blog 10

I have one friend who was a wonderful example of the personal fable. She had a family who did not go to go to college. Most of the women in her family were at home moms. She would often remark about how she was going to go to college and be “better than them all”. She would tell stories about her plans of being a mom and being a successful professional of course this would be evidence by how wealthy she would be. She never really had any ideas about what profession to go into, but just more behind the story of how she was going to gain these things to be better than her current family members. Knowing her for years, I have had the pleasure of getting to see her grow up. She is a outstanding mom of two wonderful kiddos and works part time. I don’t know if she fully achieved the college part of her fable, but she looks like a wonderfully happy, dedicated mother, who balances it with a part time job in which she is successful in.

blog 9

Thinking back to my teenage years, I can remember a horrible hair cut that I was talked into as “perms were in style”. To my horrified teenage mind, this haircut was the “end of the world”. I was hoping to have a great hairstyle to fit in with all of my friends, and came out with a horrible, layered, curly mess. I cried for days. I remember refusing to go anywhere because “everyone would be looking at my horrible hair”. My mother, being the loving mother, attempted to console me and get me out of the house, but it really didn’t work too well. Of course this is a real life example of the imaginary audience that teenagers go through in which they think they are the focus of everyone else’s attention.

blog 8

I have a friend who is a gay male with an eating disorder. He is very aware of this disorder and yet does not want treatment. I have known him most of my life. He had a very distant father, and is a perfectionist. He was a heavier child and teen. He is often described as a person who is “all in” when he decides to do something, and “doesn’t do anything half way”. He started by exercising compulsively, he continues to do this. He runs daily for around an hour or more a day. He will often only eat small amounts when we go out to eat. He will order salads and move his food around. He sometimes tells me about the times he eats too much and purges. He often will find things to eat such as condiments due to thinking they have less calories. He refuses to get treatment and tends to borderline on both anorexia and bulimia. I have often offered to help, at those times he becomes more distant. He tells me he is “happier now” and he has it under control. He needs help as you can see he is thinner than he should be, and has a bigger build, but is not as skinny as the horrible pictures you will often see when your text books describe the disorders.

blog 7

I went to kindergarten with one third of my graduating class from high school. There were less than one hundred people in my graduating class. There were three elementary schools that went to one middle and high school.
Due to the small selection of peers some peer groups were formed very early. Some of the kiddos made friends of one or two peers as early as kindergarten and were friends all the way though the end of their senior year. Peer groups later formed off of these early friendships. Peer groups changed some with the introduction of the three schools merging at seventh grade, but rarely changed. I think with the limited population and children knowing each other from a young age, or able to access information easily about a child all the way back to kindergarten we were less likely to see a person move in their social group to another social group versus a larger school or population. I would actually love to see if there is some research or data to support my thoughts.

blog 6

Growing up in a rural area which was of a lower socioeconomic status I saw “learned helplessness” frequently. I saw many students who would just attribute their lack of success in a class as due to things such as luck, or the “teacher not liking them”. A few kids would say “I am just going to be a farmer anyways, why do I need math?”
I remember one kid in particular, let’s call him Joe. Joe always came to class in dirty clothing. Joe often acted out for attention and was the “bad boy”. Joe would frequently be verbally aggressive with the teachers, and tell them how he didn’t need to learn, wouldn’t learn it anyways, didn’t know why he was there, etc. Joe is often the kiddo I think about when I think of learned helplessness. I often wonder how he turned out and if his life would have been different with a little attention from caregivers.

blog 5

If you walk though all the rooms in my home, the hallways will connect in a circle. This is a wonderful thing at 3 am as the cats run though my house with their claws scitterscattering across the wooden floor. This also led to other forms of entertainment when my friend brought over his 3 year old child the other day. The child followed his parents though the house on a tour starting at one side of the circle and going to the other ending in the living room. The living room and bathroom are very close to each other and at the opposite end of the circle that the tour started at.
The child enjoyed the circle tour and proceeded to go in a circle around the house in the same direction a few times before sitting with his parents on the couch. The child then verbalized he needed to go “potty” and had an accident much to his parents dismay. They attempted to get him to go to the restroom by himself first. The child ran to the bathroom the long way around the circle, the same way he was originally taken. The bathroom was further away when going around the circle. The bathroom is even in plain sight from the couch, but the child wanted to go the way to the bathroom that he had first gone. To my great entertainment he did this multiple times during the visit. I was reminded of Piagets’ preoperational thought. The child followed the “logical rule” of walking to the bathroom the original way he was shown.

blog 4

My nephew is around one year old currently. I spent most of my time before school started hanging out with him, enjoying the time. Sometimes I spend so much of my time around children with developmental delay; I am always enamored watching a typically developing child. I remember how amazed I was when he started to develop object permanence. This was such an awesome time to interact with him. During this time he would look for items that have “disappeared” in front of him. I had forgotten from my undergraduate developmental class how early this could develop.
I remember my absolute delight when he just the week prior he had not paid attention or looked for an item that was not in his view. I was playing with him with one of his favorite toys, a plastic, squeaky giraffe. He started to look around for the object once I took it out of his view. I was amazed that a baby of around 4 months was looking for this item.
The recap of this course has been refreshing as I have been able to look at skills from a typically developing perspective. I think because I spend my time in the world of developmental delay, I remained so amused by things that other people might take for granted. I know I have appreciated every moment of watching my nephew develop as a precious gift.

Blog 3

I was lucky enough to have a visit from my friend the other night. He brought over his 3 year old kiddo who just was a world for fun for me to watch. I finally got to see tons of things from our developmental class right in front of my eyes. I think sometimes we take these normal instances of development for granted and just go on with life, until we are prompted to recall them.
My cats were just a source of wonderment to him. He repeatedly attempted to case them around the house. He used multiple forms of overgeneralization when discussing my cats with me. He would say things like “the white cat has orange feets” or the “white cat runned slower than the grey cat”. (The “white cat” was a source of entertainment as the kiddo was able to actually catch him.) My friends kiddo has pretty good language for his age, but still struggles with irregular verbs and will overgeneralize them. I think we, as adults, often use these moments as functional teaching moments and then move on with life.
When I first was introduced to overgeneralization I only thought of it in the world of Autism as a taught word that then is applied to everything. I have often seen children who would overgeneralize “more” due the word often getting them an increased access to multiple reinforcers. We see this as a problem when a child walks up to you and says “more”, but it unable to tell you what he wants. One of the ways we would use for treatment would be to only teach the child to mand for items and not with the overgeneralized word to promote communication.

2nd blog 12-01-10

My father decided he wanted to come to a school function of mine. He was not my custodial parent, and in fact did not live in the same county. He promised my mother that he could get me home from the school function if she dropped me off. My father made the mistake of trusting that I could get him from my school to my home. I was a reasonably bright child, and of course went on that route two times a day, 5 days a week. The total trip from the school to my house was around 10 minutes or 10 miles. Being as I was around 6 years old I will still in the directional form of Piagets’ Spatial reasoning.
After our fun school function my confidence was bursting. I remember feeling so proud that I was going to direct my father to my house like a big girl. One hour later, we still had not made it home. Cell phones were not an option at this time. My poor father stopped off a child’s home that I knew in the middle of nowhere. Upon calling my mom he realized he was around 3 miles from my house. My 6 year old mind had taken him the only way I knew home from school…. the bus route home. I was normally the last kid dropped off. It was a very long trip home! That moment lived on has a family joke for many years.