Family Observation Paper

Observation Paper: Children in Childcare or Family Settings

Section 2: Description of Family Observation James Egins the 3rd is a rather rambunctious 5-year-old boy who has a great love for video games. James currently lives with his 27-year-old Filipino mother, 46-year-old African American father, and baby sister Princess who is only 1. Although James is the older brother in the household, he does have an older half sister who is 25 years old. James would definitely fall under the category of “slow to warm up”, he needs to be around someone for awhile to get adjusted to them. As for both parents, they can be described as residing on the “permissive” end of the spectrum when it comes to parenting styles (Lewin, 2016a). The observation started in the afternoon around 2:30 and ended around 5:30. James was at his grandmother’s house going from basement
to midlevel off and on. Also, his niece, who is a year younger, played with him most of the observation time. He would occasionally head upstairs to visit his parents or one parent would go downstairs to check on the two to see if they were behaving. Most of the time, the two played tag or tumbled on a padded gym mat.
Section 4: Child’s Behavior & Development in the Family James is a fairly tall for his age and could easily pass for a child older than 5. As noted in lecture, he is about 50 inches tall when the average in only around “46 inches” (Lewin, 2016b). James does not carry much baby fat on him like you might find on a two-year-olds body. Furthermore, there is noticeable muscle development which is said to be usual in a 5-year-old child, according to (Lewin, 2016b). Seeing James father, who is over 6ft, and mother who is around 5’9, it makes sense to assume their son will grow to be somewhere in the 6ft range. When James and his niece were taking a break from playing they went to grab something to drink. First, his niece grabs a tall fairly narrow cup and James grabs a wider but shorter cup and they both go to fill it up with water. Once they go sit down, James starts to look upset that he grabbed the wider cup because he thinks that he wasn’t able to get as much water. Even though James cup took longer to fill up he wasn’t understanding because of his inability to grasp the concept of “conservation” (Feldman, 2016, p. 226).
Section 6: Evaluation – Family. As stated previously, both parents express more of a “permissive” parenting style (Lewin, 2016a). When James was being called upstairs for something, he took his time to go up or respond to his parent. Also, his mother or father never came down to get him and follow up on calling him upstairs. Something else that occurred was when his mother told him to eat something- James responded with a firm “no” and then his mother continued to bribe him to eat the food. During the entire observation, James was only scolded once for misbehavior. From what was observed, there seemed to be a “secure attachment” between James and both of his parents (Lewin, 2016c).
Once James got situated and warmed up, he was completely ready to explore the entire house and play around with his niece. The interaction between him and his parents seemed to be full of love and comforting for James. Often, he would go over to his parents seemingly, just to quickly get their attention but go back to playing video games right after. He was comfortable with asking other family members like his grandmother for assistance when he needed it as well. A strong suit for this family is the love and affection that they show for one another and seemingly get along very well. The family as a whole is also providing James with a secure attachment and is fostering exploration and self-regulation. The main thing the family needs to work towards is a more “authoritative” parenting style (Lewin, 2016a). Working towards an authoritative parenting style will help James learn to be more emotionally responsive to his peers and set firm limits on how he should and should not
act.