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Running Head: Case Study of Caleigh Peterson 1

Case Study of Five Year Old Caleigh Peterson

Tori Kessel

Westmont College

Author Note

The author would like to thank the Peterson family for their willingness to participate and allow

for their daughter’s participation in this study. Contact Tori Kessel at [email protected] for

comments regarding this paper.

CASE STUDY OF CALEIGH PETERSON 2

Abstract

This paper examines the life of five year old Caleigh Peterson and her current physical,

cognitive, and social and emotional development in relation to other developmental theories and

normal age level development. Caleigh comes from a two parent upper-middle class Santa

Barbara family and lives in a stable home environment that facilitates positive and healthy

development at home and at school. Caleigh is healthy and has normal physical development, is

in the preoperational stage of cognitive development and has high social and emotional

development. She loves to play and be creative and interacts with her sisters and those around

her and takes great initiative in her learning and playing.

Case Study of Five Year Old Caleigh Peterson

Caleigh Peterson is the oldest of the three daughters of Christy and Greg Peterson. As

her birthday is January 23rd, 2007, Caleigh was between five years and eight months old and, five

years and ten months old throughout my study. Her sisters, Fia and Maddie are three and half

years and 15 months old respectively. They are residents of Santa Barbara, California and live in

a six bedroom house on about a half-acre of land, into which they moved into last year. Before

coming to Santa Barbara two years ago, the Petersons lived in San Diego where Caleigh was

born. Like each of her sisters, Caleigh has her own room on the second floor of her house. I,

Tori Kessel, have known Caleigh and the Peterson family since September 2010, when I started

to babysit them periodically (approximately twice a month) throughout the school year when I

was in Santa Barbara. Before August of this year, I had been away for about 9 months because I

studied abroad and then went home for summer and therefore had not babysat/seen the Petersons

since December 2011. Caleigh is in kindergarten this year at Montessori Center School in


Goleta, the school to which she went last year as well. She goes to school there Monday through

Friday from 8:30 to 2:45. Both of her parents work professionally but are still heavily involved

in their children’s lives. Christy though does not work full time and is the primary care giver and

is home with girls during the day.

Caleigh lives in a stimulating environment and the Petersons house is welcoming and

neat, child-friendly and full of books and stimulating toys and dolls. There are books in every

room, which is great because according to Caleigh her favorite toy is “a book”! There is plenty

of room for the girls to play both inside and outside including a grassy area, a sand box in the

backyard. They live in a neighborhood in the Upper East of Santa Barbara. Their neighborhood

has sidewalks and is in a relatively affluent area. Some of their extended family live close by,

including Caleigh’s grandparents and aunt and uncle and two elementary and middle school aged

boy cousins, Patch and Will. Because of their close proximity, Caleigh often interacts with and

sees her grandparents and cousins and aunt and uncle. Her grandparents and aunt and uncle take

care of her and her sisters from time to time as well and because they see them often, are also

significant parts of their development. Most of my times observing Caleigh were in her own

home with her sisters present though I did have a significant amount of one on one time with her

through taking her to school one day and spending time with her when her younger sisters were

napping.

Caleigh’s Development

Physical Development

As she is in the latter part of her preschool years Caleigh has grown and developed

significantly since the past few years. The average height and weight for a 5 and ½ year old girl

is about 42 inches and about 40 pounds (Feldman 2010). Children start slimming out and their


proportions continue to become more adult like. Another important aspect of physical

development that normally occurs in the stage in which Caleigh would be at is lateralization,

meaning the left and right hemispheres of the brain become more specialized (Feldman 2010).

Caleigh continues to experience lateralization during this time as her bring has sorted out and

specialized further since her younger years. Caleigh also is developing handedness, tendencies

towards right handed-ness as is evident through her use of her right hand in drawing and writing

and brushing her teeth.

Because it can be difficult for rambunctious five year olds to make the transition to

sleeping even at the end of the long day, Caleigh and her sisters have a consistent bedtime

routine that helps in the transition to rest. After any baths and often after putting Maddie to bed,

Caleigh and Fia get in their pajamas, go to the bathroom, brush their teeth, and then choose out

books to read which we read together before they each go to their beds and go to sleep.

