Virtual Child Case Study

1.
My child’s development was more atypical in his earlier years and became more typical when he reached puberty. In Virtual Child, you are given brief reports at the end of each developmental milestone. The reports evaluate your child’s verbal, academic, social, and motor skills. These reports also provide you information about your affectionate and discipline levels with your child and what you can do to improve in those areas. At 19 months, my child “Scored about the 12-15 month old range in terms of communication skill, language comprehension and language production” (Manis & Radford, 2016, 19 months). In his year 3 report, He scored below average in every area accept for gross motor skills. He didn’t start showing improvement until the
My partner and I would get into a lot of arguments that would make the environment hostile. There were times that I would fall into depression which, could have affected the relationship quality between me and my virtual child (Feldman, 2017, Families: The Changing Home Environment, para 17) . The simulator didn’t give me much of a chance to save my relationship with my partner. Even when my child was only 3 months, I and my partner would get into frequent arguments and at that point in the simulator, I had only answered maybe about three questions-which had nothing to do with my partner. The simulator just decided that my partner and I would end up in divorce. There are consequences of divorce that could have affected my child psychologically. For example, my child became depressed at a very young age and children can experience depression and other psychological maladjustments. (Feldman, 2017, Families: The Changing Home Environment, para 17). Things did get better overtime but, I think my child would have turned out differently if I had the option to work it out with my partner. Another factor that could have affected the way my baby developed was genes. The Virtual Child Simulator bases the genetic outcome of your baby based on the questions you answered before starting the simulator. The simulator only calculates my genetics, not my partners. The only question they ask about my partner is the gender. My partner’s genetics is unknown. Genetics plays a huge role in childhood development. While genetics obviously influence the physical appearance of the child, genetics also influence intelligence and personality (Feldman, 2017, Genetic and the Environment Working Together) It is also unknown if the simulator takes my answers and just applies them to my partners genetics. If that was the case, my child should have been diagnosed with ADHD. It is