Observation Of Observing Children

The child that was observed was a sibling of a close friend. The child was female and is 5 years old. An unexpected issue that arose was how frequently the child became engaged in different activities in a short time. During the whole observation my friend was with me overseeing the child, but my friend did not interfere with my note taking or observation. An issue that occurred was that I wasn’t aware that I would be following the child around in the playground/yard, since I thought the observation would be taking place at the child’s home. Due to the warm weather the child preferred to be outside and thus I had to follow around the child with the sister who was next to me. This caused my notes to be very sloppy and hard to understand. I expected the child to interact a lot more with her parents in the hour that I was observing but the child seemed content to be around her siblings, while the parents were gardening. I would prepare myself to expect sudden bursts of activity from the child next time and be more open minded about the area of the observation.
I assumed that the child will miss her parents and will go find them much sooner than what actually happened. The child was very energetic but I assumed that there will be more physical activity than the vast amount of communication that happened between the sister and the brother. Since the child was a female I expected the child to have a higher level of interaction with the mother, even though the child interacted with mother before the observation began interactions were mostly limited to their brother and sister. If someone were to read the observation notes it would seem that the child is more comfortable around their siblings rather than being with their