Monday, July 28, 2008
Thursday, July 24, 2008
Wednesday, July 16, 2008
Observation Paper for School
This is a short observation paper that I turned in for one of my classes, kinda like a journal....
"Assignment 1
In reviewing this first assignment, I couldn’t imagine a better place to make these observations than in my own home and with my own children. I am so engrossed in how the two of them are progressing that I am grateful to have had this assignment to be able to put it into words what I tell family and friends daily. My wife keeps a daily (really weekly) blog of the kids at familyhershey.blogspot.com, but this hopefully will prove to be a little more in depth for the purpose of this assignment.
With regards to which one I review, I have chosen to speak about Bennett. He is the larger one of the two by about one and a half pounds, which makes him just a little more developed for this observation. He has also from what I have seen, advanced a little more with regards to the cognitive and physical developmental attributes. Catherine is still in the somewhat in her “premie/infancy” stage, so hopefully she will catch up nicely soon enough.
Bennett just turned 11 weeks old this past Tuesday the 15th (my birthday) of July. He has shown since the inception of this class the following attributes physically. He has lost a little of his brown hair, but has been able to keep a decent cover over his little noggin. He right now has blue eyes, but we understand that this can change a little later. He is a fairly proportionate baby with regards to his height and weight, but his head falls pretty high in the growth chart at the 51st percentile. He is now able to hold up his head somewhat when we hold him with are hands under his arms. He tends to mostly turn his head to his right which is something that the pediatrician wants us to keep an eye on. He is now starting to come out of what we believe to be a growth spurt, so he has stopped eating as much as he was about a week ago (100 cc then vs. 120 cc now). Within the past week or so he also has started to kick his legs when he is lying on his back which sometimes is in concert, but most of the time not, with his arms. Most of these things also blend in to the cognitive aspect of my observations. When Bennett is in a good (stable) mode, I notice the following actions fairly routinely displayed:
1. He is starting to track things around the room. We have a woman who stays with us at night for 5 days a week to let us get some sleep. When she came into the nursery the other night, he noticed her and followed with both his head and his eyes her walking across the room
2. He seems to have started reaching our making motions for an object called the “Diaper Monkey”. This little monkey hangs above the changing area and rattles. We try to draw their attention to it when changing their diapers so that they won’t be moving so much. He, and she to some extent, have started to notice DM when we rattle it.
We regards to the social effects, I am not seeing any real observed occurrences in this domain. I don’t think that he really notices when his sister is right there, much less wants to do anything about it. He does notice however when she is screaming bloody murder in the middle of the night.
Emotionally I have noticed an affective notion of being soothed when we pick him up after a lengthy crying bout. Sometimes I have to make a choice when one of them is crying and I am feeding the other one. Do I stop feeding and attend to said sad baby, or do I finish the feed and then attend to the “concerned” party. The answer usually is dependent upon the type of cry I am getting. When Bennett is taking 2 to 3 second breathes to ramp up for a scream, you plug her up with a pacifier and attend to him. I have noticed that after one of these meltdowns he really senses that he is in dad’s arms and that everything is going to be ok. He may take a few seconds to get his wits about him, but he does seem to have reached a point where calming down is ok at this point.
I know that I could ramble on for a while about this, but there are length guidelines, and yes, I believe one of them is crying again…….
-nh"
"Assignment 1
In reviewing this first assignment, I couldn’t imagine a better place to make these observations than in my own home and with my own children. I am so engrossed in how the two of them are progressing that I am grateful to have had this assignment to be able to put it into words what I tell family and friends daily. My wife keeps a daily (really weekly) blog of the kids at familyhershey.blogspot.com, but this hopefully will prove to be a little more in depth for the purpose of this assignment.
With regards to which one I review, I have chosen to speak about Bennett. He is the larger one of the two by about one and a half pounds, which makes him just a little more developed for this observation. He has also from what I have seen, advanced a little more with regards to the cognitive and physical developmental attributes. Catherine is still in the somewhat in her “premie/infancy” stage, so hopefully she will catch up nicely soon enough.
Bennett just turned 11 weeks old this past Tuesday the 15th (my birthday) of July. He has shown since the inception of this class the following attributes physically. He has lost a little of his brown hair, but has been able to keep a decent cover over his little noggin. He right now has blue eyes, but we understand that this can change a little later. He is a fairly proportionate baby with regards to his height and weight, but his head falls pretty high in the growth chart at the 51st percentile. He is now able to hold up his head somewhat when we hold him with are hands under his arms. He tends to mostly turn his head to his right which is something that the pediatrician wants us to keep an eye on. He is now starting to come out of what we believe to be a growth spurt, so he has stopped eating as much as he was about a week ago (100 cc then vs. 120 cc now). Within the past week or so he also has started to kick his legs when he is lying on his back which sometimes is in concert, but most of the time not, with his arms. Most of these things also blend in to the cognitive aspect of my observations. When Bennett is in a good (stable) mode, I notice the following actions fairly routinely displayed:
1. He is starting to track things around the room. We have a woman who stays with us at night for 5 days a week to let us get some sleep. When she came into the nursery the other night, he noticed her and followed with both his head and his eyes her walking across the room
2. He seems to have started reaching our making motions for an object called the “Diaper Monkey”. This little monkey hangs above the changing area and rattles. We try to draw their attention to it when changing their diapers so that they won’t be moving so much. He, and she to some extent, have started to notice DM when we rattle it.
We regards to the social effects, I am not seeing any real observed occurrences in this domain. I don’t think that he really notices when his sister is right there, much less wants to do anything about it. He does notice however when she is screaming bloody murder in the middle of the night.
Emotionally I have noticed an affective notion of being soothed when we pick him up after a lengthy crying bout. Sometimes I have to make a choice when one of them is crying and I am feeding the other one. Do I stop feeding and attend to said sad baby, or do I finish the feed and then attend to the “concerned” party. The answer usually is dependent upon the type of cry I am getting. When Bennett is taking 2 to 3 second breathes to ramp up for a scream, you plug her up with a pacifier and attend to him. I have noticed that after one of these meltdowns he really senses that he is in dad’s arms and that everything is going to be ok. He may take a few seconds to get his wits about him, but he does seem to have reached a point where calming down is ok at this point.
I know that I could ramble on for a while about this, but there are length guidelines, and yes, I believe one of them is crying again…….
-nh"
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