How Children Develop Cognitively

Observation
Part 1: Running Record
Thomas is watching Paw Patrol on the couch. He is not so much sitting as he is lying on his stomach with his feet in the air. Paw Patrol ends and Thomas cries out, “IT’S OVER!” He gets no response, so hops down from the couch and looks for his mother. “It’s over, Mama!” he whines. “Okay, well, I told you you could watch one episode!” she responds. Thomas whines more loudly. “I want to watch another one! I want to watch Blaze!” Thomas cries, stretching out the sounds in the last words to emphasize them. He pouts and fusses and pulls at his hair and face as though he can’t stand this predicament. His mother says, “Why don’t we color?” Thomas cries more vehemently. His mother, unperturbed, says lovingly and with some excitement in her tone: “We got those new coloring books and crayons from the store! Remember?” Thomas stops crying. “Oh yeah! We got crayons and coloring books!” He is now excited about coloring and jumps up and down and claps his hands and smiles and laughs. His mother gets up to get the crayons and coloring books.
Thomas colors for a few moments. He does not stay in the lines. He uses a variety of colors. He colors each individual section of the page with a color and gets a new crayon to color another section. He colors a few pages and says, “All done, Mama! Now can I have uh apple?” His mother says, “Just one minute.” Thomas sidles up alongside her and persists, “Mama, can I have uh apple?” “One minute,” she says. He waits maybe three seconds and asks with a little more pout in his tone, with the familiar face pulling and whine appearing, “I want uh apple…” and follows it up with a whimper. “Okay, let’s get an apple,” his mother says. He follows her happily into the kitchen, jumping and skipping as he goes. She cuts an apple for him and he dances around the room while he eats it. When his older brother and sister come in, he roars with excitement and shouts with a mouthful of apple, “APPLE!” and spins in several circles before crashing off down the hall. He follows his older siblings in playing with Legos, watching them and mimicking their actions. He sets his apple down and picks up Legos. Thomas puts three Legos together. He holds his Legos in his hand and picks up his apple as he stomps around the room. He roars like a dinosaur as he stomps. Then he stops and moves his head side to side, and his whole body moves as well. He sings the Paw Patrol theme song in broken toddler English: “Paw Puhchol, Paw Puhchol! Be there on uh double!” as he continues to sway side to side and walk around the room clutching his Legos and finishing his apple.
Part 2: Analysis
Physical Development
Thomas is well developed for a two year old. He is stocky with full cheeks and a healthy glow. His fine use of fingers is evident as he was able to hold individual crayons and color with them. Though he did not stay in the lines when coloring, he showed awareness of the lines and did not color haphazardly as though there were no lines at all. Likewise, when he played with Legos, he was able to put three small Lego blocks together and walk around holding them displaying pleasure and a sense of accomplishment at having achieved this Lego stacking task. He is also strong and his large muscles have developed well: he demonstrates the ability to go from standing still to springing into action with a burst of energy and crash down the hall. He also has balance and dexterity as he is able to stomp and sway without falling over, and he is able to slide off a couch from a lying position and turn and land on his feet without trouble. By all accounts, he appears to be developing in a typical way.
Cognitive Development
In terms of sensorimotor development, Thomas demonstrated the sub-stage of representational thought, which is consistent with his age at 24 months. He constructed a Lego and it served as a meaningful accomplishment for him, clearly representing something or serving as some kind of symbol. As Piaget (1964) notes, this is a stage of cognitive development in which the child begins to have the ability to develop a sense of symbolism. He also demonstrated some preoperational stage development by engaging in role playing (acting as a dinosaur, roaring and stomping around and singing Paw Patrol).
He also had a sense of object permanence, which is another aspect of the sensorimotor stage. He remembered the crayons and coloring book that his mother had purchased for him at the store when she mentioned it. He also understood that he could watch another show after one had ended, meaning he sensed that just because the show was over it did not mean another could not be turned on.
He showed a good sense of how to use tools: he colored well-enough for a two year old, staying on the page with the crayons and showing awareness of the general area in which he needed to color. He was able to put the Legos together. He also demonstrated excellent secondary circular reactions, repeating his whine when he did not immediately get his way and producing the long face for added effect. It was his go-to move for emphasizing his wants.
