Case Study
(Child with Global Developmental Delay) A. General Profile
“Jelay” is a 7-year-old student at Creative Angels SPED Learning School who has moved to San Jose Del Monte Bulacan from her hometown of Bicol province. She was born on November 18, 2008, four years younger to her older brother who is now 11-year-old. She is with her 19-year-old cousin during the interview who is also the one who answered all the questions. She informed us that their home is only within from the school community, which is also part of the reason Jelay is enrolled there. The clients home is consist of eight (8) family members including her father, grandmother, cousins, and aunts.The clients parents were seperated and she is now living with her 45-year-old father, a college graduate now working as a contructor along with other family members mentioned earlier. It was also reported that the client owns a pet fish and loves to play “luto-lutuan” and is especially fond of her ball toy. TV shows that the client loves to watch includes “High 5” and other kiddie shows. The clients activities during the whole week includes going to school from Monday to Friday, 8:00-11:00 am or 9:00-12:00 pm depending on the day of week. When the client gets home the usual daily activity would be to eat, play and take a nap. The client usually wakes up at 5:30 am to take her medication and sleeps at around 9:00 pm every night. On weekends when there is no school to attend to, client still wakes up at 5:30 am again due to medication as mentioned earlier. And would usually play indoors, either by herself or with her older brother and cousins rather than outside as reported by her cousin. The client was diagnosed with Global developmental delay when she was at the age of 2.
And in forms of discipline, the clients guardian explains that talking to Jelay and explaining to her what she did wrong usually works best most of the time. Occasionally the client would throw tantrums and the best way to handle it is to just wait for the client to stop or until she gets tired of it. Because otherwise the child could hurt herself and the person trying to soothe her. But of course the case would be different when they are in public whereas the guardian or person with her will find a different way to distract her and stop her from throwing more tantrums. It was also mentioned that there are times when the form of discipline would include hitting the child mildly, usually on the legs to control her behaviour. In summary, the client would react positively to talking about her mistakes but sometimes if this doesn’t work out they would resort to different forms of discipline but not anything that would severely hurt the child physically or emotionally. The client’s relationship with her older brother was described as affectionate, and much like other normal siblings. And since her brother is 4 years older than her there is not much problem in terms of their relationship. The client’s brother also knows perfectly his sister’s condition. It was either explained by the parents/ guradian around them or as experienced growing up with the client.

B. Health And Developmental Profile
As noted above, the client “jelay” is diagnosed with Global developmental delay (GDD) at around the age of 2. At first glance Jelay looks like a normal cheerful kid, she was even dancing at the time and does what exactly she’s told. She greeted us ‘Hi’ and even waved goodbye when we were about to leave. But upon interviewing Jelay’s guardian did we found out more about her.
At age 7, Jelay still have trouble holding a pencil correctly thus limiting her ability to write. At her age all she could do is scribble, a skill seen in toddlers. She does the same with coloring pictures, not really coloring the picture but just scribbling on the whole page. Other 7- year-olds are able to write their name, draw shapes or a few numbers properly by this time. From here we could already see some of the delays Jelay is experiencing. Her fine motor skills are very much delayed compared to other normal children her age.
In terms of language and communication, Jelay can speak a few words but not a full sentence usually used by normal 7-year-old when engaging in conversation. The words she say are very limited like that of a toddler only learning to speak words for the first time. By now she knows how to sing the ABC and speaks both Tagalog and English words.
All this lead to the suspicion of the parent and/or guardian that Jelay have a serious problem. Especially delayed speaking. The first professional consulted was a family doctor as reported by the clients cousin. Unfortunately she doesn’t have enough information as to what other professionals have seen Jelay’s condition.
Maladaptive behaviors observed by the parent and/or guardian includes being excessively shy towards peers and others, communication is very limited and does not seem to socialize much. Attending school has somehow improve some of this maladaptive behavior as reported. She now