Normally, Caleigh is in bed between 7:30 and 8, though she often wants to look through books

for a little bit on her own after reading together. Caleigh, like her sister Fia, wears a pull up

because she still sometimes wets the bed at night. Caleigh, unlike most girls her age, does still

wet at night and Christy, Caleigh’s mom, believes this is not a result of inability but rather that

she is just used to it because Christy started to have her wear a pull up right after she potty

trained at the young age of 2. Normally, girls of this age are able to control their bladders at

night as well, and hopefully soon, once she starts trying and being aware of it, Caleigh will be

able to as well (Feldman 2010).

Most children Caleigh’s age are healthy overall and Caleigh was no exception. Caleigh’s

health was good each time I observed her. She even avoided the stomach flu both her sisters got

at one point; this also may be due to the fact that her younger sisters are entering or in the minor


illness of preschools stage, whereas Caleigh is coming out of it and may have already developed

a stronger immune system. Nutritionally, the food Caleigh eats is well balanced from my

observations. Caleigh does not like very much and does not eat new foods or as much food

though as her younger sister. For dinner on an average night, Caleigh would eat a little slice of

previously frozen Trader Joe’s pizza, a half a cup of applesauce, and maybe a carrot or two or

some broccoli if she can get it down. Overall though, Caleigh is not super interested in food

which actually is consistent with findings that older preschool children like Caleigh do not need

as much food to maintain their growth (Feldman 2010). Because Caleigh thinned out and grew a

little during the past few years, she has changed in different ways, but the actual amount of food

needed for these changes hasn’t been huge. It therefore makes sense why Caleigh may not eat as

much as she did before. Neither I nor her parents made her eat more than she wanted, but we did

make sure she ate relatively evenly, meaning ate some apple sauce, some broccoli and some

pizza and not just all of one thing. Caleigh also normally eats three meals a day with snacks in

between and snacks after their “nap” time or after school which Caleigh is done with around 3.

Major gross motor skills that normal 5 years olds possess are the ability to start, turn and

stop effectively and have generally high motion/activity. They can normally do a running long

jump of approximately 2-3 feet, and descend stairway alternating the feet (Feldman 2010).

Caleigh as well has good gross motor skills and often dances, climbs up and down the stairs of

her house with ease and has high energy and ability to run and turn and play and somersault.

Fine motor skills that are normal for five year olds include being able to draw rectangles,

triangles and circles, copy letters, words, using crayons and folding paper (Feldman 2010).

Caliegh has excellent fine motor skills and can copy most letters well, especially when she takes

her time. One of the aspects of her life which I believed developed her fine motor skills is


Caliegh's early and continuous love for drawing and coloring. From when I first started

babysitting her when she was three, Caleigh loved to draw and use markers to make pictures.

Though that desire has not been as strong in the recent future (almost all she wanted to do when

she was just a little younger was color, hours and hours of coloring) Caleigh still greatly enjoys

art and when I asked her what her favorite thing to do was she quickly replied “drawing!” I

included one of her drawings in the back which she drew for me on the way to school one day in

the car. It was a casual drawing, in the car with limited resources but demonstrates her fine

motor and art skills. One of Caleigh’s favorite things to draw is flowers. Caleigh has definitely

reached, and I believed had reached that stage a while ago, what Feldman calls the pictorial

stage, which is normally reached around the age 4 of 5 (Feldman 2010).

Cognitive Development

Caleigh is nearing the end of the preoperational stage. One important aspect of this

stage is symbolic thinking, which Caleigh certainly has. She uses symbols in her pictures, in

toys and in language to represent the real thing. Caleigh’s language is still developing but, at

almost six, she has seemingly average sophistication of language. Sometimes she mixes up

orders of words or uses words incorrectly, like she told me that she was “five and a half and three

quarters” one time, and another time when I was putting her to bed she asked me “oh for

goodness. Please you close my curtains please?” Caleigh, like most children her age, uses

language to think into the future. One day we were playing and she told me the whole story of

what we were going to be playing after dinner and what was going to happen in this game. It

was an imagination game and Caliegh had a sick dog and I was the vet and had to take care of it.

