Growing up so fast
August 15, 2006
Julia turned 8 over the summer and her little sister Madeline turned 5 in the spring. Madeline will be off to school in the fall and we will have both kids in school full time. It will be nice to have both girls on the same school schedule and routine. This will make the family schedule more well balanced and we can plan fun times and family dinners more consistently.
Julia continues to do well in elementary school and remains curious about the world in general. My nephew (Julia's cousin) returned from a tour of duty in Asia and came over for a visit last week. Julia was very interested in looking at a map of this region of the world and learning as much about it as possible. At this point Julia is showing developmental signs leading us to believe she is having some concrete operational thought. She is using logic more and more as she approaches intellectual problems. She is learning there is a vast world out there and is able to approach topics with a more worldly view. We believe at this age Julia is becoming less egocentric and taking a more broad approach to learning. Piaget calls this decentering.
We played lots of games at home over the summer. Julia has a competitive spirit but sometimes she still cheats in order to beat her sister and her parents. She also blames messes on her sister even when I know Julia was to blame. After reading some information about moral development, it would appear Julia remains at the preconventional level of morality at this point. She is lying about the mess to avoid being punished for the mess even though she knows she is guilty. To help her through this stage, my husband and I have started to role play scenarios with Julia defining consequences for not telling the truth.
Overall we had a great summer with the kids with lots of play dates for the girls. Julia spent some time teaching our neighbors dog some tricks and we are considering getting the girls a family pet to teach them some responsibility.
Julia turned 8 over the summer and her little sister Madeline turned 5 in the spring. Madeline will be off to school in the fall and we will have both kids in school full time. It will be nice to have both girls on the same school schedule and routine. This will make the family schedule more well balanced and we can plan fun times and family dinners more consistently.
Julia continues to do well in elementary school and remains curious about the world in general. My nephew (Julia's cousin) returned from a tour of duty in Asia and came over for a visit last week. Julia was very interested in looking at a map of this region of the world and learning as much about it as possible. At this point Julia is showing developmental signs leading us to believe she is having some concrete operational thought. She is using logic more and more as she approaches intellectual problems. She is learning there is a vast world out there and is able to approach topics with a more worldly view. We believe at this age Julia is becoming less egocentric and taking a more broad approach to learning. Piaget calls this decentering.
We played lots of games at home over the summer. Julia has a competitive spirit but sometimes she still cheats in order to beat her sister and her parents. She also blames messes on her sister even when I know Julia was to blame. After reading some information about moral development, it would appear Julia remains at the preconventional level of morality at this point. She is lying about the mess to avoid being punished for the mess even though she knows she is guilty. To help her through this stage, my husband and I have started to role play scenarios with Julia defining consequences for not telling the truth.
Overall we had a great summer with the kids with lots of play dates for the girls. Julia spent some time teaching our neighbors dog some tricks and we are considering getting the girls a family pet to teach them some responsibility.
Comments
Post a Comment