child observation study.

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 Child Observational Study

        This child observation study was done as the part of curricular requirement of MSW programme of Kingston University. The child in this study is a 7 month old girl ‘S’, born in a family from south India settled in London. She has an elder sister, who is 3 and a half years old. As both parents are working on different shift patterns, mostly only one of them is available with the children. They are living in a house having two reception rooms, kitchen, an extended dining room on downstairs, two bedrooms and bathrooms upstairs. There is a small but nice garden behind the house.

         The child selection was deliberate on the intention that the parenting and the ethnic backgrounds of the child rearing shall be culturally familiar to me. As I had personal acquaintance with the parents, I could easily negotiate with them by discussing about the objective and methodology of the study and accordingly we fixed suitable time for observation. Here I am attempting to describe the process of observation emphasizing first the ways, the observations were thought about within theoretical framework, and second to show how this framework could then be used to address the problems of professional concern.

This observation has been made in three phases of one-hour duration each with a time gap of one week between the observations. The selection of the child with an Indian origin was deliberate as I belong to the same ethnic origin. I planned and executed the observation on the baby in three occasions which are different to each other in terms of time and the adult individuals’ presence. One was in the morning with the father and sister, second in an evening with the mother and child, Dad and sister, and third time in another evening, when she was sleeping. I could negotiate the schedule with the parents and they were happy to co-operate with me.

         The first observation has been arranged in the morning on 21st December last. As planned earlier, I reached there by 9 O’ clock in the morning. When I reached, the baby girl ‘S’ was sitting on an automated pink coloured swing which has been placed in front of the television.

I selected the sofa kept on right hand side of the baby as my place to sit. When I sat down she watched me almost for 5 seconds and then turned looking at her Dad who was standing near by. It is interesting that S paid her Dad a smile at the 3rd second from she started looking at him. It is understood that S developed the most remarkable achievement of specific social attachement whereby the infant seeks to be near certain people, not just anyone. When Dad touched on her head, she was responding to that with moving hands and legs rapidly and laughing again. This shows that she could discriminate familiar and unfamiliar people and developed the capacity to form a special relationship with certain specific individuals with whom she actively seeks to maintain contact.

 When S’ Dad and sister went in to Kitchen, baby was looking turned to look at the television screen. She used to give very frequent look at me during this time. It is interesting that the infant did not manifest any stranger fear with me. Fear of strangers as a reaction to unfamiliar people is usually called, was at one time thought to be inevittable and universal and has become enshrined at the psychological literature as developmental mile stone (Hetherington & Parke, 1979, p233). It is now understood as neither inevittable nor universal. However, infants show a great interest in novel people and novel objects and often look longer at a stranger than their familiar care taker. In infancy, according to Ross & Goldman, (1977, p, 48, 638-642) behaviours of stranger determine how the infant will react. In the present case I have not made any direct contact with the baby rather than I was just there.

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 There was a little soft toy placed at her hand and when she dropped it down, she looked at me (as if expecting me to get it for her from the floor). As I have not intervened, she exhibited visual search but no manual search for the missing toy. Gratch and Landers (1971) are of the opionion that if the loss of the object is associated with the interruption of child’s own movements, visual searching is more likely to ensure than if it has been hidden by another person.

 She was moving the position of head and hands when ...

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