PEPSI SCREENING 1

Melissa Villalba

PEPSI Screening

College of Southern Nevada

Professor Rochelle Hooks

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Introduction

Aaliyah is an eight year girl who I chose for the next Physical, emotional, philosophical,

social, intellectual screening. She is my daughter and lives with me, my husband an new addition

puppy. Aaliyah is very social and smiling daily. She has many family members. Her father lives

in California and she has a two year old little brother who she loves dearly. The people in her life

bring her joy especially when she is with the grandparents. She visits her fathers family every

summer and she has spent her school year with me since kindergarten. I have not had an issue

with her schooling, every teacher has had positive evaluations from her prior and most recent

schools. Aaliyah is in second grade and she frequently walks to school and walks home about a

mile both ways. Her independence is strong and she also makes her self lunch and gets ready for

school all on her own. She has her weaknesses as we all do but we are working on those, this

paper will help me do just that. She has a hard time listening to small task requests like

showering, cleaning her room, and minor social manners. Child development is unique and

complex and the PEPSI screening breaks down areas to help see strengths and weaknesses in a

child's life so as to see where improvement is needed. In our society our socioeconomic class is

working class. I work two jobs and take online classes, while my husband has class during the

day at UNLV full time. We arrange our schedules so we are working or in school during the day

while Aaliyah is at school.

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Physical Development

The physical development of Aaliyah has been an issue so far in her life, she is able to do

activities that any average kid her age do and she is a vegetarian with a slim, healthy body.

However she does not exercise outside of school except the occasional park trip or hikes.. Her

relatives are somewhat close in age an she keeps up well enough with them during games and

such.

Although we watch movies every now and then, I do not have cable and television which is

something I do not allow her watch for various reasons. Her diet is fair, we are all vegetarians in

the house hold and do not have much money so fast food is no option for us. I think her diet and

lack of television in her life has definitely impacted her focus on reading, math and schooling in

general. With regard to her exercise again she does loves to jump rope daily and play tag so that

helps. I also recently signed her up for karate but she has not yet started that. For the most part

she is pretty active but there's room for more.

She does take naps throughout the week but I think there is room for more of those as well.

From experience a twenty minute nap definitely helps her to be less moody. A regular bedtime

has been implanted but she still has trouble agreeing to get to bed exactly at 8:30pm. Aaliyah's

motor skills have improved over the years now being able to swim under water, skateboard and

as a family take longer hikes.

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Emotional Development

We all get emotional as humans and I think children take the cake with regards to lack of

emotional control, although I have seen mtv so that's up for debate. Aaliyah's emotional control

has grown stronger and she adapted to her life for the most part in a pretty surprisingly well

manner. At first, when her father and I would send her back and forth from Vegas to California

she would cry and miss me and when she's here cry and miss him. My mother, sister, niece, and

nephew live down the street from her dad, so she grew an attachment to them all of course, plus

they are relatively nice people so that helped.

Then her little brother came into the picture and she is grown enough to teach him many

things along with my five year old niece. She loves to play school and show them what she

already knows. But sometimes during play, as with her school time, she can be very sensitive to

any kind of people messing with her such as my nephew. So the biggest issue of weakness in her

current developmental emotional stage would have to be crying, she cries when anyone messes

with her, or even when I ask her bluntly to do certain things, sometimes I think it is a scapegoat

but for the most part it's just emotional insecurity. Simple things like asking her ten times to

clean up or help with chores, she will cry from. She gets upset and I have tried to help her realize

a cry over a shower is unacceptable because we have to do that task for the rest of our lives,

hopefully.

I think if I start helping her more to not be lazy and so emotionally out of control, then

showers and bedtime will be less of an issue as well. My husband teaches her algebra and she

sometimes gets emotional when she gets a problem wrong, which I think is normal but agin, can

be worked on but consistently telling her that wrong answers help her learn from her mistakes.

She does not get angry hardly ever in life, thankfully. Aaliyah is generally a positive happy kid
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and is very funny minus those few things that trigger her less productive emotions. She is a very

loving person generally.

