Early Childhood

Care and
Development
Checklist

Infants Name: Chesca Elaine de

Leon Reyes

Birthday of Infant: May 20, 2015

Age of Infant as of February 2016:

9 months

Baysa, Nicole
2015-08446
Reflection Paper

Doing the checklist was a painful thing to do. I knew the infant I observed can still
do so much but there I was tracking her development with a checklist. In my raw notes, I
was able to list quite a lot of actions that exhibited Chescas physical development but
then I was only limited to the actions listed in the checklist. For instance, after my first 3
hours of observation, Chesca was beginning to learn how to open and close her hands.
It may not have been fully executed but I think that it is a good fine motor skill to note. I
was really wishing that I could add skills in the fine motor domain but I couldnt. I had to
force myself to stick with the checklist that gave an incomplete picture of Chescas
physical development.
It is also disappointing how checklists only determine whether the behavior is
present or not. One description in the checklist is Holds crayon with all the fingers of his
hand making a fist. As much as I wanted to comment that Chesca was able to hold a
rattle using the palmar grasp, I couldnt check that description because it indicated that
the action had to be executed with a crayon. Her mother also would not give Chesca
crayons as she knew that she would eat it. Besides that, most of the descriptions listed
also involved the stairs. The house where I observed only had one floor. If lets say
Chesca was already at the age where she can climb the stairs, I still had to leave the
boxes blank all because I did not see the action done by the child. It is very unfair that
an action not carried out because of these factors already means that the infant could
not do it despite not having the means to do it.
Even if all I had to do was check whether Chesca can do an action or not, I never
knew that it would actually be quite tough for me to do it. It is my least favourite type of
observation tool because it does not see the child as developing unlike the anecdotal
record that assumes that an action has an important implication in a childs
development. Yes, checklists have its good points but knowing that my course gives
emphasis on having a holistic view of a child, checklists do not train me in seeing the
child in that way. Perhaps someday, Chesca will be the next Alyssa Valdez and if she
does become one, it will be funny to think that she was that kid with lots of blank boxes
in her physical domain.