But even before playing, Caliegh had already planned what was going to happen and what each

of us were going to be doing. It is also evident that Caleigh has a grasp on symbolic function


through her use of letters and writing as she does that often and understands that the words and

letters on paper stand for something she is trying to communicate, i.e.: her writing “I did a big

play dough ball” on my journal.

Many children in the preoperational stage experience centration, concentrating of one

aspect of a stimulus to make a judgment about it (Feldman 2010). Caleigh still has centration in

some areas but it was clear that she was moving beyond that in some ways. Caleigh does not yet

have conservation and during the water glass experiment, it was clear that Caleigh thought the

water became more when put into the taller glass. This was also the same for the play dough ball

experiment, when flattened, Caleigh thought there was less play dough then before. When I

made play dough into two equal logs and then cut one of the logs into four parts and asked

Caleigh if either one had more play dough, she said the one that was not cut because the other

one had “a bunch of little pieces” although she saw, like the water and the ball, that both were

the same at the beginning. Other event that signified Caleigh’s preoperational, appearance-base

stage happened one time when I gave Caleigh and Fia Fig Newtons as a snack, originally telling

them they could each have two, but there were only three Fig Newtons so I cut each of them in

half and gave Fia and Caleigh each three halves and Caleigh was enthusiastic that she got three.

She had focused on one aspect of the stimuli, the number, without taking into consideration

another essential aspect, the size of the Fig Newtons.

An incident that indicated that Caleigh is moving out of centration and the preoperational

stage happened when I asked them whether I was a boy or a girl and Caleigh sais I was a girl.

“Why?” I asked. “Because you have long hair.” But when I asked if I cut my hair if I would be a

boy, she said no, I would still be a girl. Although, when I asked if Patch, their boy cousin, were

to dress up in dress what would that mean, Caleigh said Patch would be a girl. So in her mind, I


am consistently a girl even I change what she stated makes me a girl, my hair. But if Patch were

to wear a dress, he would be a girl. This may be the result of me being there and Patch being

gone, or it could be due to the feeling that a dress designates girl-ness more than hair, therefore a

girl can have short hair and still be a girl, but a boy cannot wear a dress and still be a boy.

She loves to create and question and has great intuitive thought that often results in

her trying things out for herself. In a book or story, if she does not understand a word or what

happened or why, she will ask. She also loves to experiment. For example, one day we were

playing with these little food coloring icing tube things out in the sandbox with a bunch of

containers of water and were dying the water different colors. Caleigh wondered what would

happen if we put every color together in a container and so then we tried it out! Then she wanted

to make all the colors of the rainbow so we learned how to mix colors to get the colors we

needed. She also through this is developing functionality as she learns that there are certain

actions to be taken to produce an outcome, i.e.: mix red and blue in the right amounts to make

purple.

Her memory seems pretty accurate based on my understanding. She can easily tell me

about her day or the day before, though sometimes things are scattered and random, for example,

she will not give enough context when telling a story so I’ll have to back track and ask a question

about when this was or where so that I know what she is talking about. This also may be a result

of egocentric thought that Caleigh still is experiencing as she may not realize that I do not know

the context of what she is saying. The level of her memory also was demonstrated when she was

able to easily tell me the directions to her school and what entrance to go into and where to park

and take her and when it was time for me to go. Caleigh is a great helper when I needed to find


something in the kitchen or around the house. Caleigh knows where things are stored and put

and how things in her house work and can communicate that effectively when I ask her.

