Naturalistic Observation
Before interviewing Cara, since she is under 18, I made sure to first ask her parents consent if it would be okay that I can get Cara’s help by allowing me to use her for my life span developmental course. After they agreed, I also went to ask Cara who confirmed it was okay and that she would help me with whatever I needed to do. After I told them that the information would be private and I were to change her name she agreed that I may come and observe her when she comes home from school.
Cara Gordon is a fourteen-year old high school student. I first arrived at Cara’s house at around 5:00 pm when she finished school for the day. She was in her room doing her homework while multitasking and watching Television on her bed. I told her that I may not speak now and will just be writing notes on my computer. Cara continued to watch Television, flipping through the channels and putting her homework on the floor. At 5:10, her mother came into the room. She than began to yell at Cara that yet again she got a letter sent home saying that she failed her math test. Cara just yelled back at her screaming that it is not her fault and that she tried her best. Her mom told her if she doesn’t do better in school she is not allowed to have texting on her cellphone for three weeks. After they argued for about five minutes, her mother left. Cara had tears in her eyes but just continued to watch Television. At 5:17, Cara turned off the Television, took her math book and threw it on the floor. She than picked up her phone, and looked as if she was texting. At 5:32, Cara took out her computer and started video chatting (a face-to-face conversation over the Internet by use of webcams) with her friend. Cara was not talking ou...
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... to know what would like to do, or have any particular interests besides for her body image and popularity. From interviewing Cara, she has showed that she cares a lot about what her friends are doing and what her peers think about her. Of course, this can be helped, but I believe if she still continues to go down this route it may lead her in a bad direction. I think if her mother were to get more involved in her life without reprimanding her to an extreme extent it can help their relationship, and eventually help with Cara’s self-esteem and identity and overall her development. What I believe that is positive for her development is being in a school that she likes, and enjoying healthy activities such as running. Although her mother may believe that she is better off studying, running is a great way to relieve stress, maintain a healthy life-style and body weight.
Ashley Davis is a 14 year-old, brown-skinned, African-American, masculine presenting female. Ashley’s mother reports that patient is defiant, especially toward her and other authority figures. Mother reports that Ashley’s behavior disrupts the family, her ability to achieve in school and has landed her in legal trouble. Mother reports that the Ashley began to exhibit sexually promiscuous behavior starting as early as 9 years old. Her reason for referral and placement on the unit was due to Ashley’s mother, finding her and her twin brother naked together in a sexualized position, all while trying to record this interaction. When the mother questioned both Ashley and her brother, it seemed as though the Ashley was the aggressor.
Last week, Katera was taken into temporary custody and later released to Centerstone of Illinois. Kaella reported an argument ensued after Katera was denied permission to go to a friend’s residence located in Harrisburg over the weekend. Kaella moved from Harrisburg to her current address a few months ago. The argument started inside the residence. Kaella was in her bedroom and Katera was in her bedroom. Katera entered her mother’s bedroom screaming and yelling. Kaella could not control her daughter’s behavior. Katera hit her mother on the backside of the torso with a pot taken from the kitchen and threatened to kill her. Kaella remanded her young son to run into the kitchen and gather all the knives and kitchen utensils so that Katera could not get to them. At this point, Kaella called 911 for help. Kaella ordered Katera to go outside until the police arrived. Katera went outside and took out her anger on the vehicle. I did not observe any obvious damage to the vehicle that appeared
She wanted to spend 8 hours at a place where she wasn’t like some type of disease. One day Alex got called to Ms. Cook’s office. When asked about her absences she told her about playing video games but she eventually told her about Ms. Pearson and how bad people at school was treating her. Ms. Cook told Alex that she would get back with her but Alex never heard back from Ms. Cook. Alex was even confronted by her mother after she had got a call from one of Alex’s classmates parents. She asked Alex about the post and Alex showed her mom the Myface and messages directed to her, she even told her about the horrible moments at school. When Ms. Billings realized that she didn’t get a copy of Alex’s report card or a phone call back, she took matters in her own head. Even when Alex’s mother contacted Principal Li about the situation she replied a week later saying “It’s probably just teenage squabbling”. As the Principal of KHS she failed to complete her task. As said in the KHS Anti-Bullying Policy under Administration Procedures for Responding to Reports of Bullying states that the KHS Principal who is Principal Li is responsible for receiving complaints alleging bullying. Also the Principal is required to conduct a prompt and thorough investigation of each
I will be evaluating the case of Angela and Adam. Angela is a white 17 year old female and Adam is her son who is 11 months old (Broderick, P., & Blewitt, P., 2015). According to Broderick, P., & Blewitt, P., (2015) Angela and her baby live with her mother, Sarah, in a small rental house in a semirural community in the Midwest. Adam’s father, Wayne, is estranged from the family due to Sarah refusing to allow him in the house however, Angela continues to see him without her mother’s permission which is very upsetting for Sarah. Angela dropped out of high school and struggles raising her son (Broderick, P., & Blewitt, P., 2015). With all that is going on in Angela and Sarah’s life right now their relationship has become strained and hostile which
