The assessment paper.
Introduction.
For most of the decades now, media has played a significant role, majorly emphasizing mostly on the problems as part of the adolescent life. Negativities such as gang violence, school shootings, alcohol-related incidents, and even drug abuse among teens. These factors being frequently highlighted by most of the newspapers and movies. As a social system student, I got interested in taking an interview with some of the adolescent students aged 15 and 18 from one of the public institutions around my hood. It was a large group that I could not manage to interview with all who were present, so I decided to sample a few to represent the whole group. From the population, I picked a boy who had a saint face with eyes that were much gent and more appealing. He was 16 years old.
The boy I picked to interview was an African American with ancestral and family ties from the Caucus Mountains. Who made it to the united stated with his parents for better living standards. He was from a humble background who had to struggle on different occasions to make ends meet and sustain the family. The boy had to trek miles daily to school and fro. His father worked as a newspaper vendor while the mother opened a local canteen selling candy. The boy was much creative, goal-oriented, and very flexible. During his leisure times, he made portrayed and beautiful drawings that he could sell over the weekends and holidays to boost the family income. I did my interview with the boy in the school hall.
Analysis
Physical development.
Early adolescence is one of the most significant and vital period in human growth and development situated between childhood and adolescence. During this period, most of the adolescents who are aged 13 have viewed this a remarkable stage of their life cycle. These young adolescents aged 13 stated that during this time, most of them experience rapid and significant changes. During my study to fully understand this development, I had to refer to Gesell’s theory, which is also known as the maturational-development theory. In this theory, one keenly observes the pattern in the way children develop, fully stating how children go through similar and predictable sequences. Gesell says that this is a process that is composed of both internal and external factors.
During this development, mostly during his or her studies usually major on the adolescents’ external growth. During this period, adolescents show a lot of physical characters; however, such factors may be hereditary from the family. During this moment, most of the body parts start to grow due to these growths the teens then requires a lot of food to help them in the process. For the male teens during this time, the muscle build begins influencing muscle development. For the teen girls, the development of muscle mass continues while adding more fats t the body.
After thoroughly reviewing the course before the interview I was majorly going into the field to observe on the physical statues of the adolescents if I could capture the observable changes such as a change in the body mass, and the shyness of the adolescents during this period when most feel the change might have been too soon. Another expectation was how their brain had grown and how responsible they were in rational thinking.
Cognitive development.
Under this development, we all understand that it is a transition from childhood to adulthood. This is one of the development characterized by cognitive, psychosocial, and emotional development of teenagers. It is usually the progression of thinking from the way a child does to an adult. As a social system student based on our class readings, I expected different results on the field while taking an interview with the adolescents. My initial expectation in the area was the development of more advanced reasoning skills of the adolescents with the ability to fully explore a range of possibilities inherent during a given situation, thinking hypothetically and using a logical thought process. My other expectations were to interact with adolescents with developed ability to think abstractly, a population that could think of things with more direct contact. Most of the teen adolescents may experience more personal fable during this period due to being able to think more abstractly. This fable is usually built on whether the imaginary audience was making the adolescents feel so great and unique.
For a better understanding of this development, I preferred to Piaget’s ideas, where he clearly distinguish the nature and the development of human intelligence. Jean Piaget’s development is regarded as one of the most crucial breakthroughs in psychology.
Psychological and emotional development.
In this development, the adolescence is usually characterized by the development of emotional and psychological competence. Emotional competence is traditionally viewed as the ability to manage emotions. While the psychological competencies often focus on one’s ability to relate with others within the community effectively. During these changes, adolescents usually have a new instinct of being much aware and able to fully identify and label their feelings and the feelings of other peers.
During this development, it is usually hard to predict what one may experience when interviewing with the adolescents as per the course materials offered in classes. This is majorly due to factors such as emotional-cognitive asynchrony that, in most cases, always results in adolescents misinterpreting other peers or adults feelings and emotions. While the emotional-physical asynchrony can occur in adolescents being seen and handled as older than their emotional stage of development, even though it is never easy to identify this adolescence changes, I had some realistic expectations when researching the significant effects on the body image and social performance. During this stage, the adolescents try to be more responsible and perform better.
