Week 3- Observing Communication

Observation Setting: Preschool

            I observed the interaction between a mother and 4-year-old daughter at my preschool that I work at.

I noticed that the daughter often calls the shots and the mother has very little authority over her daughter. Upon the mother picking up her daughter from school, I notice the daughter does not acknowledges that her mother is there to pick her up despite her mother, myself, and her friends telling her that her mother is there. Even after the mother had signed her daughter out and grabbed all of her daugher’s belongings, the daughter still did not acknowledge that her mother was there or ready to leave.

            From my observations, I learned that the mother had little control over her daughter. The daughter seems like she is the one in control and tells the mother what to do.

            In order to have helped the communication between the mother and daughter, I could have sat next to the 4 –year-old girl and while she was playing I could have gotten her attention and told her that her mom is here to pick her up. In addition, I will let the girl know that her mommy has had a long day and needs to go home to pick up her brother.  Maybe saying this would allow the girl to realize that if she and her mom are unable to leave the school, then her brother would be waiting for both of them.

            I think the interaction between the girl and her mother is normal. The mother was not really upset, but just kept politely asking her daughter to go. I am hoping that the parenting style between the mother and daughter improves as this could have detrimental affects on the child.

            As an educator it is important to continue my efforts in playing the authority figure, thus teaching the children that there are rules to follow and people to obey. It is important to teach children that they need to be respectful to others, and in this case they need to listen and be respectful to their parents. In the future if children are unwilling to leave school and make their parents wait, I will then ask the children the following day how come they do not want to go home. Hopefully, this will answer some questions as to why they want to stay at the school longer.