Early Childhood Observation
Lilly is a 4-year-old girl. She has dark brown hair, a darker complexion, and green eyes. The observation took place at a preschool in Neenah. The classroom was a four and five year old classroom with one lead teacher and other adult helpers.
Observation: Lilly plays in the kitchen; she opens all of the cupboards and piles the plastic plates on the kitchen table. She then aligns cups in a row (according to their size) and later hands out the cups to the other children without asking them if they want the cups. Lilly receives praise from her teacher for sharing with others. The ability to place objects in a certain order begins to develop in children from the age of four or five. This skill is perceived as a difficult conceptual achievement that requires the development and comprehension of spatial relations. Lilly has illustrated through the arrangement of cups that she understands the basic concepts of size and how to place them in a descending order.
Lilly’s choice of kitchen as a place to play may be due to the gender-role stereotypes that she has been exposed to from an early age. Children learn about gender stereotypical behavior through diverse media and observation; this leads to the development of a certain gender-role behavioral model, which the child internalizes and exhibits later in life. Therefore, Lilly may have internalized the stereotypical female role that she had observed in her environment. Therefore, she attempts to model the learned behavior by playing in the kitchen. By giving cups to a number of children, Lilly may be seen as exhibiting a degree of pro-social behavior. Pro-social behavior would require a child to experience empathy towards another person; according to Piaget, this is not possible due to the egocentrism of the child through the ages of 2 until 7. This is due to the fact that egocentrism is not