Preschool Here We Come!

Gabriel is now 3 years, 11 months old! To promote healthy behavioral practices and an interest in physical activity, my husband and I love to play catch with Gabriel, shoot mini-basketballs and kick the mini-soccer ball. Although Gabriel is too young to follow any of the rules of these games, we figure it's a good chance to develop ball-handling skills and fitness. Gabriel is also fascinated by music and enjoys dancing. Since the age of two, we have taken Gabriel on walks around the neighborhood or in the park

Gabriel’s language development is going slowly. His scores in receptive and expressive vocabulary are below average. When asked to tell a story about a funny picture, Gabriel will give only the broad outlines without any details. Gabriel sometimes seems not to understand our directions. He is still speaking mostly in two to three word sentences, and using gestures. Sometimes Gabriel gets frustrated and throws a tantrum when he can't communicate. Gabriel likes to tell people about things he has done, but he usually leaves out some key details.

My husband and I have been urged to have more conversations with Gabriel about anything of interest, read aloud, watch educational television together and go to interesting places. Gabriel loves to watch children's educational television and we encourage this. He is learning to name some letters and numbers. He sometimes repeats what the characters on the shows say, but sometimes just sits and watches or plays with his toys. When out on our walks around the neighborhood, he seems to be curious about every fence, leaf or bird and always wants to stop and look at, touch, or talk about them so we take the time to answer all of his questions about his surroundings.

Gabriel is average in his cognitive development. He can understand quantitative descriptions like “more” or “less” and “longer” or “shorter”. He is good with classifying objects like types of animals and in solving reasoning problems. He is about average in copying designs, solving picture puzzles, and building block towers. He can now see patterns and seems to have a good idea of how familiar things happen, such as baths and restaurant visits. He often points out when someone doesn't do something in the right order. He is having a little trouble distinguishing between fantasy and reality though. Gabriel seems to know that the cartoons he watches aren't real, but he gets nervous or scared when watching prime-time dramas or even "G" rated videos.

I think the reason behind Gabriel’s short responses is that my husband and I are not being clear enough in our responses to Gabriel’s questions and not asking enough open-ended questions. If we give him more opportunities to use his vocabulary, maybe his language skills will improve. We are also being very careful about what we let Gabriel watch on T.V. I think we may need to find a particular show that captures his interest to fully use his interest to our advantage. When Gabriel is telling us about something he has done, we need to listen to his telling of the story with enthusiasm and ask questions to prompt him to fill in a few details he missed.

Outside our home, Gabriel is quite self-confident in new social situations and seems to be well-liked by several children. He has several little friends in preschool and is somewhat of a group leader in free play activities, such as imaginary play or riding trikes. We also have new neighbors two doors down. Gabriel has struck up a friendship with the four-year old boy that lives there. They have fun riding trikes on the sidewalk, playing superheroes and villains, and other games. Gabriel generally seems to want to please adults. He is rarely aggressive to adults or other children but sometimes he forgets to pick up or he doesn't listen. At home, Gabriel loves interacting with his new baby sister. Gabriel really wanted to have his sister in the room, and normally is able to sleep through the baby's crying at night, so we moved the crib into Gabriel's room. Gabriel also loves to talk about his friends from Preschool at home.

Gabriel’s behavioral problems right now are lying and behavior properly in public. Gabriel has begun occasionally lying to us about accidents or rule violations. The lies are pretty small and we realize this is a sign of a theory of mind. We wait until we catch him in the act, explain that lying is wrong, and put him in time-out. For good measure, we also explain that being lied to makes people feel bad. Gabriel is not generally able to sit still or stay quiet through an entire meal at a fast food restaurant but we are very clear about what we expect of him and remind him often during these outings. I think that Gabriel has not been exposed to enough of these experiences to know how to behave and that with firm guidance, these problems will be resolved.

Gabriel is 30 Months Old!

Gabriel’s environment has influenced him greatly. At nine months old, Gabriel could understand a few words and point to something he wanted but at twelve months old, Gabriel could clearly understand a couple of dozen words. I think that this is partly due to the fact that me, my husband, and Gabriel started regularly visiting grandma and grandpa's house on weekends. Gabriel loves to play with their little dog, and gets a lot of attention from grandma and grandpa. In fact, Gabriel’s first words were the name of grandma and grandpa’s dog. I think that these chances for Gabriel to socialize with extended family and learn new words on a regular basis greatly increased Gabriel’s socialization, vocabulary and language skills. I have also been showing Gabriel how to take care of the growing number of plants we have on the sunny balcony of the apartment to give Gabriel a chance to further bond with me and work on his fine motor skills. Gabriel is very interested in music, and we have often danced with him. He has clapped and sang along with the TV. We have also taught him some short little preschool songs and enjoy dancing or moving around together to music. I think these experiences have helped Gabriel become above average in his gross motor skills. I believe the lack of experiences with other children have contributed to Gabriel’s below average skills in language.

Gabriel is now able to focus on tasks and show self control for long periods of time. I have heard that this is unusually good for his age. He is pretty cooperative with other children, but can become a little aggressive over a favorite toy, and needs to be reminded to share. Gabriel is toilet trained now, and rarely has any accidents. When the occasional accident does occur he is embarrassed and is showing signs of self awareness. He is communicating better, but has difficulty understanding other people's perspectives and using plural and past tenses. Gabriel knows he is a boy now, and has begun to categorize behavior and objects as made for boys or girls. He prefers playing with boys, but gets along pretty well with girls. We are still working on socialization with other children.

