19 to 30 Months...

1. Have there been any environmental events in your child’s first 2 1/2 years that you think might have influenced his or her behavior? On what do you base your hypotheses?
There haven’t been that many events in Peyton’s life. I think being consistent with how we discipline, talk, interact, and play with her is what helps with her behavior. She has a good daycare that she is going to and is interacting just fine with all the other kids. We did have some financial issues, but it didn’t really affect Peyton that much because we tried not to stress out around her. Right now her behavior seems to have stabilized.

2. How is your child progressing on typical toddler issues, such as learning household rules, learning to follow routines, listening to you, developing self control and learning to get along with other children?
Peyton seems to be learning very well for her age. She is above average when it comes to her talking and expressing herself. She loves helping around the house and she knows the routine of what she can do to help me out. When it comes to solving problems she’s about average, but to help her out I should probably start talking through how to solve problems to help her learn better. Her motor skills are doing so well, she’s a little below average and can’t climb, throw, or catch very well and I should play more of these types of games with her to help her improve them. The specialist said that she is doing well enough in all of her learning that she is definitely ready for preschool.

3. Analyze your own parenting philosophy and practices. What principles from social learning theory, Bowlby, Ainsworth, Piaget, Vygotsky, information processing theory, developmental neuroscience and other theories do you appear to have relied on in making your parenting choices or interpreting your child’s behavior? Include three principles/theorists from the above list in your answer
I can see that Peyton has the tendency to do more of what the Social Learning theory is about, for example when we play hide an go seek after she sees where I went to hide when it’s her turn to hide she picks the same spot that I did when it was my turn to hide. In some ways I like to use that theory because she mimics my behaviors when it’s time to clean up her room or take care of some chores that need to get done and Peyton likes to follow my lead. I think I like to use the ecological system theory because for the most part she is in a good environment for most of the time; I like to use the daycare to expand her social skills. I don’t caudle her or anything when she starts crying and wants me to stay around; she eventually gets over it and then is really good with the other kids around. She use to be very shy, but because of this it really has helped her step out of her comfort zone and explore new things. I’m learning how to use the information process because I think that’s important to use to help her develop problem solving skills. She’s actually doing pretty well now when it comes to problem solving; however, she tends to do repeated behavior and gets frustrated when she’s trying to figure it out. I think the information process will help her not get so frustrated. Those are the closest theories that I could come up that are similar to my philosophies that I have been using on Peyton. I’ve kind of been doing my own thing when it comes to raising her by seeing how she is reacting and if she’s changing and so far I think I’m doing a good job and things are working out pretty well.