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Newborn Jaundice
We are so excited to welcome Grayson into the world! At the hospital, while holding Grayson, I noticed yellowing of his skin and eyes. I was extremely concerned, but the nurses assurred me that it was common. About half of all neonates have a yellowish look to their skin and eyeballs in their first few days of life. This condition is known as neonatal jaundice due to the immaturity of the liver (p. 99). -
Reach & Grasp
At five months, Grayson demonstrated his ability to reach and grasp when he reached out for the rattle toy I was holding and grasped on to it. He often holds/grasps the toy in one hand and then explores it with his other hand. According to Arnett, reaching and grasping is a principle milestone of fine motor development in infancy (p. 144). It can start at just one month of infancy, but it's at three months when reaching and grasping starts to occur in a moore coordinated and accurate fashion. -
Coordination of Secondary Schemes
Grayson is almost a year old and is displaying his ability to coordinate secondary schemes. He tends to move toys out of the way in order to get a toy that he desires more. If something is in his way on the floor in the living room, he will move it out of the way to free up a path to walk down. This is the 4th substage of Cognitive Development in Piaget's Theory and this is where the childs actions going from accidents to intentional, and can exercise more than one scheme at a time (p. 149). -
Toliet Training
Around age 2, Grayson started to show signs of readiness to start toliet training. There are multiple signs to watch for to see if your toddler is ready to progress towards toliet training; Grayson exhibited two of those signs which was staying dry for about two hours during the day, as well as increased anticipation of the event (pp. 183-184). The readiness to start toliet training usually occurs between 18 and 30 months of age, but children may still continue to have accidents after that age. -
Gross Motor Skills
At 4 years old, Grayson started to demonstrate excellent motor skills. He started climbing the stairs in our home without assistance and has been showing even more advancement with how he alternates his feet as he goes up and down the stairs. He is at the younger end of the spectrum for developing this type of motor skill. The ability to climb stairs without support and alternate their feet usually starts ate age three and is mastered by age six (p. 237). -
Vulnerability to the effects of media violence
With Grayson only being 4 years old, he does not have a TV set in his bedroom, and he is only allowed an hour of TV a day. Because young children between the ages of 3-6 are believed to be especially vulnerable to the effects of TV violence (p. 273-274), we pre-pick movies or shoes that he is allowed to watch. We pre-screen the programs to ensure that there's no violence, even in the lightest sense. We tchoose shows that have positive behaviors as Grayson is most likely to model their behavior. -
Metamemory
Grayson has been showing signs of metamemory. He is working on vocabulary in school and often times does much better on the lists of vocabulary that are shorter than longer, and he has expressed that he knows it's easier to memorize the shorter list than the longer. Metamemory is the ability and advancement of understanding how the memory works. He's a little bit on the later side of developing this understanding, as most children are age 5-6 when they begin to understand it (p. 299). -
Puberty
Amongst other changes, Grayson's voice pitch has been changing quite dramatically over the last year, and I expect that it will continue to change until about age 15. Change in voice is part of the secondary sex characteristics, and often occurs between the ages of 11-15 in boys (p. 343).