My husband and I are big believers in aspects of social learning theory. We are careful to make sure that our actions are appropriate and beneficial for Gabriel at all times and we love to set a good example for Gabriel. As mentioned above, Gabriel loves to help me take care of our plants and models the way that I water them. He also loves to dance the way that we do. Money is tight for us right now because we are saving to buy a house but we love to do inexpensive activities with Gabriel so that he can learn from us in new situations such as going to the zoo, the petting farm, museums and the park. We also keep our actions in mind when following elements of Vygotsky’s sociocultural theory. We make sure that we talk to Gabriel a lot and attempt to pass on our information to him about the world around him. Gabriel loves to follow me around the house and I teach him about everything I do. We also talk to Gabriel about the importance of values like sharing with the other children he plays with, listening to his teachers, etc. In addition, we recognize aspects of information processing theory. We try to give Gabriel interesting stimuli and encourage positive behavior.

19 Months and Things are Going Great!

Gabriel’s exploratory and problem solving behavior has greatly improved from 8 months. At 8 months old, Gabriel was able to find a hidden object, as long as I didn’t wait too long or distract him in the middle of the search. At 12 months, we tried the object permanence test again. This time, Gabriel was able to find the object even after long delays and loved the game. I set up two hiding places for the object and hid it under one of the two covers repeatedly. When I switched it to the second hiding place, he no longer had the problem he had earlier of searching the more common of the two hiding places. I couldn’t even trick him by hiding it in my hand. Gabriel liked this game and wants to play it over and over. At 15 months, I noticed he often explores and studies things in his environment and performs simple little "experiments" with them. For example, he throws a ball against the wall repeatedly, varying the strength or angle of throw and happily watching how the ball rebounds. At 18 months, he showed signs of self awareness while looking in the mirror. He has begun using the word "me" a lot and wants to do things himself. He likes to explore the plants on the balcony and help me water them. Finally, at 19 months, Gabriel is able to model actions or words that he has seen or heard days before. Gabriel seems to become aware of basic categories, such as big or little, and blue or red because of the way he sorts his toys. And Gabriel is age-appropriate on tasks such as building a structure to model other structures and other spatial skills such as copying shapes, coloring within the lines and solving picture puzzles.

Gabriel’s temperament has also greatly improved. He has shown much more activity recently and is very interested in music. He often dances in rhythm to familiar music and tries to clap or sing along with songs that I sing or that are played on TV. We enjoy dancing or moving around together to music. Although Gabriel is still slow to warm up to new situations and people, when we give him time he usually comes around. It has been recommended that we spend more time in child playgroups in familiar settings to improve his sociability. His emotionality has vastly improved and we are very happy about this. While at 8 months Gabriel was very hard to soothe, he is now pretty cheerful during play sessions and only becomes irritable when another child becomes aggressive toward him. Gabriel himself is not very aggressive with other children unless another child tries to grab a toy from him and then he will resist. It has also been recommended that Gabriel continue to go to toddler play groups or daycare to develop his interaction skills further. His cooperation and self-control are very good is able to concentrate very well for short periods of time. We have been told that if this continues he will be more than ready for preschool-type activities and “group time”.

It seems that Gabriel’s temperament has been fairly stable in the last 18 months. I have observed mostly good tempered reactions to things. At 3 Months, Gabriel would smile at familiar people and toys and begun developing lots of cute little habits. At 8 Months, my partner and I were able to spend a lot of time in the evenings and on weekends playing with Gabriel. He seemed to be having a lot of fun! He did have some difficulty at 9 months when he became difficult to soothe if upset. He would sometimes accept my embraces and sometimes pushes me away. He also experienced the typical emotional reactions for his age, such as fear of total strangers and separation anxiety. But at 12 months he seemed happier and when we had a party at our house Gabriel seemed very happy, regardless of whether he knew what we were celebrating or not. At 19 months, Gabriel is a pretty cheerful child.

To encourage Gabriel to broad his contact with other people we have been taking him to visit grandma and grandpa's house on weekends, and we all have a great time. Gabriel loves to play with their gentle dog, and gets a lot of attention from grandma and grandpa. I have also been encouraging his communication skills by asking him questions that require more than a “yes” or “no” answer and pointing out new objects and naming them.

I am very surprised and glad that Gabriel is turning out to be such an intelligent and happy child! I love that he is always exploring his surroundings and doing little experiments. I did have the impression that I was doing some things wrong with Gabriel at first. His difficulty to soothe and refusal of my embraces were concerning. But I have been pleasantly surprised with his progress. I am still a little worried about his level of communication skills, but with work I am sure they will improve.

Gabriel is 9 Months Old!

Well after at nine months old, Gabriel has just seen the pediatrician.

The doctor says that Gabriel is physically healthy. Yay! He doctor recommends a greater variety of baby food and ground up fruits and vegetables so we will be introducing those slowly as not to upset his digestion. I was a little scared to introduce him to too much to fast so his suggestion is good to know. Gabriel is advanced in his gross and fine motor skills! I am so proud! He is already crawling, pulling himself up to stand and can manipulate objects.


I would classify Gabriel as a "slow-to-warm-up" child as far as temperament. He is not a "difficult" child, but not a "easy" child either. When he becomes upset it is hard to soothe him and he sometimes accepts my hugs, sometimes not. He has typical emotional reactions for his age: he is fearful of total strangers and is quick to cry when upset or in pain. He is cautious at first around new people, but warms up fairly quickly to friendly people and to new activities and then will vocalize a lot and make eye contact. I don't understand why he is willing to accept my embraces at time and at times not, but I am hoping that this is corrects itself.


Gabriel is extremely attached to me and not quite as attached to my husband. He gets separation anxiety but we realize that is normal for his age. He is making an effort to increase the time he spends with Gabriel, changing diapers, playing and feeding.