is in a situation where he and his mother have been separated from his father because of work. He sees his father on the weekends. During my observation, my nephew sat in his chair and we had our usual afternoon talk. I asked how his school day was. I could tell he was feeling a little down. He told me that he had gotten in trouble at school for picking on another student. When I asked him why he picked on this student, he dropped his head and said that he did not know. This behavior could be attributed to the fact that his family has been going through a period of transition. Over the course of six months, his family has moved to a new city, my nephew has started a new school, and his father has moved away from him and his mother for work and to prepare a new home for them. My nephew has gradually gone from very well behaved and constantly cheerful to a school bully who is still mostly cheerful at home. Our textbook discusses how instability in the family can be harmful to children and how these particular children are usually more susceptible to having behavior problems and delinquent behavior (Martorell, Papalia, Feldman, 2013).

        After my nephew and I had our afternoon talk over a delicious lunch of peanut butter sandwiches, as he requested, he ran off to his grandparents’ room and sat in his favorite chair. He then picked up a pencil and a bottle from his grandmother desk and began to play with them. He created his own dialog and roles for each item. He played by himself in that chair for about five minutes. He then asked his grandfather to play and insisted that the pencil was a motorcycle and the bottle was a van. He also insisted that his grandfather had to “drive” the van because he is too old for the motorcycle. This is an example of pretend or imaginary play as described in chapter 10 of the textbook. This occurs when children take objects and pretend that they have properties that they do not really have (Martorell, Papalia, Feldman, 2013).