Cara Sierra Skyes has a hard role in Perfect by Ellen Hopkins. Cara is in love with her boyfriend Sean, she describes him as fun, good-looking, adventurous, and a jock. Everyone expects the perfect girl to go out with the perfect guy. Caras mom has always taught her, appearances are everything. So, Cara held onto that. She is a pretty and popular cheerleader. Cara holds a special trait, she is actually really smart and has a scholarship lined up at Stanford. Problem is, Cara has a twin brother, Connor. Connor is super suicidal and has tried many times to kill himself, sadly one day he succeeds and leaves a girlfriend and his family behind in his high school years. So everything is definitely not the idea her parents have of “perfect”. At Least she tries. Cara is in love with her boyfriend Sean but she starts to spark an interest for a girl at the ski slopes one day and she becomes very confused. Between dealing with all her school activities, her grades, and her brother that she worries about all the time, Cara is struggling to keep her life together and be
When asked about discipline at home she said that if you got in trouble you picked your own switch and braced yourself to get your butt beaten. At home their was always a consequence and you knew it. When she talked about school she said “money could get you out of just about anything”. She explained a situation in which a student got expelled, but then their parents made “some generous donations” and that student was allowed to return. “The only exception was if a girl got pregnant then the girl, not the dude, would be kicked out!” Going along with values, Lindsey said that something the school did not value that her home did was food. She mentioned that the school could mess up any food, yet at home, if Lindsey came home with good grades like an A on a test her dad would fix up a big dinner to celebrate. Lastly she talked about how school valued education versus how her culture viewed it. She went on to say that “our school only cares about grades because it reflected good on the school, but my parents value
Adolescence’s go through stages at their teen point of their lives. They are curious, defiant and insolent. A parent’s main concern is to ensure that their child is protected from hazardous, troublesome situations especially, from ones that can involve self-harm and carry on into future self-harm. A parent has little approved tactics to act upon once they have already taken away their child privileges, grounded them and explained what they did wrong but that child still continues to act out. From being a teen myself, we must understand that the mindset of a teen is almost always focused on not being embarrassed. Since most teen are self conscious about their reputation they are less likely to rebel again once they realize that their reputation is in jeopardy. That feeling of distress is so unbearable and uneasy to forget that it overcomes any urge to something even remotely similar to what was shamed upon ever again. When Renee and Gentry Nickell tried everything to...
One of Amanda’s strongest characteristics is being domineering. She focuses mainly on their defaults and errors rather than focusing on how to be supportive and properly guide them as a mother. Any achievement her children would accomplish Laura wouldn’t recognize how skilled and their positive traits they can overcome. Amanda was being pessimistic about Laura’s future when Laura dropped business school and planned her future without hesitating to ask her but instantly assumed she was going to end up being an old maid. She didn’t think about any possibilities her daughter can become successful on her own, but instead she fails to recognize that both Laura and Tom can have a second chance to succeed on what their own plans for themselves can become if their mother wasn’t so over controlling.
My virtual child’s name is Naneno. She was born 1 week after her due date via a C-Section. She was a beautiful child that looked hairless, because of her light blond hair. She had bright blue eyes and an already infectious smile. Her blond hair grew very long over the years and became a little darker, with some dark blond highlights. I keep telling her that people spend a lot of money for highlights and hers are natural. Naneno has two sisters, both older than her. She always told her parents that she wanted to remain the baby, so no more siblings! I was born and raised in Germany and her dad is an US Soldier. We met when dad was stationed in Germany and have been married for 20 years. Naneno and her sisters were born in
For my Child Interview Assignment I interviewed a little girl named Kyla that I know from my hometown. I know her through my mother, who is friends with her mom. Kyla is a kindergartener at Johnson Elementary School in Scottsburg, Indiana where I went to school when I was her age. During my interview with Kyla I asked her various questions to help insure I was going to be able to study the different aspects of her development needed for this assignment. The answers I got from her were very surprising to me because they were definitely not what I was expecting from her. However, they still tied into the theories we studied in class so I felt she had only made my assignment more interesting for me to do, which I was slightly happy about because
Cyberbullying has become a very serious issue. One of the first cases of cyberbullying that made the news headlines was that of Megan Meier of Missouri. In late 2006, Megan was 13 years old and was a Myspace user. Megan was noted to be a self-conscious person and this caused her parents to move her from a public school to a private one. Megan had an off and on again friendship with a neighborhood girl. The Drew family lived just down the road from the Meier family but once they moved Megan out of the public school, the friendship between the Drew girl and Megan begin to fade. The cyberbullying began after it was thought by the Drew family that Megan had been gossiping about the Drew girl. The accusation fueled the drama that pursued on Myspace. Megan began an online friendship with a boy named Josh and Megan and Josh messaged everyday over Myspace forming an online relationship, or so Megan thought. It turned out that Josh was not a real person and was a ruse to see what Megan would say about the Drew girl and he had been fabricated by the mother of the Drew girl. The fabricated Josh began accusing Megan of talking badly about her friends. Megan never talked about her friends even after being pressed to do so and an online argument followed with other girls joining in. In the end, Megan was told by Josh that the world would be better off without her in it. Thirteen year old Megan
Just recently, a cyberbullying incident involving three girls resulted in one girl commiting suicide. The victim, Rebecca, started dating a boy back in 2012. Another girl did not like this so she began to harass and bully her telling her that she should “drink bleach and die” (Newcomb). The bullying did not stop there, it only escalated from online verbal harassment to physical confrontations at school. On top of that, the girl allegedly bullied any of Rebecca’s friends and turned one of her closer friends against her. During this school year (2013-2014), Rebecca tried to start fresh by going to a new school only to find that the bullying would continue. Find no other way out, Rebecca Sedwick jumped from the top of a silo tower on Sept. 9.
