Section One: My Child in Context

Home Life and Family

The focus of this developmental journey will be on a female child name Jodi. Jodi is the

third of four children in her family. She has an older brother, an older sister, and a younger

brother. Jodis older brother is six years older than she is and her younger brother is less than two

years apart from her. Jodis sister is three years older than she is. Jodis parents were married at a

young age out of high school. Her brother was born before her parents finished college but with

the help of family and friends both parents were able to finish their associates degrees in a

community college after her brother was born. Upon completing community college, Jodis

father took a job with a large package carrier service and made his way up to become the night

supervisor looking after a crew of workers over night. He works five nights a week and will pick

up extra shifts on the weekend if they are available, especially during the holiday season. Jodis

mother continued on to pursue her dental hygienists certificate and works four days in a dental

office.

The family lives in a modest three bedroom house where the boys share a room and the

girls share a room. The basement has been turned into a family and playroom for the children

since the bedrooms do not offer much space for play. There is a small fenced in backyard that the

children can play in. The family has an eat-in kitchen with a table for six, but often turn the

television on while eating dinner. Jodis mother usually prepares the dinner for the family but

because her father leaves for work before the family is ready to eat, he often takes his dinner to

go. With Jodis father working overnight her mother has the duty of getting the childrens

homework done and the children ready for bed. She also gets them up and ready for school in the

morning. Jodis father usually stays up to have breakfast with the children before they go to
school to be able to spend some time with them during the week. He talks with them about what

they are doing in school and if anything is going on with their friends.

Now that all children are in school Jodis mother is their primary caregiver and is home to

get the children off the bus. When the children were infants, Jodis mother stayed home for the

six weeks allotted by her job and the babysitting duties transferred between both grandmothers.

Jodis maternal grandmother is a retired elementary school teacher and her paternal grandmother

was a stay at home mom all of her life.

The family currently has two ten year old cats that belonged to Jodis mother before she

had children. The older children have the responsibility to feed the cats in the morning before

school but the rest of the responsibilities fall on to Jodis mother. Although while pregnant with

each child, Jodis father cleaned the litter box as the doctor told Jodis mother that it was unsafe

for her to do so.

Jodis mother has seen the same prenatal doctor for the youngest three children. She

regularly gets check-ups and refrains from drinking alcohol and smoking. She has had high

blood pressure with all of her pregnancies which has led to all four children being born around

three weeks early. Besides high blood pressure Jodis mother did not suffer from any other

prenatal ailments and all babies scored within the normal range on the fetal scales and

assessments. As an infant and toddler, Jodi experienced some inner ear infections. As a result of

this her doctors considered putting tubes in her ears, but refrained from doing so as they

determined her ear canals were wide enough for drainage to occur.

As a family they enjoy watching movies together at home and when the weather is nice

the family frequents their local lake to walk or ride bikes around together. They occasionally take

family vacations camping with Jodis aunt, uncle and two cousins.
 Community, Culture, and Language

Jodi lives in a small suburb outside of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Her neighborhood is a

mixture of cultures, mainly European, and the children often play together in the neighborhood.

Besides the occasional Italian words being said between her maternal grandparents, Jodi only is

exposed to English. She has one friend whose family is from Bolivia that will sometimes speak

Spanish to her when they are playing but it is the only language other than some Italian that she

has heard in actual conversations.

Since Jodis maternal grandparents are both fully Italian, although born in the United

States, their parents worked very hard to learn the English language. This idea has been passed

down to Jodis beliefs in that speaking another language is a fantastic skill to have, but if you live

in the United States it is important that you learn to speak English. So although they embrace

other languages, they do not have the understanding of what it takes to learn a whole new

language and expect it to happen quickly.

In town there is a library which holds monthly childrens activities but the family rarely

goes to these events. They do however have a library card and try to go every other week when

the book are due to avoid a late fee. Sometimes Jodis mom drops of the books on her way to

work if they are due and the children do not get new books that week. With the maternal

grandmother being a retired teacher she often buys books for the family for holidays and

birthdays, so they do have books at their leisure to look at. Although Jodis mother knows the

importance of reading to her children she rarely has an opportunity to read them bed time stories

as she has the responsibility of having four children to get ready for bed. However when there is

down time and one of the children asks her to read a book to them, she is always willing, or

sometimes encourages the older siblings to read to the younger children. When the children need
to read for homework or a project however Jodis mother makes an extra effort to make sure the

book gets read.

Jodis mother and father care very much for the children. They support them and make

decisions that take into account the basic needs of their children, first and then the other niceties

that they can provide. With having four young children at a young age, her parents make sure to

work hard to provide a stable life for their children.

Section Four: Preschoolers

The preschool years, ages three to five, are the single most critical time in the

development and growth of executive functioning skills. This is the first of two times that the

brain is capable of a steep growth in learning and processing information with a term declared as

plasticity until around the age of fifteen until twenty five (Shonkoff, 2013). Therefore the

experiences that children have during the preschool stage of their lives must be rich with

language and literacy development opportunities.