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Philosophical Development

With regards to ethics in philosophy Aaliyah carries with her many of the same moral bylaws

and maxims that most Americans do. We as parents try to teach her about Socrates by reading the

Dialogues out loud like plays but we stopped doing that until she gets to be about ten, because

she was not understanding it muchor at least the subtleties. We teach her about the historical

Jesus and we could probably do more of that as well as about Socrates and other maybe eastern

sages, but like I said maybe more around ten years old.

She gets a general sense of what is right and what is wrong through instruction and example.

We are very kind (aside from farce jokes) to each other my husband and I and she sees that. We

all try rigidly to keep up with our good manners even to each other which can sometimes be hard

when you are family because the tendency is to just be too comfortable. When she goes to other

people's houses however I do not know if she keeps up with her good manners.

I would say that out of all of the PEPSI formula requirements for development her morals are

what need most improvement. She does not watch television so she is not getting a negative

education in morals. But we hardly give her a positive education either aside from tacit example.

She needs more explicit moral instruction and she needs to be put in hypothetical scenarios so

that we can assess her tendencies so as to correct wrong behavior or action before it is too late

and she is ensconced in some habit. We need to read to her more about the moral heroes of the

worlds past. She generally does the right thing but she usually cannot tell us what the right thing

is, and like they say if you can't teach it, you don't know it.
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Social Development

Aaliyah is a very social being like most humans. She started a new school recently because

we moved and made friends right away and loved it. Most of her close friends are family

members in California though. Over here in Las Vegas there are not too many children around

except her school mates. She plays outside with kids from her school once in a while though,

especially now a days whereas in the past she was either too afraid or just liked being at home

more. We try to focus on more learning play than playing with the neighborhood kids because in

the summer all she does is play with family members. Play is important for children because it

exercises their linguistic, cognitive, and social skills and contributes to their general personality

development (Berk, 2013; Hughes, 2010; Johnson, Sevimli-Cellik, & Al-Mansour, 2013).

Children use their minds when playing because they are thinking and acting as if they were

another person. When they make such a transformation, they are taking a step toward abstract

thinking in that they are freeing their thoughts from a focus on concrete objects.(Slavin pg.57) I

agree that children should have play time to improve individual learning skills. Generally she is

pretty social although it takes her a while to warm up to new children but before she does she is

kind of rude in the broad sense, not negatively so but she just does not say anything to them, I

mean nothing, which could be construed as rude.

Aaliyah is great with group work in school and out. She is almost too good in that if she gets

into a group at school she tends to talk too much and this puts her off task. There is a tendency in

20th and 21st century children to be more social because of television and media but this has

negative effects on them. For example children are becoming too social as a result to the point

where they will not focus or they become so enraptured with talking with others that they do not
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get their work done. Also they have a tendency to care more about what other children are doing

and censuring them rather than themselves.

This tendency I have found in my daughter, although less than some children like her

cousins. She gets talked to in school by her teacher for talking too much sometimes although not

overtly. Besides that she is always talking unless we wind her down with reading or exercise or

math. She talks to her father and brother almost everyday on the phone as well. She could use

some improvement in this area overall but she has not proven her overt social skills to be so

much of a problem in her life that it takes away from her development. In fact I think it is better

for her development as long as her interactions and teamwork skills are up to tasks and are

productively positive or friendly.

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Intellectual Development

Aaliyah's intellectual development has been very positive. She loves to read an do math. Plus

she's full of questions when she doesn't know something because we encourage her to be so. The

only downside in her intellectual development is something that has overlap from her social

development, namely her interdependence or overt social wants. According to the text

Meichenbaums model of self-regulated learning mentions a few steps involved in self

instruction such as, 2. The child performs the same task under the direction of the models

instructions (overt, external guidance). 3. The child performs the task while instructing self aloud

(overt self-guidance). 4. The child whispers the instructions to self as he or she goes through the

task (faded, overt self-guidance). 5. The child performs the task while guiding his or her

performance via private speech (covert self-instruction). (Slavin, pg. 116) She cannot, without

much ado, work on her own but she wants to ask too many questions even when she has been

instructed fully in what she is asking about. She does most task speaking out loud to her self

which I do not think is horrible and will end over time.

