Case of Study

Santiago Melendez
Subject of Study

After having studied the different theories about child development, we can easily identify each of the stages stated in them by observing the way children behave. In order to probe this, I performed a few experiments with my three-year-old nephew, Santiago. Besides the experiments, I also took the time to observe his behaviour in his natural environment. In this entry you will find the information about this study, including the profile of the child I worked with, a brief description of the experiments we performed, the conclusions and results of this study, and also pictures (which you can click to enlarge) that evidence such results.

Santiago Melendez was the subject of this study, he just turned 3 years old a few weeks ago on July, 30th. He lives with his mother, and his grandparents. Despite not having any siblings, and not going to school yet, he has a lot of interaction with children of different ages that live near his house. Of course I know my nephew very well, I am very aware of the things he is capable to do, and the activities he can easily perform. However, in order to get the most accurate and detailed results, I studied him for a couple of days, trying not to interfere with his regular development. Thanks to this, I realized that he is capable to do many things by himself, and he prefers to perform those activities without any help. Just to mention a few, he can eat by himself; in fact, he uses a fork and a spoon in a very decent way. Moreover, he is capable of driving his bicycle with training wheels very well, and he can go up and down stairs alone. However, there are many activities that he is not able to perform without external help yet; he does not go to the bathroom alone, he is not capable of getting dressed by himself, and he needs help to take showers. Nonetheless, he shows an autonomous attitude towards everything he does, trying to learn those things he stills struggles with, and trying not to ask for help whenever is posible.

Santiago eating by himself

Besides observing Santiago in a discrete way, I also decided to perform a couple of direct experiments to prove some of the theories we have studied. In the first experiment, I presented him two different towels, and I hid a toy under one of them. He was able to tell me where the toy was very easily. Then, I hid the toy under the second towel to see if his answer changed, and it did. He was aware that the toy was not under the same towel.
 
I also performed a second experiment with him. I placed to glasses with an exact amount of water in them, when I asked him which one had more water, he told me that they had the same amount since the water reached the same point in both of the glasses. After that, and in front of him, I poured the water from one of the glasses into a shorter and wider bowl, and I asked him the same question. He told me that the glass had more water, because the water inside of it reached a higher point than the water inside the bowl.

As a conclusion, I realized that Santiago has reached a point in which he starts to feel the necesity to be more independent. Erik Erikson describes this stage as "Autonomy vs. Shame", something that occurs between the age of 18 months and 3 years. He starts to build his self-esteem as he learns new skills, and he feels proud when he accomplish things on his own. Furthermore, by being able to tell where the toy was hidden in the first experiment, he demonstrated his awareness of the environment around him, showing that he is no longer in the "Sensorimotor" stage, a term presented by Jean Piaget and that lasts from birth to approximately 2 years old. On the other hand, by not being able to tell that the amount of water was the same in the bowl as in the glass in the second experiment, he showed that he cannot use logic to understand certain ideas and abstract concepts like amounts, speed, or weight. This behaviour belongs to the stage Piaget named "Preoperational" and that ranges from ages 2 to 7. 

It has been very interesting to observe how this theories apply to the development of children, and how they resulted very accurate, at least in my case of study.

Experiment 1

Experiment 2