A Developmental and Biopsychosocial Assessment
A Developmental and Biopsychosocial Assessment
Arizona State University
Abstract
This is a developmental and biopsychosocial assessment of a five-year-old girl. She is a very social, confident little girl with a home environment that is impacting her development. She attends preschool part time, and is showing a few delays. Her preschool teachers have informed the parents she is not ready for kindergarten at this time. Sophie’s scores showed deficits in the areas of communication and problem solving (Squires & Bricker, 2009). Her fine motor skills were also on the lower end of the spectrum. Sophie’s mother states these answers are not an accurate representation of her daughter, and she answers incorrectly for attention (Sophie’s mother, personal communication, September 2, 2016). Her mother would often intervene when her daughter did not answer correctly, trying to prompt Sophie into saying the correct answer. Early intervention, and family-centered therapy would be helpful for this family. Which would integrate the entire family into addressing and helping to improve these delays early on, and lessening the impact it would have later on (Kaiser & Roberts, 2011).
Introduction
Sophie is an outgoing, energetic five-year old girl. Sophie is very outspoken, and did not seem shy or unsure of herself at anytime during the interview. She lives at home with her mother, father, and one-year-old sister. They have recently moved away from their family, and Sophie is unhappy about it. Her dad is in the military, and is not home a lot. Her mother stays at home with her and her younger sister. She is in preschool part-time, but is having some problems. Many times when I asked Sophie a question, I would have to repeat it multiple times before she would answer me. Sophie continues to have trouble listening and following directions. Her mother states there have been behavioral issues at home since the move (Sophie’s mother, personal communication, September 2, 2016). Sophie used to spend a lot of time with her grandmother, and she had no rules there. According to Sophie’s mother, if she’s told no she throws a temper tantrum, and says she’s leaving to go be with her grandmother (Sophie’s mother, personal communication, September 2, 2016). Her mother says there are problems with the grandmother undermining their authority (Sophie’s mother, personal communication, September 2, 2016). Sophie’s grandmother has been pushing for Sophie to go to a private school so she can start this year, instead of being almost six-years-old when starting kindergarten. Her mother stated the preschool recently informed them that Sophie was not quite ready for a school environment, and would benefit from the extra year of preschool (Sophie’s mother, personal communication, September 2, 2016). Since the grandmother was paying for the preschool, she required the parents to find a new school for Sophie. There is a lot of tension in the home environment.
Age Assessment
I noticed before even starting the Ages and Stages questionnaire that Sophie has trouble listening, and following directions. Sometimes she could follow two of the three directions, but never all three. Her multiple word sentences were age appropriate, and easily understood. She does appear to have a language deficit that could possibly correlate to the issues she has in her problem solving skills (Dickins, 2014). She does not use nor understand past tense language, or comparison words. When asked “if your car is big, then your mom’s car is what? (Squires & Bricker, 2009)” Sophie’s response to the question was “big too” (personal communication, September 2, 2016). I also asked, “ if Sadie jumps high, then you jump what? (Squires & Bricker, 2009)” Her response was “high too” (Sophie, personal communication, September 2, 2016). In the problem solving area of her assessment, she also experienced issues with comparison words. Sophie’s use of plural verbs is also incorrect. Throughout the interview she used incorrect tenses of verbs, even though she had the correct response to the questions. For example, she used the verb “askes” instead of asked (Sophie, personal communication, September 2, 2016). Just as Sophie had trouble following the three directions earlier, she also was unable to repeat any of the sentences back to me. She was only able to recall a word or two from each sentence.
Sophie’s gross motor skills are well above the cutoff range, however, she fell below the cutoff in fine motor skills (Squires & Bricker, 2009). She throws a ball very well, and was able to catch the ball two of the three times. The only portion of the gross motor skills that she was unable to accomplish was skipping with alternating feet (Squires & Bricker, 2009). However, her fine motor skills are lacking. Her picture of a person only had three parts, she struggled with the scissors while cutting the paper, and she was only able to make two of the shapes recognizable (Squires & Bricker, 2009). This trend continued when Sophie was copying letters. She was able to copy about half of the letters I gave her, and four letters out of her name.