Interview with Schoolteacher and Stay-At-Home Mom on Kids Upbringing - Research Paper Example

Day 1 Interview The parents that I am interviewing for this observation are Maurice and Alice. Maurice is a schoolteacher and Alice is a stay-at-home mom. I learned a lot about them as a result of this interview. Maurice teaches math and has a Masters degree in School Administration. He is currently working as a high school calculus teacher and seeking possible employment and a building administrator. Alice also has a college degree but does not work outside the home at this current time. She has a bachelor’s degree in Physics and worked for a time after graduation in a research laboratory. She and Maurice both agreed that when they started their family, one of the parents would say home with the children. After the birth of their first child, Redmond in 2001, Alice decided that she would prefer to stay home with the children, even though her career had the most potential for promotion and a higher salary. Maurice currently earns about $60,000 per year. This is the only income the family has. Maurice and Alice are both 39 years old and have been married for fourteen years. There are three children in the family. Redmond is an 11 year-old boy that currently attends the local elementary school as a 6th grade student. Lena is an 8 year-old girl currently attending 2nd grade in the same school as Redmond. The youngest child is Jasper. He has just turned five years old and has not yet begun his formal schooling. He spends his days at home with Alice engaged in mostly unstructured play, with some structured visits to places such as the public library for story time. Maurice and Alice both identify themselves as Christians. They attend weekly meetings at a local evangelical Christian church. They are active members, volunteering to serve on various committees and working as Deacons, which is a position of responsibility. As Deacons, they help and counsel individuals that are experiencing financial difficulties by connecting them with services in the community and within the congregation. They provide informal counseling to these individuals and families and find the work very rewarding. They feel qualified to give this information because they have found a way to live a fairly comfortable life on one income when most families seem to need to depend on two. They share that they are happy with their church family but they sometimes feel that the area where they live is too conservative and sometimes consider moving away. Jasper is the subject of the observation. He is five years old, about 37” tall and weighs about forty-six pounds. His physical appearance is consistent with a typical five-year old boy. As Jasper has not yet begun school, his daily routine is quite flexible, and Alice and Maurice believe it should be this way. He is awake by 6:30 each day, eats lunch around 11:30, has a meal with his family at 4:30 and is in bed by 8:00 each night. The time in between is filled with unstructured play and visits to the park, YMCA and the library. Maurice and Alice feel that they are both on the same page when it comes to raising kids. They have a Christian centered worldview that they feel stresses kindness, forgiveness and gentle guidance. They are highly suspicious of pre-school, day care and public education. They want their children to be educated, but fear that these institutions can supplant the importance of the family. Maurice and Alice agree that children are overscheduled in today’s world. They believe that exploration and unstructured play (that does not included much TV or computer time) is best for children. When disciplined is needed, they used time out to instruct children and to get them to consider their actions. They are not opposed to spanking their children when young and when they feel a lesson or teaching needs particular emphasis. They report that they have only spanked their children once of twice each over the course of their childhood. They said that the three most important traits for successful parenting are patience, purpose and tenacity. They both admit to getting frustrated with their kids at times, but remind themselves that they are kids. They are learning and therefore deserve patience. They also feel that parents need to have a vision for what type of people they want their children to be. This is where Maurice and Alice rely on their Christian faith for guidance. They want their kids to be strong Christians so that is how they teach them and raise them with this purpose in mind. The last thing they say is important is tenacity. Parents need to hold on to what is best for their kids, even if it is a lot of work or is difficult. The advice that they said they would give new parents first is to keep a simple schedule. They say that many parents feel they need to have all of their kids in all sorts of sports and cultural activities. They said that over scheduling the family would just stress everyone out. They also say that being united as husband and wife in raising the kids is important. Decisions about activities, education and disciplined need to be discussed by