Observation Six

Observation #6:

Rating Scale Observation

Background Context: October 29th 2015 Time from 4pm to 5:30pm

ZR is a nine year old girl diagnosed with a behavioral disorder as well as a hormone imbalance. She finds listening to be somewhat difficult at times, and often can become overwhelmed in social situations.

SM is a 10 year old girl, my sister, who is friends with ZR.

AB and GB are two twin 10 year old girls who rides at the same horse barn that ZR does and lives down the road from SM.

They were all playing with each other and I took note of the arguing, activities and playing that they participated in.  I focused mainly on ZR, as she was the child I focused on in my last observation. I wanted to see this time how she interacted with other children, rather than animals. I tried to stay very neutral and this time not interact so much with ZR.

Activity	Always	Often	Sometimes	Seldom	Never
All 4 play together			X
Arguing between twins		X
Listening to adult		X
Agreeing on activity				X
Arguing between ZR and SM			X
Arguing between twins and SM		X
Playing outside		X
Playing inside				X

Statements on Development:

ZR:

®    Very talkative, not always understandable. Typical for a 9-year old.

®    Early onset puberty, due to excessive hormone levels: this is very atypical. She is undergoing a surgery to help slow down her hormones & to help the body to regulate them more.

®    Highly observant, notices and comments on anything new or exciting. This is typical nine year old behavior.

®    Good with animals. Likes to give them attention and nurturing. Seems happy when she is with animals of all kinds (dogs, too). Fairly typical behavior, but varies child to child.

®    Gets stuck on ONE thing: today it was the fact that she wanted to play with SM by herself and not with the twins. She was upset because she wanted to play inside & they outside.

SM:

®    High energy- likes to be active. Typical.

®    Very interested in my life (as my younger sister) and likes to tag along with what I am doing.

®    Does not necessarily notice that ZR is unhappy with her actions- does not seem to understand why ZR feels that way. I think this seems typical- at this age brains are not fully developed and therefore cannot always empathize.

GB & AB:

®    Also high level of physical development, overweight. Somewhat typical.

®    Twins- like to spend time together. Rarely seen without each other. Fairly typical for twins

Professional Reflection:

I chose the checklist method of observation because there were four children total and I wanted to observe how they argued and interacted and to see a simplified version of this observation. I like how easy it is to use and the results turned out well.

A professional in this field may choose to use this method to collapse or condense the observation into an easy to understand format. It keeps your attention on the children more because you are not actively writing notes at all times.