For the success of this research, I had to use bot the behavioral theory that allowed me to learn based on the ideas that all behaviors are acquired through conditioning. John B. Watson majorly advocated this. And the Mini-theory that equally narrowed the actions of these adolescents to how self-esteemed is formed within the early and late stages of adolescents.
Family relationship.
Changes within teens during physical and cognitive development is usually quite substantial. During puberty, family relationship is often recognized. During this period, most of the teens always prefer to be more independent and to keep more emotional distance between their parents. This is the moment when the teens usually want to spend more and focus on social interaction and friendship. The adolescents’ sexual maturity always triggers interest in dating and sexual relations.
During the interview, the boy stated that his life had changed as it were in the past before he attained the age of 15. During this period, he wanted to be more independent by making decisions and acting on his thought processes and judgment. He made me understand that for most of his time, he tries to figure out problems and work on them and did not require his parents for some of the issues like he did lay all the issues to his parent before adolescents. The teenager felt that with more reasoning and intuitive ability, then he can start to face new responsibilities and to enjoy his thought and actions. And now, he felt freer than before as he had started having thoughts and fantasies about his future adult life.
The teenager was more comfortable with his body changes than before when he started experiencing the changes in the early stages of adolescence. In his middle adolescent stage, everything seemed reasonable to him, and he was also learning how to and make judgments on his own. At 15, the teenager tend to develop friendship between other teens with similar interest, social class, and ethnic backgrounds. This friendship is always based on everyday activities, and later expand to include similarities in attitudes, value and shared actions. This is much different during his childhood. During childhood, the boy majorly seen his parent as the only superheroes to confine to.
In the boy’s family, his parents majored in authoritative parenting. His parents were much reasonable and nurturing his father struggled to make ends meet for the family by working as a newspaper vendor in one of the local stores. His mother opened a candy shop in his neighborhood, even under these statuses. They set high and clear expectations for their children. Due to such authoritative measures, the boy was self-disciplined. He also had expectations and goals to achieve that were as a result of proper upkeep.
Peer relations.
Good parent-child relationships always tend to lead children to have positive relationships with their peers. Just for my case, the boy I interviewed was brought up by authoritative parenting who ware many supportive and active listeners that helped him to develop from childhood to understand and realize his potentials during the adolescents equally. This also enabled him to establish excellent friendship skills.
At adolescence, the boy tends to spend a lot of time with his peers more than he does with the parents. But from proper upkeep, he shared a lot and copied most of the essential deals and skills from the older ones who acted as his group’s role models. He mostly engaged with teenagers of ethical behavior and goal-oriented mentality. This group helped him achieve positive life skills that he never got during childhood due to fear of expression before the parents. Concerning our course study on social theory, most of the interactions are usually seen in the development of the earliest relationship between the infant and their parents in the first year. Virtually all the infants who are put under normal circumstances always develop a firm emotional bond with their parents. During this childhood stage, the children feel much protected by their parents since they offer them with all the basic needs they require and the motivation making them much attracted to the family than their peers.
As in social theory, I expected the adolescents to be able to freely air their views on different arguments giving the hypothesis of their thoughts. During the interview, I realized that the changes that every environment of every child up bring is quite vital for their growth and their life changes and the relations among their peers.
Other system relationships.
Social networks are a measure of relationships between entities, while the social network analysis is usually known as the study of all of such relations. Religion is still one of the oldest social networks since it evolved from the beginning of evolution. My interviewee being on from an African setup religion was the core of their living and success. He was brought up in a Christian home that helped him attain firm personal beliefs in religion as a social institution. This social system helped him organize and integrate sets of beliefs, behaviors, and norms centered on basic social needs and values.
During childhood, he majorly viewed religion as a more adulthood participation and interest he felt it was for the older ones and never minded much thou under continuous training and involvement in adolescent stage it allowed him to come to terms that religion was one of the significant and old social system that most of the ideas relied upon. He came to realize it was full of career participation fields that could choose to do. It allowed him to know what peers and friends could move and make good bonds with due to good religious teaching in church, school, and parental guidance. This made him strong in ethics and life experience.
Multicultural considerations.