Getting her excited about intellectual endeavors was not easy. Especially with math she

would get discouraged and want to give up after a few wrong answers. Reading however has

always been her strong suit as far as enthusiasm, although her math skills are better than her

reading. We spend much time on her intellectual development mostly because my husband and I

are so concerned with our own and she sees the example. With her father and his family though

she does not get that example so her enthusiasm is a mixed bag. Correlational research on

parent involvement has clearly shown that parents who involve themselves in their childrens

educations have higher-achieving children than other parents (Flouri & Buchanan, 2004; Lee &

Bowen, 2006). However, there has been more debate about the impacts of school programs to
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increase parent involvement. (Slavin, pg. 75). This has definitely shown as a positive for

Aaliayh and I appreciate the parent-teacher conference because I get more of an insight to

increase for individual development in the home.

Her critical thinking skills are very up to par and we have taught her to question everything.

She will not even do a chore without a thorough explanation as to why she should do it. She is

full of wonder, although not at the big questions but we are working on that. She can teach her

self things easily so her metacognitive skills are also very good. She could use improvement in

this area though as we all could no matter how old. I think what she is best at is social

intelligence. She can read people like a book and know how to manipulate situations to her

benefit for better or worse. I disagree with Piagets stages of cognitive development theory in

chapter two. Piaget believes that ages 7-11 major accomplishments are Improvement in ability

to think logically. New abilities include the use of operations that are reversible. Thinking is

decentered, and problem solving is less restricted by egocentrism. Abstract thinking is not

possible. (Slavin, pg. 32) I think that her ability to think logical and abstractly is possible with

her age from personal examples. Overall she is very intelligent to my very pleasant surprise.
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Recommendation for Teachers and Parents

In the PEPSI article by Ellsworth states that If we to assist children to be more appropriate,

to be more humane, it can be best done with trust building, mutual limit setting, with assisting

the child to take more and more responsibility for self and for his or her actions. Moving a child

to love others is best done with love and patience, modeling the things we want from the child.

Forcing our will is a clear message that is is only a matter of time until might and height will be

theirs(Ellsworth) Obviously a major recommendation for parents is to assess their respective

Pepsi development chart and own input as far as development. This could be a benefit because

the Pepsi model forces parents to be introspective and self critical by pulling their own individual

ideas about child development and making them assess their child honestly (as far as possible).

The Pepsi model for parents is especially useful because they are on the front lines as it were of

their children's lives and are thus the best able to assess and then improve their child's

development. Teachers using the Pepsi model would not benefit the child as much because the

teacher only has the child for a limited number of hours each day, although it would not be

entirely counter-productive for them to do so and they can be a prime model example of good

behavior and etc.

I think it would be beneficial for teachers to help.. Assist families with parenting and child-

rearing skills, family support, under-standing child and adolescent development, and setting

home conditions to support learning at each age and grade level. Obtain information from

families to help schools understand families backgrounds, cultures, and goals for children.

(Slavin pg. 74) With regards to teachers recommendations the teachers can work with the parents

and of course should in helping them with the improvement of development. Here a teacher can

get insight on home behavior on the child from the parents Pepsi model and can help the parent
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in specific areas. A lot of children are not the same as the are at school at home but are better or

less well behaved. So in this way the teachers can act as a supplement as far as improvement in

development in any of the Pepsi areas.

Teachers cannot explicitly teach any values as far as the philosophical development goes but

they can hint and indeed do hint (sometimes border line too much) at what children should think

is right or wrong. Teachers can improve general well being and promote stability and kindness as

well as other universal values as much as possible without interfering with parental value

lessons. Teachers, in sum, are the backbone of the parental improvement in development of

children for better or worse.

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Presentation
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Graph
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References

Ellsworth, J. (1966). Pepsi. A Screening and Programming Tool for Understand of the Whole

Child.

Slavin, R. E. (1997). Educational psychology: Theory and practice. Boston: Allyn and Bacon.