Virtual Child Assignment

My Virtual Child Assignment Throughout the course of the class and completing the My Virtual Child assignment, I have been given new information in regards to childhood development through the lifespan. Starting with infancy, we had the opportunity to raise our own child online and test our parenting skills while applying the knowledge we learned from class. I believe this program has helped me grasp the concepts we learned in class and fully understand the different aspects of development throughout childhood. As I started the program, I had the opportunity to pick the gender of my child and provide a name. My child’s name was Ezra (Manis, 2008) and he was a boy. I selected his name because it is one of the names that I plan to name one

When Ezra was eight years old, he had a psychologist report done that asked a set of questions not only to him but also to myself about my parenting style. I scored high in the top 15 percentiles in not only warmth and affection but also discipline and control. Being high in all four aspects of parenting styles puts me into the authoritative style (Bee & Boyd, 2012). In The Developing Child, the authors describe the parents with this parenting style as those that are “setting clear limits, expecting and reinforcing socially mature behavior, and at the same time responding to the child’s individual needs (Bee & Boyd, 2012, p. 326).” As I reflect on certain situations, I can tell that this style guided my parenting. For example, when Ezra was 6 he frequently cheated at games if he knew he could get away with it. My response, with accordance to my authoritative parenting style, was to beginning teaching him right and wrong, not getting upset, but to bring up the cheating and tell him to play by the rules despite him not having a “strong sense of mortality (Manis, 2008).” I decided to use that option because I wanted Ezra to learn from the experience but continue to play the game and have