Child Development Observation
Child observation during the early stages of development entails watching, listening, documenting, and analyzing a child’s actions and behaviors as they explore and discover themselves. It involves monitoring the child’s physical activities, expressions, emotions, gestures, and behaviors by paying closer attention to how they talk and interact with their peers and their immediate environment. Observation helps discover what the child likes and what they dislike and understand their strengths and weaknesses. It also helps reveal and establish the child as an individual away from other children by how they approach different things and interact with people and the environment close to them.
Child Observation is a process that lasts through child growth. It involves consistently and keenly monitoring, documenting, and reviewing the observations to ensure that child’s development is in line with what is expected at that particular age. Observation should quickly establish any issues or delays in development and appropriate measures taken to ensure that the child receives suitable help. Some of the most common areas of learning and development that you can observe include language, emotions, physical, social, and cognitive development aspects.
What are the benefits of child observation in childhood?
Through observing and monitoring children as they explore, play, and learn, parents and practitioners can establish whether the child develops appropriately and whether the environment and resources like toys and occurrences influence their development. If the child has any difficulties in any area, it will be easy to catch the problem on time and establish the most appropriate support they may need to stimulate new interests and acquire new skills and knowledge.
Children learn by exploring and learning. Observing them as they go about their daily lives is the most accurate way for parents, teachers, and care providers to evaluate whether the child develops as expected. Observation should be conducted with the primary aim of acquiring accurate first-hand information regarding the child’s development and form a basis upon which appropriate plans focused on improving their development are made.
There are several child observation methods used to document and report different aspects of child development. One approach is running records, which involves recording observations as the action occurs, anecdotal records, which entails factual accounts of events answering questions like what, when, and where, and taking photographs and adding connotations of the event happening when the picture was taken. Whichever method is used, it is very important to make sure that the information recorded is factual, exact, and as detailed as possible. You may also consider comparing the behavior of the child in different scenarios and environments to ensure you get in-depth and reliable information.
References
Briggs, Stephen, Pat Cartney, Andrew Cooper, Minna Daum, Claire Kent, Duncan McLean, Graham Music, and Gillian Ruch. Observation in health and social care: Applications for learning, research and practice with children and adults. Jessica Kingsley Publishers, 2017.
Gischlar, Karen L. “Observing the child.” In Psychoeducational Assessment and Report Writing, pp. 109-130. Springer, Cham, 2020.
Palaiologou, Ioanna. Child observation: A guide for students of early childhood. Learning Matters, 2019: 2024 – Online Assignment Homework Writing Help Service By Expert Research Writers.
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