Denisse Medina

Professor Pappas

ENG 101

Ethnography

 

A Day With A Three Year Old

 

Rosemary wakes up at eight this particular morning yawning and smiling from the foot of our bed with her pony pillow beside and mutters “ is not dark outside no more”, with an accent as if she has lived in Boston for three almost four years of her life.

I would ask her did you have a goodnight sleep last night. She would smile and say yes as if she had nights she hasn’t slept well. She laid there at the foot of the bed and all of a sudden she jumps out of the bed and speeds out to the bathroom. She is finally fully potty trained, which is exciting to me because I no longer have to change diapers.

We began our day in her bedroom which reminds me of a beautiful fairy tale garden. She is excited to get dressed this morning after I told her I was taking her to the zoo. She enjoys the Zoo because it has a big playground. As she’s rushing me out the door as if the zoo was going to close in five minutes she turns back and say I forgot my glasses.

I sat down at the picnic table and observed rosemary runs anxiously into the playground. She first climbed up to the slide, using the stairs carefully and turns and quickly sits herself and slides down the slide screaming WEEEEE! After going down the slide many times she observes me eating and determines that she is also hungry. She runs up to me and says can I have a piece, but I was having a junky snack so I afford her some strawberries instead, but she refused my offer so she then began to whine. I made it clear to her you have two choices you can have some strawberries, or we can go home. She preferred the second choice.

As I observe Rosemary’s way of interacting with the children I haven’t noticed how social she is. She always makes new friends everywhere she goes. She is always coping what the other kids are doing so if she seemed a child climbed up the slide she decides she should also try. An hour has passed and Rosemary seems pretty exhausted so I decided that it was time to go home and take a nap.

I allowed Rosemary some free time, but as soon as we came in, that is when I become aware of something that I had never noticed before. I knew that she chattered to herself occasionally, but I never really paid any attention to what she said. She has actual conversation with herself. I overheard her saying do you want some juice and then she said yes, and then she replied back you go get it. I started laughing out loud, so loud that Rosemary approached me and asked me what I was laughing at. I disregarded her question and said, who, are you talking to, she answered that she had been talking to her pony (stuffed animal) that was indeed on the floor at the side of her.

Soon after the dialog with her pony she began to be noticeably tired. I sat on the floor there watching her distantly in the hallway outside her room, where she began to play with her little pony dolls lining them up flawlessly as her eyes would gradually shut and her head collapsed forward. Why didn’t she just lie down baffled me. She carried this out for a few minutes and then finally fell sound asleep, lying down on the floor.

One way that we learn about our children is by watching them; we learn who they are and how they interact. We do this as naturally as parents. When they are babies, it is nature’s way of making sure they are protected and cared for. We observe the way they move and explore, their gestures, every sound that is made, the tone of their cries, what calms them down, the times they nap and their eating habits. When we observe is when we begin to know our children.