parents and they both need to agree on a course of action before talking to the kids. If this is not done, then there is discord between husband and wife and kids get conflicting messages. The final bit of advice for new parents is to relax. New parents feel that everything they do will have a huge impact on their kids. They share that they have fond that most things matter little; such as the type of stroller you buy. Relax and enjoy being with your kids. Day 2 Observation I was invited to observe Jasper for 30 minutes. It was fortunate that he was in the backyard playing when I arrived. I was able to sit at a dining room window and observe everything he did for the entire time. When I arrived, Jasper was playing in a sandbox. For the first 4 minutes and 30 seconds, Jasper poured moist sand into buckets and then tipped the buckets over in an effort to build a molded tower. He did this eight times with varying degrees of success. Sometimes the sand fell out of the bucket before the bucket could be flipped and sometimes the molded tower fell apart after the bucket was removed. He did get four towers to stand. For the next eight minutes, Jasper used his hands to mold walls that connected the four towers. He was building a sand castle. During this process, Jasper was chased from the sandbox three times by some sort of flying insect. He ran around waving his hands at the insect. He appeared to be frightened of the insect and on the third chase seemed to be heading for the door leading into the house. Jasper stopped short of the back porch, however. Looking around, he returned to the sandbox and continued to work on his castle. The remaining 18 minutes and thirty seconds of the observation haw Jasper destroy and rebuild the walls of the sandcastle 6 times. He destroyed them in a number of ways. The first time the walls were destroyed was most elaborate. Small cars were placed upon the tops of each wall and were then driven off of the wall one by one, destroying the wall. Each of the times the wall was destroyed after this was a variation on the same theme. With my observation complete, I thanked Alice for letting me visit and made arrangements for my next visit. Day 3 Observation/Evaluation On this day, the weather was cold and rainy so Jasper and I spent our 30 minutes together indoors. Jasper was painting with a small watercolor kit when I arrived. He was making a scene that included his house and lots of trees. I asked him about the trees, because his house didn’t have any trees around it currently. He said that the trees are so small right now that I couldn’t see them, but they would grow. I asked him when the trees would be big, like the ones he was drawing in the picture. He said they would be big by Christmas. Finishing the painting took 10 minutes. Jasper then asked if he could build a fort in the living room. Alice gave her permission. Building a fort consisted of taking all of the cushions off of the couch and chairs in the living room and stacking them so they formed a wall. This was then covered by various throws and blankets found in the room. Jasper enjoyed jumping off of the couch and wrecking the fort walls. He said, “You need to do it now,” so I wrecked the walls as well (but didn’t jump off of the couch to do it!). This activity took the remainder of the 30 minutes of the observation. Jasper seems to be very advanced in this physical development. He is the typical physically active five year old when considering large motor skills. Running in the back year and jumping in the house are all normal for five year olds. Jasper’s fine motor skills are advanced. His ability with the paintbrush was advanced. He was able to produce fine detain on this trees and house, indicating an advanced degree of visual perception and fine motor skills (Lightfoot, 2009). Jaspers cognitive development seems to be normal as well. Five year olds like repetition. This would account for the fact that he was perfectly happy doing the same thing over and over again for long periods of time (Santrock, 2008). He made and destroyed the castle and the fort inside the house numerous times in very similar ways. Each time seemed to be just as engaging as the last. While I was unable to hear it, it appeared as though he was talking to his toys while playing in the backyard sandbox. This would also be typical development for a five year old because they think inanimate objects have feelings and understand what they are saying (Usha, 2006). Finally, Jasper’s social development seems to be normal as well. He was cautious around me because I was new, but he seemed to gain confidence because his mother told him I was OK. The fact that he sought comfort from a parent during the attack of the bee was typical for his age. He seems like he really wants to be “good” for Alice and that is another common characteristic of a five-year-old boy. Works Cited Lightfoot, Cynthia, Michael Cole, and Sheila Cole. The Development of Children. New York, NY: Worth, 2009. Print. Santrock, John W. Educational Psychology. Boston: McGraw-Hill, 2008. Print. Usha, Goswami. Cognitive Development. London [etc.: Routledge, 2007. Print. Read More