Language Development
The child communicated very well for a two year old. He was able to express using intelligible words what he wanted. He addressed his mother by name, “Mama,” and used proper diction: “I want uh apple”—“uh” the only mispronunciation but obviously understandable for one so young. The toddler often whined and pouted when he did not get what he wanted, which is also to be expected for the age (Fagot, Hagan, Leinbach & Kronsberg, 1985). The child left out some sounds in his sentences but it was nothing egregious and there were no indications of any speech delays or other developmental issues.
Social Emotional Development
The child’s temperament is extroverted, sanguine and melancholic. The child displayed great bursts of enthusiasm and excitement, punctuated by bouts of sadness and self-pity, which was probably no doubt part of his intention to get what he wanted, for whenever he would succeed in getting what he wanted his mood changed instantly. However, he was also capable of being diverted away from whatever sad thought oppressed him. For instance, the moment when he was complaining that he could not watch another show, his mother distracted him with coloring and that made him happy once more. Overall, as long as he was pleased, he was sanguine and happy.
The attachment behavior that I observed was one attachment to the mother, one to watching Paw Patrol, and one to apples. The child moved to his mother for comfort when the show ended (and the show was obviously entertaining for him otherwise he would not have requested more), and the apple was a kind of comfort food for him that filled the hole in between coloring and his brother and sister arriving home from wherever they had been.
The child experienced a sense of self by singing his favorite Paw Patrol song, and by demonstrating emotional self-regulation with the assistance of his mother, who used a comforting, soothing and calm and loving voice with him when he was distressed. Her ability to not lose her patience acted as a support for him as he relied on her strength to guide his own self-behavior. He calmed himself with her assistance and moved from whining about not being able to watch another show to being excited about coloring. He calmed himself with coloring for a while before then moving on to eating an apple. He was very happy to see his siblings and expressed his enthusiasm for apples by announcing to them that he had one. He also seemed to express enthusiasm for being a dinosaur as he romped and stomped and crashed and roared like one while playing.
Thomas displayed unoccupied play (watching TV), solitary play (coloring), physical play (hopping, spinning, stomping, jumping, romping and roaring), constructive play (building with Legos), fantasy play (acting like a dinosaur), onlooker play (watching his siblings build Legos before joining in), and parallel play (building alongside his siblings). Each of these types of play is consistent with his age and his social emotional development (Fiese, 1990; Garner & Bergen, 2006). In relation to Erikson’s stage of trust vs. mistrust, Thomas showed a high degree of trust towards his mother and siblings.
Part 3: Conclusion
The observation supported my understanding of infancy and toddler development by showing that at certain age levels, children are going to tend to behave in typical ways, as they are learning motor skills, emotional regulation, and how to play in different ways. What I learned from the observation assignment overall was that at the toddler age, the child is developing ways of expressing himself and will rely on old formulas to get what he wants. He is also learning emotional self-regulation and a mother’s soothing words and ability to distract the child from negative emotion by using positive emotion can be very helpful.
Summary
The child observed for this study was a two year old named Thomas. The observation began with Thomas finishing up a show. When it ended, he complained he wanted to watch another. The mother switched the child’s negative emotion to positive emotion by remaining calm with the pouting, whining child. The child colored for a while, demonstrating solitary play and motor control. The child then asked for an apple and danced happily in more solitary, physical play. When his siblings arrived, he watched them play and then entered into parallel play with them. Overall, the child showed typical signs of social emotional, physical, language and cognitive development for his age.

References
Fagot, B. I., Hagan, R., Leinbach, M. D., & Kronsberg, S. (1985). Differential reactions
to assertive and communicative acts of toddler boys and girls. Child development, 1499-1505.
Fiese, B. H. (1990). Playful relationships: A contextual analysis of mother?toddler
interaction and symbolic play. Child Development, 61(5), 1648-1656.
Garner, B. P., & Bergen, D. (2006). Play development from birth to age four. Play from
birth to twelve: Contexts, perspectives, and meanings, 3-12.
Piaget, J. (1964). Part I: Cognitive development in children: Piaget development and
learning. Journal of research in science teaching, 2(3), 176-186.