Caleigh goes to a Montessori school and is constantly learning from and interacting

with others both at school and at home and that greatly influences her development. Caleigh

takes advantage of scaffolding and the example and help of others as she plays and learns. One

simple example involved one time when I was coming to babysit and Christy was giving me the

information for the evening and said to Caleigh “and what has Maddie been doing lately Miss

Cay that we need to tell Tori about?” and Caleigh said “biting!” The scaffolding Christy

provided through that question was an excellent launching pad for Caleigh to come to a

conclusion. Caleigh is also very open to my suggestions when playing and is good at imitating

and using language I said previously. One time I was talking about a game being tricky and then

the rest of the day she referred to certain things as being tricky as well. This is also an example

of social learning.

Caleigh has great differentiation of objects and when I told her to close her eyes and feel an

object and then open it up and identify the object she felt, she was able to do it with ease. Even

the more difficult objects like three different pencils, without hesitation she chose the correct one

even though they differed only on little things like length, roundness vs. octagonal and with or

without an eraser.

Social and Emotional Development

Caleigh is the oldest of three girls, very close in age and her sisters contribute greatly to

her self-concept. Although there are just daughters in the house, and there are understandably

many girl-oriented toys, they are not exclusive and the girls love to play in the mud and ride on

scooters and be rough with one another. Caleigh especially will play pretty rough with Maddie


and normally Maddie is fine with it but sometimes as well, Caleigh needs to be reminded to tone

it down a little and be gentler with her baby sister. It is possible that having all one gender

decreases the amount of gender preference or bias because all the daughters seem to get treated

equally with their exposer to certain activities rather than having a bias towards one because of

his/her gender. Caleigh is very aware and happy that she is a girl and enjoys doing “girl”

activities like coloring and drawing and playing dress up and with dolls and in the kitchen along

her other more rough activities.

From my observations and interactions, Caleigh is clearly is somewhere in between the

initiative vs. guilt and competence vs. inferiority of Erikson’s stages as she take great initiative

of her actions and constantly is trying new things, but also seeks to do things for herself and help

me with what I am doing (Feldman 2010). For example, she always sets the table for dinner and

often will help me scoop the apple sauce and prepare the food. She spread her own peanut butter

and squeezed her own honey onto her sandwich when we were making lunch. Caleigh also can

dress herself, which is quite fun. Sometimes she is very creative in her outfits as well, as you can

see from picture in the back. I love that she is developing her competency and independence in a

healthy way through choosing out her outfits. These are all elements of the competence she is

developing. She also though, and I believe this is a wonderful thing, still is in the initiative vs.

guilt stage in that she takes initiative and is very creative in coming up with games and activities.

Caleigh makes elaborate forts and builds sand projects and colors pictures without instruction.

She often instructs Fia to join along in which normally she happily does so.

Caleigh is very good at play, and has high social competency. She is especially advanced

in her cooperative play. She can actively engage in a game with taking turns and figuring out

concepts together. When we played the “bug catcher” board game she and I shared bugs and


interacted with one another and took turns spinning the cards to choose bugs out. She would

comment on my bugs in my container and I would comment on hers. She also can actively

engage in role playing games and imagination games like the veterinarian game or dolls which

involve all of us having roles and interaction with one another.

Conclusion

Caleigh Peterson overall is a healthy, active, average 5 and half (and three quarters!) year

old girl who is raised in a healthy, developmentally stimulating home and school environment.

She has average and good physical development and gross and fine motor skills. Her cognitive

development is continuing to develop as she is still currently in the preoperational stage signified

by her difficulties with concepts like conservation and gender constancy, though her language

skills and writing and art skills are high. Caleigh is an innovative, creative thinker and playmate

and enjoys stimulation and asks intriguing questions. She receives and responds to information

well and learns from those around her. She has high social ability and is great at cooperative and

pretend play. She has high self-ability and independence and is willing to help. Caleigh is a

happy and beautiful girl well on her way to continuing to grow up to be a healthy, smart, social,

and fun person.


Caleigh Peterson on September 29th, 2012 at her school,

Montessori Center School, after dressing herself for the day.

Notice her “twirly whirly dress” layered over the pink t shirt.


Reference

Feldman, R.S., (2010). Child Development Fifth Edition. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall.

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