Background Information

Person’s age: Adolescent (12-18 years old)

Fictitious Name: “Carmen” (The child’s name has been changed for privacy purposes.)
Location: Carmen's Home
Brief Description: Video of an adolescent interacting with their siblings, and caregivers
at their home.

Biological Development
Carmen is pretty clever and she will use her body in any way to get her
intended object. One point in the video she needs something on a top shelf in the
pantry so she climbs up so she can get it. Another time you see her coming toward
the camera and ducked maybe even crawled across so she would bump into it. Her
gross motor skills are working great as she gets water for her siblings and when she
is pulling the pizza slice, also she is chewing.
The next scene that you see is they are in the backyard and Carmens
brothers are jumping on the trampoline. She was able to help one of her siblings on
along with herself. When she was on the trampoline she jumped and even kicked
the ball at the same time. Carmen was also able to do some tricks in the air like a
backflip, back handspring as well as landing on her back which made her fly
backwards! By far the coolest trick I have seen on a trampoline. As her and her
siblings took turns it was cool because they started to copy each other’s tricks.
Carmen did an aerial and copied her sister who had done it previously.
While she and her siblings were on the trampoline she was needed to get off
the tramp well and when she came back she was able to get on really well. She
stepped on a pail in order to get on and off of the tramp. As I have been observing
Carmen's actions she is definitely one that is fit and with all the tricks that her and
her sister do I am thinking they might be in dance or tumbling because they had
everything down even to pointed toes.

Cognitive Development
In this video Carmen is pretty shy or at least that is what it looks like since she
isn’t talking a lot which could be she might be camera shy. She starts talking more
when she has a conversation with someone with her brother. A funny thing I noticed
in this video is that while the kids are eating more of the girls have their mouths
closed where the boys don’t. It is funny because I have seen that in my own life
growing up with boys.
Even on the tramp she makes sure her siblings get a chance to do tricks and
doesn’t really say anything even if one of her siblings cuts in front of her. You can tell
that she has a lot of patience when she goes to do a trick the youngest goes in front
of her and does a short front flip and she just stands there and waits for him to be
done. Once he is done getting up from his front flip she waits for him to go with his
other siblings who are waiting on the side and then does her trick. This shows that
she is even being protective of her siblings. Another example of this is when the
older brother is doing a trick he jumps closer and closer to the youngest. Carmen
was able to motion him to come closer to her and her sister which he did go closer to
them. When the youngest moved the brother had more room as well as not kicking
his brother in the face. It is nice to see how a lot of the parenting roles are seen
being developed during the adolescent age.

Psychosocial Development
It was interesting how you could see she was the oldest girl in the family.
Whenever the girls went to get a slice of the domino's pizza she would always close
the cardboard lid so the heat could stay and keep the pizza warm. Then there was
her brothers who just left the lid open so they could grab more slices. You could
even see that she took on the “womanly role” as she asked her siblings if they
wanted water.
The next scene that you see is they are in the backyard and Carmens
brothers are jumping on the trampoline. She was able to help one of her siblings on
the trampoline and there was a net so when she got on the trampoline she made
sure it was zipped up. I just thought of how much we say mothers along with fathers
protect their children and you can definitely see that Carmen is already doing that in
her adolescence.
You can see that she cares more about her siblings than herself or how she
acts throughout the video asking them if they need any water. Even when they are
on the tramp she gets cut in line and it doesn’t even phase her as she is watching
her siblings do their tricks. There is a thing called Adolescence egocentric which
means,"A characteristic of adolescent thinking that leads young people (ages 10 to
13) to focus on themselves to the exclusion of others"(Berger, 2016,p. 94). This is
definitely not Carmen. It is nice to see that she has already gotten past this stage or
she might have just skipped that stage. It is funny though because you can see it in
her other siblings as they do cool tricks they try to do the coolest one. At one point in
the video one of the siblings yells out “ Show Off!”

Reference
Berger, K. S (2019).Invitation to the life span (4th ed.). New York, NY: Worth
Publishers. (Berger, 2016,p. 94).