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An Ultrasound-In the womb
My mother went to an ultrasound, which is something that sends high-frequency sound waves to the uterus to show a picture of the baby in the womb (2.7 of textbook).At first she wanted a boy because she was always so much of a tom boy and the first ultrasound showed that I was a girl.Studies have shown that looking at the ultrasound does help with the feeling of attachment (2.7 of textbook) which is probably why the constant monitoring of my growth helped my mother grow to love me even more. -
Born
My mother gave birth to me in a hospital via vaginal birth but she wanted to be as natural as possible and refused all medications, like the epidural, and felt that this was the safest way for both her and myself. In the textbook of chapter 3.2 (Bergstrom), there were no differences in the health of both parties during medical vs natural birthing practices.But even with info like this being told to my mom, she still sticks with her decision and wouldn't change how she gave birth to me. -
Breastfeeding
When my mother brought me home, she tried breastfeeding me. She stated that whenever I would cry, her breasts would hurt and leak out milk, even though she had problems producing the amount that I needed. I thought she was over exaggerating but this was probably due to her let-down reflex, as mentioned in chapter 3.5 in the textbook. -
Sleeping baby
I slept quite a lot as most babies do especially before the age of one. My mother was very cautious though and even if she was tired, she would constantly wake up to check on me throughout the night. She was sure to check that I was sleeping on my back, only wearing onesies instead of too much clothing or blankets, as it is pretty warm where we live. She also did not put any thick blankets, covers or toys near or on my crib. She took this precaution to avoid SIDS, like mentioned in chapter 4.1. -
Walking
I learned how to walk around 10 months old, which according to section 5.1 of the reading is within the wide range of the average ages of learning to walk. In this section, anything from 9-17 months is normal for children to start walking. -
Walking
I began walking at around 10 months of age which is within the wide ranged average that toddlers begin walking. According to section 5.1 of the reading, children learn to walk anywhere between 9-17 months of age. -
Drawing
After learning how to draw, I would always grab whatever I could find to draw with and draw all over the house. I used to draw on the pillows, sheets, walls, doors, tables, etc. According to Piaget in section 5.3, this was me using tertiary circular reactions, which is an action that I intentionally took and continued to repeat. -
Language and learning to speak
Both my parents speak English but my father's first language is Japanese. They both only spoke to me in English so I never got the chance to learn any other languages. The first words that I said were words such as, dog and cat due to my mom's pets or even mommy, daddy, car, tv, brush, etc.These were all words familiar to me that my parents used daily, like mentioned in chapter 4.6,babies usually learn to say words including important people or things that they hear all the time by the age of 1. -
Heels
When I was a toddler, I used to always see my grandma wear heels and carry a purse around when she had to leave or come home from work. I then started copying her and using deferred imitation as mentioned in section 5.3, by grabbing any bags that I saw and trying to fit in her heels to walk around like her. This showed deferred imitation b/c like section 5.3 states, this is when children repeat actions that they witnessed someone else doing. -
Drawing
When I was young I used to love drawing. I would grab anything I could find to draw with and draw all over the house. I drew on the walls, the pillow cases, sheets, and tables. This was an example of tertiary circular reactions, as mentioned in section 5.3 of reading, which is performing an action intentionally and repeating this action. -
Big girl
When I was 2 1/2 years old, I used to tell everyone that I was a big girl, which is gender identity. As stated in section 5.5, this is when children identify their own genders and use gender terms. -
Baking
When I was a toddler, I used to always watch my grandmother make Chinese almond cookies. After a while, I started to copy her using my toy kitchen and pretending to make my own cookies. This is an example of deferred imitation like mentioned in section 5.3 of the reading, which is when people copy something that they witnessed someone else doing. -
Pretending
When I was about 4 years old, my dad who is full Japanese used to pretend to have a tea ceremony with me. This is an example of guided participation as he would tell what they would do in the ceremony. Guided participation is the direction offered by the social and cultural values (section 5.3) -
Angry child
At around 4 years old, I was an only child and I usually got whatever I wanted. For the most part I was pretty grateful but like everyone, I had my bad days. Sometimes if I was in a bad mood and wanted a toy that my parents did not want to get me, I would tell them that I didn't like them and that they weren't my friend. This is an example of instrumental aggression, where I used verbal aggression or aggressive words/behavior to try to get what I wanted as described in section 6.9 reading. -
The tooth fairy
When I was about 7 years old, I stopped believing in the tooth fairy. For one she forgot to come one night and then later left me a note saying sorry but that really got me thinking about how there could be such a person that could go all around the world doing this. This shows an understanding of conservation as mentioned in chapter 6.4, where we start to think more logically about how the world works. -
All about disney
When I was in the 4th grade, I used to watch disney channel pretty often. At times they would have commercials about games on their websites which intrigued me, therefore, I would play the computer games while still watching disney on tv. This shows media multitasking as mentioned in section 7.7 of reading, which is basically what the name says, using two medias at one time. -
Please excuse my dear aunt sally
When I was in the 4th grade, learning math, there was something that we had learned for doing equations, which was PEMDAS. Another way to remember this was "please excuse my dear aunt sally", which actually was the order of operations. This was supposed to represent parentheses, exponents, multiplication, division, addition, and subtraction. The abbreviation is an example of elaboration as talked about in chapter 7.3 which is just transforming information into something easier to remember. -
Hungry driving fun
After getting my license, I felt like a pro driver and I would often be hungry. I could be eating while driving and trying to find a good song to listen to on the radio, all at the same time. With this ability to focus on multiple tasks at a time, this was showing my divided attention as talked about in section 8.3 of the reading. -
Hash days
Sometimes I was just so tired and lazy after staying up late at night that I would go to school looking like a mess. At home I wouldn't care but as the day persisted, I would get more and more self conscious of how I looked. Then I would start thinking about how others are thinking about me, if I'm poor or dirty, etc. This showed an example of an imaginary audience, which according to section 8.3 of the reading, is when we exaggerate in our minds what other people could be thinking. -
Peer pressure
Since we just graduated high school and half of my friends were not going to college afterwards, many of them were in the "partying" mindset. They wanted to celebrate as much as possible because there was no school anymore for them. But my social control was not fully there, so I often gave in even when I had class the next morning. This greatly affected my grades and my sleep schedule, but as talked about in section 9.2, emerging adulthood is our low point of social control. -
Starting College
Prior to starting college, I was working 55+ hours weekly during that summer break. I then cut back to only 40 hours a week while going to school full time. This made me extremely sleepy, I felt like I had no time to sleep and was very unproductive during my days off due to oversleeping. This shows delayed sleep phase syndrome, like mentioned in section 9.2 of the reading, where college kids accumulate sleep debt during the week and can really hurt their cognitive and emotional functioning.
