My husband Brett and I, were not able to have children of our own. So we contacted the best adoption agency around us, through this agency we now have two beautiful children. Six year old Joseph Louis and three year old Poppy Jean. Joseph is a “slow to warm up” (Mannis 2014) child and though we are working on ways to improve this we are so blessed to have two healthy children. I know that Joseph is a “slow to warm up baby” because he is very loving and very adventurous but it takes him a little bit of time before he is comfortable, he also will use me as a secure base.
Times have been very hard especially with the economy. I was laid off at one point which put a very great deal of stress on my marriage. I have been blessed with an amazing husband who not only works full time at his job, but who is absolutely amazing with our children. He helps me whenever | need him, and he is so in tuned with our children’s needs. We have been wanting to get a bigger house so that we are not all crammed into our little apartment but with the funds of only one income we have not been able to make this happen.
Joseph just finished his first year of kindergarten, and he loved it. At Christmas time he was reading books that we have read multiple times his father and I are so proud of him. Since Joseph was adopted we did not get to breastfeed him, but my husband and I went with a formula that was similar to breast milk and had the same vitamins founded in breastmilk. When Joseph was 9 months of age his pediatrician recommended that we increase baby food and ground up fruits and vegetables in his diet (My virtual child 9 month pediatrician report). Mannis 2014) He is very interested with new things so we try to introduce new foods to him each day, we have had a couple of times where he was sick and we thought that it was the food but the pediatrician said that this was normal. At 12 months of age Joseph has started to say a couple of clear words. He is also “advanced” according to his pediatrician in his gross motor skills he is crawling and he has started to pull himself up in a standing position, Brett and I are very proud of Josephs eating habits and in his motor skills.
According to Bayley (2005), “stands alone is on the average of 11 months of age, but age range in which 90% of infants achieve this is 9-16 months” (Berk, 2012) As a newborn Joseph was a good sleeper he would be up in the night to feed but then he would go back to sleep. At 12 months he was taking a couple hour nap during the day and then at night he would sleep for either 6 to 8 hours. When he does wake up it would be to eat and sometimes it would be hard for me to put him back o bed and he would want to stay up, but we would read books, or have the lights low and would do a silent activity and then we would put him back to sleep. According to the textbook (Berk, 2012) newborns sleep for about fifteen to eighteen hours while the average two year old needs twelve to thirteen hours. As the child gets older, the amount of sleep gradually gets shorter. According to My Virtual Child I was told that my child had a secure attachment but our communication could use some help.
I think my child and I have a very secure attachment and so does my husband, I think that the program is wrong about our communication because I respond to my child’s cries. I think that program said our communication needed work because in the program at 12-8 the question was ‘When strangers come to visit, they think Joseph is really cute so they want to hold him. But he starts crying and is inconsolable until the person returns him to me. ” And the answer I picked was “Let the person hold Joseph and try to calm him down and if it does not work have them return him and comfort him.
I picked this answer because in real life you are not going to be around the same people every single day, you will meet new ones or there will be some people that you have not seen in a while. For instance, I am going to be moving to North Carolina with my husband 6 weeks after I have my son, I am not going to be able to come home and see my family and friends every single weekend so when we do come home and family wants to see my son he is most likely going to scream and cry but my intentions are too not scare him and make him think I am leaving him.
I will be in his eye sight until he can calm down, I just want my son to be able to make the connection that my mom trusts these weird strangers sol should too. If it was a total stranger then no I would not let them hold my child while he screams and searches for me but when it is someone that I trust him with, then I think that it will be okay to let him cry. Also I would not let my child scream and cry for longer than 10 minutes because his father and I should know what his cries mean and er than that it could also e a hunger cry. I think that it all just depends on the situation that you are put in with your child. In the My Virtual Child program (8-5 Mannis 2014)
Joseph cries when he is put in new situations, we have tried to keep him in the same situations and around the same people so that he can get used to them. But it can be hard as a new parent to be around the same people and the same situations every day. According to the book (Berk, 2012) “By the second half of the first year, infants have become attached to familiar people. With our financial situation my husband and I are the ones that respond to Josephs’ needs. I think that because I am with Joseph all day long that, that is why we have a secure attachment. Joseph is very good with other children but when he is first introduced he is shy and scared. When it comes to sociodramatic play, and we put Joseph into pre-school they told us that he was not aggressive against other kids except when they tried to take the toys that he was playing with.
I would describe Josephs’ personality as over-controlled, I suggest this because he is shy in new situations but once he gets used to the things around him he is very happy. He will use me as a secure base when we go to the playground, an example of this would be we went to the playground and Joseph was very shy around the other kids his age but once he got more comfortable he would run back to me and would be laughing or he would smile and then run off and continue to play with the other kids. Joseph is also very good at following rules at the house and at preschool.
But when we are around new people he becomes shy and he will cling to me Personally I do not agree with how parents are letting their kids watch hours of television because they want some “quiet time”. Joseph watches television but he will watch mostly the educational kid’s shows and he rarely will watch the boring kid’s shows. Instead of watching television he would rather have us read him a book or he will try to read it himself.
According to the book (Berk 2012) “television remains the dominant form of youth media, with hildren first becoming viewers in early infancy. About 40% of U. S. 3-month olds regularly watch television. ” I personally think that this is a low number because as I said before that most parents will set their children in front of the television or they will give them their cell phones and most kid’s eye sight is being affected from this because they are either sitting too close to the television or they are holding the phone too close to their face and they watch it for too long.
I think that parents should limit the amount of time that their kid’s play with phones and watch television. It would be better if the parents were more active with their kid’s like playing games with the or reading to them or even going outside and playing outdoors with them.
