I was able to observe a father-son interaction at the playground of my church. I was observing the children playing, but one particular little boy and his father captured my attention. The boy appeared to be about 1 1/2 to 2 years old. The father is a tall and sort of a brawny looking person. The father and son were playing at the slides in the playground. The father would just watch as his little boy unsteadily but surely climbed up the steps to his destination. I was particularly intrigued by their relationship and I must have watched them for about twenty to thirty minutes. Every time the little boy climbed up the steps he would look back to see if his father was watching him. The boy would make his way up and then slide down from the slides and this continued for about half an hour.
             First, I must describe the playground. It plays an intricate part in influencing a particular behavior of the little boy. The playground is a small area that is boxed in with sand. It only consists of one big set-up that has three different slides. This is where the interactions mostly take place. When I watched the little toddler step his way up to get to the peak of the slides, he stopped in the middle, and looked back at his father for a sign of recognition. When the father smiled at his son, the toddler flashed an excited smile and continued up to the top. This is a pure example of social referencing that was discussed during a class session. According to Durkin (1995) social referencing denotes a monitoring process that most of us exploit at least occasionally, and that is the use of other people's reactions to help us to interpret a situation and guide our own responses. (Durkin, 1995). The little boy looked back at his father for recognition by looking at his facial expressions then he continued to move the rest of the way up to the top, only after he saw that his father showed a response. This is like the "
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