During the preschool years, children can start to begin to talk about things in their

environment and begin to build basic foundations in literacy. They can use decontextualized

language to speak about events and objects that are not currently present, whereas in the

toddlerhood stage, children focused on the present when talking (Pence Turnbull & Justice,

2017). In the area of hearing, typical development of children at this age are hearing volumes at

the same level as others, are understanding words within genres (color words, animals names,

etc.) and can identify labels for their family members (American Speech-Language-Hearing

Association, n.d). In conjunction with hearing, typical speaking abilities consist of speaking

about what their day was like, answering simple questions, using pronouns, expressing multiple

sentences and identify rhyming words (American Speech-Language-Hearing Association, n.d).

 By the time Jodi turned three years old, behind-the-ear hearing aids had been ordered for

her. She was categorized as having moderately severe hearing loss. This categorization meant

that Jodi would be unable to actively participate in group and one on one conversations, that her

voice quality would be affected, and that around seventy-five percent of the time Jodi would

produce unintelligible speech (Pence Turnbull & Justice, 2017). The hearing aids use a

microphone to amplify sounds that a person would normally be able to hear without if they did

not have a hearing impairment. This amplification would help Jodi be able to hear the sounds

that are spoken for words and become familiar to her so that she could start using them in her

own language development. Once her hearing aids were received, Jodis parents worked with

the audiologist on how to control the volume of sounds and ways to get her to keep them on her

ears without taking them off. Some of these suggestions included using them during activities

when she was highly engaged and trying them for short bursts of time until Jodi was used to

wearing them during all daytime hours (American Speech-Language-Hearing Association,

2017).

As a result of Jodis hearing impairment, she was significantly delayed in her language

development than children without hearing impairments at her age. Even with amplification,

children with moderately-severe to profound hearing loss do not perceive speech in the same

way as hearing people (Lederberg, Spencer, & Spencer, 2013, pp. 15). Without being able to

respond to language unless it was specifically directed to her within close proximity and with the

use of visual gestures, Jodi could not engage in conversations about objects or experiences in her

life prior to receiving her hearing aids. Jodi was able to communicate her basic needs for by

showing what she needed and labeling objects with one word. From working with her

audiologist and beginning speech therapy, Jodis language resembled typical milestones of a
beginning toddler. With gestures along with language Jodi began to start to be able to respond to

simple directions such as go get your shoes or put on your jacket. She also began to speak

words more clearly and label objects with one word, but was not yet putting two words together

(American Speech-Language-Hearing Association, n.d).

Since Jodi was diagnosed as hearing impaired and was three years old, she qualified for

the preschool education program through her countys special education services. For half a day,

Jodi attended a preschool program at a local elementary school. Her class had nine students with

a variety of different exceptionalities that qualified them for special education services. Her

program focused on a common curriculum that children across the county had access to when

enrolled in a preschool program. Jodis Individual Education Plan (IEP) focused on language,

speech, and literacy goals. To strengthen Jodis development, her instructors practiced cued

speech, total communication, and auditory/oral goals. Cued speech helps develop the

phonological awareness aspect of language. It works by visually conveying speech at the

phoneme level (LaSasso, Crain, & Leybaert, 2003). It uses handshapes for consonants and

vowels so that they can be differentiated by the learner.

Having specialized instruction and teachers working with her every day, along with the

use of her hearing aids, Jodis language development slowly began to strengthen over her

preschool years. She began labeling objects more clearly and making connections between

illustrations in books and her environment. Her language at this point started to reflect that of a

two year old, although Jodi was four years old. She was gaining more words each month and

using different beginning consonant sounds (American Speech-Language-Hearing Association,

n.d). Jodi still was not putting two words together yet, but was a goal for her to practice. Her
receptive speech began to depend less on gestures from the speaker and she was able to follow

simple directions.

At the beginning of starting her preschool program, Jodis social-emotional development

was affected. She cried daily when being dropped off at school and took a substantial amount of

time to calm down. Though her parents did not like causing this distress on their child, they

understood that Jodis cognitive and language development depended on this extra instruction.

After three weeks Jodi got into a routine and seemed to gain a self-confidence when going to

school. She began to take initiative to participate in activities and to get involved with the other

students. Jodi showed more of an interest in communicating with her classmates as she gained

more confidence and took more chances with language.

Her teachers also noticed that as Jodis language development increased, so did her

interest in books. She would regularly take books off the shelf and look at them. When she saw a

picture of something she recognized such as a tree, she would get excited and label it. Her

attention for sitting and listening to a story also increased (American Speech-Language-Hearing

Association, n.d). Instead of losing interest and wondering away from the group, Jodi listened

and look attentively at the stories. She also began participating in music opportunities and

danced when songs were playing.

Jodis parents continued to support their daughter during her preschool years. They did

have concerns over her entering elementary school with her delayed language development.

Between the ages of three and five, children should able to listen and respond to a conversation

with multiple exchanges, tell stories and sequence events (American Speech-Language-Hearing

Association, n.d), all of which were not yet attainable for Jodis language development. She had

a choice of enrolling in two different schools when Kindergarten approached. One school was
totally inclusive and mainstreamed all children with special needs into a general education

classroom while assigning a Para educator to students who needed it, such as Jodi. The other

option was for Jodi to attend a school where children with special needs spend most of their day

in a special education classroom, where there would be less students than a general education

classroom. There were benefits and challenges for both options and Jodis mother, along with her

grandmother, a retired teacher, did much research on which would be most beneficial for Jodis

overall development.