Child Observation: Sixteen-Year-Old Girl

Katie is an introverted sixteen-year-old girl that was homeschooled by her mother until this school year. She is attending school two days a week to take an advanced placement English class and to see a math tutor. She is the oldest of six children with a major amount of responsibility placed on her shoulders.

Physical In appearance Katie looks like your average seventeen-year-old girl in jeans and make-up. At five foot six inches she is upset that her fifteen-year-old sister, Ella, is taller than her because Ella has matched her physical development since puberty needing bras at the same time and just a few weeks apart with the start of menstruation. Katie talked about her new found interest in make up with her “little” sister teaching her how to apply it properly, it is a "little embarrassing, but necessary to not like a dork.” Katie hasn’t been involved in formal sports since late elementary school age. She prefers to run cross-country in the warm months. In passing, she mentioned that it would’ve been exciting to play basketball for a high school team.

Social/Emotional Socially life has been difficult for Katie due the fact she hasn’t attended a high school. Friends have been made at church and a few neighbors that stay near her house seasonally making her closest friends her sisters. The extra curricular activities have been solitary …show more content…
We witness these stages and skills everyday but rarely identify it. It was interesting to see that not a single child really fit into the cookie cutter milestones that are set up for development but each had their own individual twists. Wilson’s language delay, Hank fitting in above the milestones, Parker’s struggles with gross motor/fine motor, and Katie adjusting and learning to being social outside her family environment. It has opened to my eyes to even more shades of gray because I was not expecting what I saw during two of the