My role is to train and license perspective foster parents. The training I facilitated is called Model Approach to Partnerships in Parenting, or MAPP, which all interested candidates must complete as part of the certification process. The MAPP training is facilitated once a week for three hours, which equates to a total of thirty hours. During those ten weeks, I tend to develop a very close report with at least one of the participants. In my last MAPP training, for instance, I became very close with a 45 years-old Dominican woman whose modified name is Maria Perez. The connection I developed with Maria was different than the ones I have established in the past with other perspective foster parents. I attribute this, in part, to the fact that Maria and I share the same ethnic background. During one of the training sessions, Maria shared that her main motivation to become a foster parent is because she is unable to biologically conceive. This made me develop deep empathy for Maria as I have experienced the feelings of loss that come with infertility in my family. Maria and I used to talk almost at the end of each meeting. During one of our conversations, Maria expressed to be grateful with the knowledge she had acquired from the training and our conversations. In our last session, like usual, Maria came to me after class. However, this time her approach was
Adrienne felt she had no choice in her when she harassed her family on Facebook. She was a thirteen year old girl from Illinois caught in a family feud over one very important cause: her baby. She had just recently got into a very physical fight with her boyfriend and baby’s father, Shawn, at school over who takes better care of the beautiful little baby. Once the fight occurred, the school felt that since it was a family matter, pressing battery on school ground charges would only makes issues worse. Their middle school decided to let them go with just a warning, which ended up resulting in Adrienne and Shawn getting charged with an entirely different criminal case. Since Adrienne is the mother of the baby, she legally has full custody since Shawn has not taken her to court. Shawn’s family feels that Adrienne does not deserve to have full custody since Shawn is the one with the part-time job that provides the necessities for the baby. The feud on Facebook broke out between Adrienne and Shawn’s family discussing what she truly does for the baby besides just “baby-sitting” when she is not in school, and why she should and should not have full custody. Other than Adrienne saying, “Because I am her mother!”, she really had no other reasons for why she deserves her rights and her anger caused her to make threats about taking the baby away from Shawn and his family for the rest of their lives. That threat is where it began and ended, theoretically. Shawn started commenting now saying multiple profanities about her and her parenting; threating Adrienne physically and saying he was going to take her to court. The comments continued to go back and forth until finally an extended famil...
I remember first observing Kayla in my first day of fieldwork in Ms. Formoso’s classroom, room 208. Kayla is a 10 year old girl in a 5th grade inclusive classroom. She is an only child and lives in a neighborhood close to the school. My first impression of Kayla was that she was polite and liked to participate in class. She raised her hand whenever she had something to say and never spoke out of turn. Kayla was just one of those students you had to get to know. The more that I observed and interacted with her the more I learned about her. In one conversation she asked me where I was from because she said that I looked like her older cousin. After I gave her an answer, she shared with me that her parents were from Puerto Rico, but she was born in the U.S. Kayla struck me as a very confident individual. On that first day of fieldwork I didn’t notice that she used a hearing aid. Instead, I noticed that she was a little taller than the other girls. I noticed her long black hair and big soft eyes. It wasn’t until my next visit that I saw her trying to fix her hair that I noticed it was there. From that moment forward I started to notice that whenever she would get to class she would put her things away, sit at her desk, and then go back to her backpack and take out her hearing aid as well as the FM system. I noticed that she didn’t try to hide her hearing aid and that she didn’t care if other students happened to be looking at her as she was doing this, but since this was just part of her daily morning routine most students didn’t even seem to take notice.