U2 Observation

Background Information
Person’s age: 24 months
Fictious Name: “Rosa” (The child’s name has been changed for privacy purposes.)
Location: Leatherby’s Creamery
Brief Description: Observation of Rosa Interacting with family, friends, and ice cream.

Biological Development

During my observation of Rosa, the first thing I noticed was her body size compared to
her cousin, who is the same age as her. “Physical growth in the second year is slower but still
rapid. By 24 months, most children weigh almost 28 pounds. They have added more than a foot
in height – from about 20 inches at birth to about 34 inches at age 2” (Berger, 2019, p. 84).
After the reading I knew to ask both of their mother’s what percentile they were in. Rosa’s
mother said she was in the 50th percentile and her cousins mother said he is in the 90th
percentile. Her cousin is taller and thicker, he had chunky arms – again, bigger hands and feet -
and legs. You name it, it was chunky, and/or bigger, comparatively. I found it interesting
because both of their moms were about the same height and both of their dads are brothers
with the same build and height.

Another thing that I noticed during my observation was that Rosa had really good fine
motor skills. “Small body movement are called fine motor skills. The most valued fine motor
skill are finger movements, enabling writing, drawing, typing, tying and so on. Movement of the
tongue, jaw lips, teeth, and toes are fine movements, too” (Berger, 2019, p. 95). She knew how
to use and which utensil she needed to eat her ice cream and food. She is also a thumb-sucker,
and she knows how to suck her thumb and pick her nose at the same time. At dinner she was
given a kid’s menu and knew how to draw and color as well. Finally, she got bubble gum ice
cream and she knew how to eat the bubble gum and not swallow it.

Cognitive Development

While we were all at the table I was playing with Rosa and her toys, I took one of her
toys and hid it behind my back with hopes she would think it was gone and eat her food, but
she still understood that I was hiding it behind my back. I know she understood because she got
up out of her seat and came and grabbed it from behind my back. This is called object
permanence, “the realization that objects (including people) still exist when they can no longer
be seen, touched or heard” (Berger, 2019, p. 98).

Something else I observed was that she’s not very good at talking. I’m not sure if it’s
because she’s behind in her development, or just because she’s shy, but she talks much less
than her cousin. I would try to talk to her and ask her about what her toy names are, how old
she is, if she was excited for ice cream, and other things like that, but she wouldn’t really
respond to me. The only thing she would really do was nod her head yes or no, but she would
form a sentence and talk to me. By 24 months a toddler should be using “multiword sentences.
Half of the toddler’s utterance are two or more words long” (Berger, 2019, p. 105). But I think
she’s just shy because she would kind of talk to her mom when she wanted something, but she
wouldn’t talk to anyone else. Her speech wasn’t understandable but of course her mom could
understand and communicate with her even when it seemed as if she wasn’t using any words
at all.

Psychosocial Development

While waiting for our food, I was watching Rosa for her mother while she grabbed the
few toys that she had brought to dinner for her to play with. Her mom said that she hoped
bringing the toys would help Rosa stay busy and out of everybody’s hair. When we got our
food, Rosa was feeding herself and drinking her water without any assistance from her mom.
The only thing her mom helped her with was getting the ketchup out of the ketchup bottle
because she couldn’t squeeze the bottle tight enough to get anything out all by herself. While I
watched her do those things it reminded me of one of my key terms and it seemed like she has
a distal parent. Distal parenting is “(keeping some distance – providing toys, encouraging self-
feeding, and talking face to face instead of communicating by touch)” (Berger, 2019, p. 143).

As I mentioned earlier, Rosa is a thumb-sucker. One of her most favorite things to do is

to suck her thumb. Everywhere and anywhere that she goes. Her mom says it’s a comfort thing
and doesn’t discourage the thumb sucking. In the last year, I can’t think of a time I’ve seen Rosa
where she wasn’t sucking her thumb at some point during our encounter. I asked her mom
about how long she had been sucking her thumb and she said since she was about 11 months
old. Her mom said she has tried to get her to stop sucking her thumb, but Rosa just continues to
suck her thumb. I told Rosas’s mom that we learned about the sucking sensation in class and
how Freud said, “the mouth is the young infant’s primary source of gratification” (Berger, 2019,
p. 142).

Reference
Berger, K. S. (2019). Invitation to the life span (4th ed.). New York, NY: Worth Publishers .