DNRS 6800 Week 11 Reflection Example

What a Colleague Would Have Believed: A Reflection on Conclusions Hidden Inside My Records

Student Name

College of Nursing, Walden University

DNRS 6800: Advanced Pediatric Development and Behavior

Instructor Name

Month Day, Year

What a Colleague Would Have Believed: A Reflection on Conclusions Hidden Inside My Records

What Changed

What changed this term is that I now write what I saw before I write what I think it means, and I keep the two apart on the page. I did not do that at the start, and two sentences from my own earlier work show the fault more clearly than any summary could.

Two Sentences, Taken Apart

From my week 2 observation, as submitted: "9:21. A girl comes over and Theo, who seems shy around other children, ignores her and keeps building." The fault is that a conclusion arrived inside the record. "Shy" is an interpretation, and so is "ignores"; both describe my reading of him, not his behavior. Guides to observing young children make this point directly: a running record should describe what the child does and says, so that interpretation can be checked against it later (Cohen et al., 2016). Rewritten: "9:21. A girl enters and takes two blocks. Theo says, 'Those are mine.' Girl says, 'There's more.' Theo turns back to his tower. Neither speaks for 3 minutes."

From my week 7 interview write-up, as submitted: "The mother is inconsistent with bedtime and gives in whenever Jada cries." The same fault appears in a different form. The interview section was meant to hold the mother's words, and instead it held my verdict on her. "Inconsistent" and "gives in" are judgments, and "whenever" claims a frequency she never gave. Rewritten, the section simply quotes her: in one line she describes lying down with Jada each time she leaves the bed and calls it "the only thing that works"; in another she gives bedtime first as eight and then as eight-thirty. The reader now has the facts that make up my impression, and can see that the same facts also show a mother protecting a sleeping baby.

Each rewrite is shorter than it looks in the original's place. It is also more useful, because the reader can see what I saw and decide for themselves.

What a Colleague Would Have Concluded

The harder question is not what I meant, but what someone reading my original sentences cold would have believed about these children. A colleague reading the first would likely conclude that Theo has a social difficulty, perhaps anxiety, and might carry that word into his next visit and look for evidence of it. Yet the full record showed him moving from parallel to cooperative play within minutes, which is not what shyness predicts. A colleague reading the second would likely conclude that the problem is the mother's parenting, and might offer advice about firmness that ignores the reason she gave: a baby who wakes when Jada cries. My sentences would have sent both children's care in directions the evidence did not support.

This matters more in development than in many areas, because surveillance depends on documentation read across visits by different clinicians (Lipkin et al., 2020). A label written once in a record is read many times, and each reader can repeat it without the evidence that should have come with it. When I compare a child's behavior against a milestone, the milestone is only as useful as my description of what the child actually did (Zubler et al., 2022).

I saw the difference in my own later work. When I wrote the parent guidance plan for the same family in week 10, the quoted version of the interview was what made the plan usable. Because her words about the baby were on the page rather than hidden under "gives in," the plan was built around a gradual chair method instead of letting Jada cry, which the mother had already told me she could not do. A plan written from my first sentence would have asked her to do the one thing she had explained was impossible, and it would probably have failed within a week.

What I Carry Forward, and What Still Needs Work

The habit I am carrying forward is simple: in any record or interview section, I write verbs and quotations only, and I read the section once before submitting it to strike every adjective that describes a child's character or a parent's quality. The habit that will need attention past this course is the one that made the original sentences tempting in the first place, which is time. A verb-by-verb record is slower to write than a quick impression, and in a busy clinic the quick impression will always be available. I do not yet have a solution for that; I only know now what the shortcut costs.

References

Cohen, D. H., Stern, V., Balaban, N., & Gropper, N. (2016). Observing and recording the behavior of young children (6th ed.). Teachers College Press.

Lipkin, P. H., Macias, M. M., Council on Children With Disabilities, & Section on Developmental and Behavioral Pediatrics. (2020). Promoting optimal development: Identifying infants and young children with developmental disorders through developmental surveillance and screening. Pediatrics, 145(1), Article e20193449. https://doi.org/10.1542/peds.2019-3449

Zubler, J. M., Wiggins, L. D., Macias, M. M., Whitaker, T. M., Shaw, J. S., Squires, J. K., Pajek, J. A., Wolf, R. B., Slaughter, K. S., Broughton, A. S., Gerndt, K. L., Mlodoch, B. J., & Lipkin, P. H. (2022). Evidence-informed milestones for developmental surveillance tools. Pediatrics, 149(3), Article e2021052138. https://doi.org/10.1542/peds.2021-052138