Developmental Journal 1

           This past holiday weekend, I spent a lot of time with family. I have two nephews, one is 3 and the other is 9. I also have a niece that is 8 weeks old. The entire weekend I watched them play and tried to look at what they were doing so that I could write a developmental blog post about something. I don’t normally blog because I don’t really think I have much to say, but I thought watching my family might give me a good topic. There is nothing like using family as study subjects.  With my Berk book in hand I watched their every move.

After watching their actions all weekend I decided to write about something very basic that can be found in the first few chapters of Infants, Children. and Adolescents. Operant conditioning of my niece’s smiling.  Since this weekend was the first time I had seen her in a few weeks, it was my first opportunity to see all the new additions to her repertoire of things she does. Not that there are that many because she is only 8 weeks old, but social smiling is always a pleasurable addition. As I laid her on the floor and began to make eye contact and smile and talk to her, she smiled back. We played this smiling game back and forth for a few minutes until she began distracted by something else. The stimulus of each of us smiling has reinforced the other to smile back. 

This addition of social smiling shows me that her development is moving along. As much as I love her being the cute little baby that she is, I can’t wait to see how else she develops.