Lucas 1
Lucas
A Case Study about Child Development
Allison Gallahan
Child Development, Section B
Professor Stetzel
May 6, 2009
Lucas 2
Abstract
After an extended period watching and observing Lucas, the bystander is able to see
where Lucas is developmentally. He is growing physically, mentally, and emotionally as a child
his age, four years old, should be maturing according to many theorists and people who have
studied child development for many years. While he has not mastered all the required steps for
his age group he is achieving more and more of them each day and will be able to enter school in
good standing. The following case study will discuss where Lucas is excelling and where he still
needs a little work.
Lucas 3
Lucas
A Case Study about Child Development
Lucas is almost four years old and lives with his mom and dad in a house in the country.
His father is a train engineer and spends a few days a week on the rails while his mother stays at
home as a housewife. Their house sits on a large plot of land surrounded by woods on one side
and a cornfield on the other. They have neighbors but only on one side and across the street.
They also have many pets, two dogs, three cats, and some fish. Lucas is presently the only child
but that will be changing in a few months, as his mother is pregnant and due at the end of July.
He loves trains, animals, ice tea, and being inside and outside of his house. His favorite movie is
the Polar Express. He does not like the word “No” and is having a tough time adjusting to his
mom’s attempts to add structure into their unstructured lives as her due date approaches. This
nickname exemplifies his fun loving, goofy, energetic personality. Throughout this study, the
observation of Lucas will take place at two places: his house, inside and out and the college.
Part II: Physical Development
Lucas developed normally through the prenatal, infancy, and toddler stages. He was born
on March eighth in 2005 by cesarean section after a full term, normal pregnancy. At birth, he
weighed eight pounds twelve ounces and measured twenty-one inches long, which according to
the Center for Disease Control (2000), put him in the seventy-fifth percentile for weight and
ninetieth percentile for length. As an infant Betsy, Lucas’s mother, chose not to breast feed and
instead gave him formula. As a toddler, Lucas hit all the important milestones, according to his
mother, included learning to walk which occurred around fifteen months.
As Lucas progressed from a toddler to preschooler, he continued to progress as he should
with only one minor lapse. When Lucas was three, he broke his first bone. He broke his right
Lucas 4
arm during the spring while playing in the woods behind his house with his dogs. Having a cast
on his arm only slowed him down and kept him out of the water, but other than that nothing
changed. At four years, he is forty-two inches tall and weights around forty-six pounds, keeping
him in the s...
