Lacey Brems

Ms. Marci Campbell

Psychology
18 February 2015
R.A. #1 Early Childhood
For this assignment I interviewed my cousins toddler, Olivia. She is about 14
months old. This sweet girl lives in my basement, but it is rare that I get one on one time
with her. I was excited for this chance so I could visualize the new theories Ive learned. I
took Olivia downstairs where she is familiar with her surroundings. The mom was happy
I wanted to spend time with her little girl. I told the mom I wanted mostly to observe
Olivia rather than ask her questions. The mom left me with some treats just in case Olivia
was sad. She went upstairs for a while and let Olivia and I play.
I started out this interview by asking Olivia if she wanted to play. She was a little
timid, not really knowing what was going on. We started out in her living room. She has a
lot of toys along with her table and children sized fridge sitting out. She grabbed her tea
set and starting to pretend that we were having tea. She showed many signs of social
learning from observing her mother. Olivia set her dolls up and feed them dinner along
with tea. I then pretended with her. When I played along she had a great time. She would
hand me food so we could pretend to eat it. She would show signs of anticipation and
goal directed behavior. If I just sat there she would hand me something to eat. She had a
lot of self-praise after she handed me something. It was as if she was a happy mom
feeding her baby. She had a very positive self-concept.
We then went into Olivias bedroom. She had a bunch of Disney dolls on her bed.
She grabbed her Elsa doll and started singing, Let It Go, from the Frozen movie. Her eyes

would light up with excitement. She danced around the room. It was almost as if I could
see the animism she believed in. I could tell in the past she had preservation with Frozen.
She knew a lot of the words to the song. She defiantly thinks very magically. She showed
signs of Piagets preoperational stage, as she would play with the dolls as if they had real
voices. At this point she was having so much fun I think she totally forgot all about her
mother.
Olivia has a little sister. As we would play I noticed she would give her dolls a
binky, pretend to change the dolls clothes, and call them sissy. I thought this is a sign of
modeling. She has watched her mom or dad tend to her sister and now relating it. I
couldnt believe how much she has picked up in her short life.
The last couple minutes she went to color. She put her hand on the paper. Olivia
kept pointing to her hand and saying, hand, hand, HAND!! She was trying to
communicate with her hands and voice. I traced her hand on the paper. I thought this was
Vygotskys zone of proximal development. She needed me to help her trace her so she
could finish the picture.
I learned a lot of this short interview. At first, I was very nervous because Olivia is
very much a mommies girl. She has always looked around and made sure her mom was
around. I tried really hard to keep Olivia engaged. We played the entire 1o minutes. This
kept Olivias attention so we didnt need treats to keep her happy. I was so happy Olivia
didnt have any tears. Also, normally I have at least of my own kids to entertain Olivia.
This experience went better than I expected. I now feel that Olivia is starting to get out of
the separation anxiety stage. It seemed to me Olivia was happy to have all of my
attention. We both had a fun time playing and imagining together. Having this

experience it was fun to think about the theories and write down which theories I really
saw.