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Birth
My son David was born today! Came out a week early, but he's healthy and beautiful! -
Initiative vs Guilt
From taking a psychology class in college, I remembered that this time of Davis's life is, according to Erikson, about planning things in a purposeful way (Arnett & Maynard, p. 21). So, I did what I could to encourage and allow David to do so. Letting him help me with certain tasks, asking him to plan where he wants to go when we visit the museum. By doing so, I really think that it helped him grow his sence of initiative. -
An early decision ...
I once read a journal in psychology in college talking about how children with authoritative parents were less likely to have problems with drinking and abusing alcohol, though they didn't know why. They scored how parent's were authoritative and applied that to adolescents who had received that kind of parenting and found a slight decrease in alcohol abuse, although there were many other factors involved. After that I knoew that's how I wanted to raise David. (Burk & Armstrong) -
"It's a wand!"
While playing today, David was pretending he was a wizard and used a stick he found as a wand. Here he's showing an example of Piaget's substage of preoperational development. He's showing that he uses representational thought in his play, that is common for this age. (Arnett & Maynard, p. 251) -
Number conservation.
David's teachers tells me that he is very good at math for his age. He even understands conservations of numbers! He understands that even though there may appear to be more items in one row than another, but they really have the same ammount. Piaget says that david isn't supposef to realize this til he's 6 or 7 years old! (Arnett & Maynard, p. 249, fig. 6.2) I guess my boy is ahead of the curve! -
"Why?"
David is asking more and more about why things happen. He is especially curious about things in science adn nature and why things are the way they are. I ask him if he knows why grass is green. He says he doesn't know, but he just knows that it is. Here Arnett & Maynard says that he's showing Piaget's second substage of preoperational development, intuitive thought (Arnett & Maynard, p. 251). -
"The sky is sad ..."
While it was raining outside, David turned to me and asked me why the sky was sad. At first, I didn't understand, but then I connected rain and crying and understood he was showing an aspect of egocentrisim: animisim. He was giving feeling to the weather (Arnett & Maynard, p. 250). -
Cheater cheater, pumpkin eater!
While playing a board game today, David cheated. We tried to ask him how his cheating makes other people feel, what it's like from their perspective. He didn't quite understand, but stopped anyway. This is an example of egocentrisim, a part of Piaget's preoperational stage (Arnett & Maynard, p. 250). -
"You're not like the other moms ..."
One thing I try to be very mindful of as I'm raising David is the idea of Authoritative parenting versus Authoritarian parenting. I try to be as responsive to his needs while at the same time making sure he knows what I expect of him, thus having a more authoritative parenting style (Arnett & Maynard, p. 269). David himself comments on this, telling me "Mommy, you're nicer than most moms, and stricter too." -
Classification
David likes building quite a lot. He likes the rainroad set we gave him for his birthday. One day I saw him sorting out him sorting out the different parts of the set; the tracks, the trains, colors of trains ect. Here we see David is showing that he understands classification, at least a little bit. He's able to put these different toys into different categories, something that is quite unique for his age according to Piaget in this developmental stage (Arnett & Maynard, p. 250).