In social network analysis, culture is one of the relatively new aspect in the social system. When doing an interview, multiculturalism is always quite crucial. Cultural humility has been one of the sound, ethical, and practical practices, mostly when dealing with a diverse population. This consideration always seeks to establish an educational foundation for cultural pluralism in counselor training, exercise, and manner.
Self-esteem.
Self-esteem is always the way an individual thinks and feel about themselves and how good they can carry out tasks by themselves. For children and adolescents, self-esteem is usually shaped by what they think and feel about themselves. During the interviewee’s childhood, he had a much lower self-esteem since, at this stage, he mostly relied on his parents to handle all his conflicts, resisting negative pressure and making friends was also not that possible. But during the adolescent stage, his self-esteem has changed since he has the freedom of choice, and he is getting it quite simple to make friends within the society and from other social system relations. During his childhood stage, his self-esteem was majorly influenced by his parent’s attitude and behavior. His parents were quite supportive. Even from a low and humble background, the parents encouraged him and praised his task accomplishment. During the adolescence stage, he gained more experience away from home.
During this stage, most experience was gained in schools, and with peers, this is more important for child growth. Schools influence adolescents’ self-esteem through attitude, making them indulge in competition and diversity-oriented recognitions in sports, academics, and arts. During his childhood, friendship also assumed a pivotal role in his life.
Self-esteem may lead to a broader range of problems as he stated since when one is of low self-esteem, he or she may get involved in dangerous actions such as bullying, become a victim of teenage pregnancy, smoking, or even get involved in drugs. But according to the interviewee, he got his goals set to be achieved daily due to such targets he got the teachers and peer group where they come together to assist each other handle their class works and complete their tasks in time, boosting their morale to achieve their needs. Most times, they achieve their goals, making them happy, and raising their esteem. For the teenagers, all that is left for them is to achieve their life goals and be much prosperous within the society.
Behavior which may not be socially accepted.
As to sociologist William Graham, he states that the behaviors that are not accepted as per the community social statues are deviance. These violations are usually established in contextual, cultural, or even social norms, whether folkways or codified law. These behaviors can always be as minor as picking one’s nose in public or more severe as committing murder. These are still the negative factors that the community does not allow one to be involved in. According to the interviewee, being brought up in a well-organized Christian family is the core value for dealing with peer pressure. Since peer pressure is always the desire to fit and comfortable feel accepted within a group. Under normal circumstances, he finds it so hard to fit in since most of his peers are from able families who always access everything of their need and choice for him; it is not possible.
Stealing is one of the negative behavior he has to deal with since he desires to own some of the study material his classmates has. He states that this is so difficult, but he always tries to avoid it by asking and borrowing to get access to them. Some willing assist while others laugh at him. If denied and humiliated, he feels vulnerable. Still, he seeks better options, which is the library, even though they are given limited access, but it helps him maintain the good behavior he was taught and brought up with. For adolescents to be equally felt, bullying is one of the alternatives they resort to. But for the interviewee, this is a significant concern since he always feels neglected and does not entirely fit in at some point. However, he says that for him to handle this pressure and avoid it, he takes most of his leisure time playing soccer and forming smaller discussion groups to assist other weak students with their studies.
Even though my interviewee had some negative thoughts due to peer pressure, he was able to fight it off. Due to his personality, he stood up for the right. When I required more on how he has faced most of these challenges, the interviewee was a bit irritated as he viewed it as more personal, so the little he provided was just enough to work with.
Conclusion.
For my interviewee, cultural settings are the most common endorse norms with perpetuate gender inequalities; parents and peers are the central factors that have shaped his life. The struggle to achieve what he misses has helped him form a positive attitude toward moving and working beyond his focus to target a more inclusive social environment. He has also joined the longitudinal studies to acquire more and have a better understanding of the globe. My interviewee is one of those teenagers who enjoy good physical and mental health. However, the primary problem he is going through is walking long miles in search of education and the family situation where he cannot be given and access the requirements for his schooling. During these early and late movements to and from school, he is always exposed to harsh weather conditions that he fears may bring him diseases that may slow his quest for education.
Confidence is one of the main strengths I identified from my interviewee. The way he laid and tackled sensitive and personal questions was quite encouraging. His belief in the system is also a strength since he has got trust with the system and has based his thought to achieve a better life through education. And the level he deals with particular situations has fully set him the standards he needs to succeed.