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Individual Differences Profile Essay

Powell, Tyler

Instructor: Dr. Egbert

EDUC 205: Development/Individual Differences

College of Southern Idaho

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Individual Differences Profile Essay

In this profile of a student with a speech disability, I will discuss the physical,

cognitive, and socio-emotional development of the student, as well as a summary of my

findings and their implications in the classroom. This particular student once had

problems saying certain sounds but has worked through that and now only struggles with

a stutter.

General Information

Hannah is a four-year-old, preschool girl. Hannah is very well loved within her

family. She has two siblings, an older brother and a younger sister. Her parents are both

very busy with their jobs so having them both home at the same time is very challenging.

Sometimes this means that she ends up being babysat by her grandma or my mom.

Hannah is related to me through my dad’s side of the family. She is the daughter of my

dad’s nephew.

Hannah’s normal routine before COVID-19 consisted of a three-hour school day

in a developmental preschool. She also attends speech therapy 2-3 times a week. Hannah

spends most of the rest of the day playing with toys and her siblings or watching

YouTube videos. Since COVID-19 began, she has been doing 3-4 hour schooling

sessions that are taught by my mom, a teacher of 20 plus years. She will then usually stay

at our house for a couple more hours where she interacts with people much older than

herself like my fifteen-year-old sister and I.

Physical Development

Hannah has brown hair, brown eyes, and white skin. Her physical maturation

looks to be the same as her peers. Her right hand is her most dominant, but she likes to
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try to use both hands often. Her muscle development is not handicapped in any way

different from what is expected of children her age. She can throw a ball, ride a scooter,

and put together puzzles which require all different types of muscle usage. She plays just

as most children can.

The general physical health of the child is good. Her parents are big advocates for

eating healthy so that leads to Hannah’s nutritious diet. Hannah is given the opportunity

to be active twice a week at school with a PE class and also is able to play outside during

recess sessions. Most of Hannah’s exercise simply comes from the family she is in. Her

family loves to be outside and has tons of room in their backyard to do so. Some of

Hannah’s favorite activities include bike riding, scooter riding, playing in her sandbox

and, her favorite, jumping on the trampoline.

Cognitive Development

Hannah goes to a developmental preschool that helps her with her disability. The

classroom is technically a regular classroom as they all stay together but it is a preschool

with other students who have a disability. Hannah is very strong in the subject of

mathematics. She loves to use hands on manipulatives to answer her math questions. She

also enjoys listening to stories. She does not yet love to read because of her speech

impediment but she will listen to others read stories all day long.

Hannah performs very well in the classroom. Many of her teachers consider her a

sweetheart who can be very quiet but also has the capability of becoming very noisy.

When it comes to staying on task, Hannah does great as long as she can do it the way she

wants. If she cannot do it that way, staying on task becomes very questionable. She is a

very stubborn little girl.

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Due to Hannah’s age, Piaget would probably place her in the preoperational stage

of cognitive development. This stage is considered to be applicable from age 2 to age 7.

Laura E. Berk and Adena B. Meyers talk about the preoperational stage of Piaget’s

Stages of Cognitive Development saying, “Preschool children use symbols to represent

their earlier sensorimotor discoveries. Development of language and make-believe play

takes place.” (pg. 19) This stage almost perfectly describes this child. The quote discusses

symbols that are used and Hannah loves to do hands on math manipulatives to work

through her problems. An example of time she has done this is when she is adding two

single digits together. My mom has taught her to place a number of objects out, let’s use

pennies for example, and then when we add we sweep both group of pennies downward

and then count the new single group of pennies to find the answer. The stage also talks

about the development of language which Hannah has unfortunately fallen behind in.

Socio-emotional Development

Hannah is able to interact with her peers very well. She can be very loud and

funny with people whom she already knows. Hannah loves to be the boss of the children

she is playing with. She wants them to play the way she thinks they should and, if they do

not, it may lead to tears. Hannah also interacts better with children who are older than

her. I believe this is mostly because she spends so much time with her family and mine

that she spends most of the time playing with her older brother and my nine-year old

brother. When making new friends with children her age, she is shy for a short period of

time but that will change within 15-30 minutes.

When it comes to adults, things become a little bit more different. Hannah still

likes to be the boss in front of the adults. She often likes to control where everyone can
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and can’t sit at the dinner table when we come together for family dinner each Sunday.

Hannah does not warm up to adults all that quickly though. Often it can take her several

visits to warm up to a new adult. Somedays can be a little better than others though so

catching her in the right mood is also key. Sometimes, due to the stutter, it can make it

hard for people in either group to understand what she is trying to say. It would be

interesting to continue to monitor if the stutter ever leads to any rude comments made

about her.

The way Hannah acts shows that she is very self-confident as long as she knows

the people she is around. An example, she wants to do anything and everything on her

own (or at least try). She doesn’t want teachers to help her write her name or help her

with the math problems. She is often paying attention to how she looks. This does not

always mean that she ensures that she is matching but she always wants to make sure she

looks “cute”. Hannah loves princesses a ton. Because of this, she wears dresses very

often. She will often run up to the first person she sees to tell them about her cute new

dress and how much she believes she looks like a princess. Hannah still cares very much

about the people around her, especially her little sister and her mom.

Erik Erikson is a phycologist that has split up psychosocial development into

eight different stages. The stage that Hannah would fall into by her age would be

Initiative vs. Guilt. Roberta Berns talks about this stage saying, “If they are allowed to

create their own games and fantasies, to ask questions, to use certain objects (a hammer

and wood, for example) with supervision, then the outcome of this stage will be a feeling

of initiative. If they are made to feel that they are bad for trying new things and pests for

asking questions, they may carry a sense of guilt throughout life.” (pg. 43) Hannah would
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love to try new things especially if the older kids are doing them as well. She strongly

dislikes being told she cannot do those things.

Summary, Conclusions and Implication

In summary, Hannah is a normal, well developed, four-year-old with a small

disability of a speech impediment or stutter. She can perform above average or average

based on the different domain of development. She is above average when it comes to

physical maturation in that she exercises plenty and eats well. She becomes a little more

average when it comes to the cognitive and socio-emotional domains. This is mostly due

to the disability she has. She struggles to read and she sometimes struggles that get full

sentences out that other people are completely able to understand.

Hannah’s strengths are in math. Her cognitive development has made her very

capable of understanding math problems using symbols, objects, or pictures to solve. She

listens very well when it comes to stories, especially if they are about princesses. She will

listen to you tell or read multiple stories and ask you to continue to read rather than do

that herself. One of her weaknesses is that of a short attention span. If things are not

going the way she wants, she will quickly lose focus on the task and hand and may be

very difficult to get to return back to the task.

In conclusion, Forest Gump once said, “Life is like a box of chocolates, you never

know what you are going to get.” As teachers, we will never know what student is going

to walk into our classroom at the beginning of the year. We will quickly realize that as

they walk in, none of them are alike and they are all unique. Understanding their ins and

outs will truly make our ability to teach more powerful.

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References

Berns, Roberta. (2016) Child, family, school, community: Socialization and

support (10th ed.). Stamford, CT: Cengage Learning.

“Chapter One: History, Theory, and Research Strategies.” Infants, Children, and

Adolescents, by Laura E. Berk and Adena Beth Meyers, 8th Edition ed., Pearson,

2016, p. 19.