Case of Study

My case of study is based on a toddler whose name is Axel Alexander Rodriguez, he is 2 years old, and he lives with his parents; and also in a middle child whose name is Assly Marielos Zapata, she is 8 years old, and she lives with her parents. They were studied according to her stage in the physical, cognitive, and psychosocial area of development. In this case, I studied them according to what some researcher and experts have said about childhood stages and areas in their theories of children’s development.

Before recording the case of study:

I looked for all the information that I find about the stages and areas that we were asked to include on it. It is important to mention that I only looked for information about two stages: toddlerhood and middle childhood due to the fact that I could not find the child at the early stage. All the information that I got was from some webpages and the handouts that we have been studying in the class.

Then, I asked for the children’s mother if they could borrow me their children, I explained them the activity, and they agreed with that.

Finally, I chose the activities that I was going to ask them to do, I looked for the camera, and I started to record them.

During recording the case of study:

 Firstly, I asked the toddler, whose name is Axel, to do all the activities that I had for him. At the beginning, I thought that he was not to do the activities if I was recording him. However, he showed more interested in doing all the activities.

Once I had recorded the toddler, I asked the middle child whose name is Assly, to do the activities that I had for her (you could see the activities in the video). As she is older, she has more understanding that being in front of a camera is not an easy task. Nevertheless, she tried to hide those nerves.

 After recording the case of study:

Once that I had recorded the children, I started to order every video according to the area and stage which they belonged. Then, I joined all of them in the movie maker program in order to see how it was going to be. As I had never edited a video, it was my first time. When I joined all the videos, according to what I saw in the program, I thought that the whole video was not going to appear, so I started to record myself in order to talk about the theories. I joined the audios with the videos, and as my computer was not working well, I could not see the video before saving it. It lasted more than one hour to be saved. Once that it was saved, I watched it and I realized that the whole videos were there and that there were parts in which I did not speak because I forgot to include them. However, I left it like that because I did not have enough time to fix it, and because I had several things to do. 

Now, talking about my finding on these children, I could realize that Salvadorian children are not far of the reality of American children, due to the fact that both children were able to perform accurately all the tasks, I mean in the same way as an American children would do it. It is important to mention that these children are from the country side. However, it was not a problem for them to perform well the tasks. Although it is true that not all children from the country side develop in the same way because it depends mostly on the parents’ background and education that children receive. Thus, I consider that these children performed well the activities because of those main factors that contribute to the children’s well development. In addition, I can say that in the physical area, children from this part have a better physical development because of the environment that living in the country side produces. That is why, we can notice that Axel’s physical development is even advanced according to his age because a two year old child is not able to kick a ball and run in the way as this boy does it. The same happens in Assly’s physical development because she is able to ride the bicycle and drive very fast since she was around five years of age, so I truly believe that children from the country side have a better physical development. On the other hand, talking about psychosocial development is the same for most Salvadorian children no matter where they live. Finally, in their cognitive development, I can say that children from the country side have less advantage comparing with children from the city. Nonetheless, Assly and Axel’s cognitive development is working according to their age.

References:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piaget's_theory_of_cognitive_development

http://psychology.about.com/library/bl_psychosocial_summary.htm

http://psychology.about.com/od/developmentalpsychology/ss/early-childhood-development_3.htm

Papalia, D., et al. A child's world. pp. 239-290. Mc Graw Hill. USA, 2006