Blog 2

            With this week’s reading I found it very easy to relate to and also found it very helpful to kind of explain some of the relationships I have in my life now. I am the older of two siblings, I was about five when my brother was born and he seemed to be the most adorable thing on earth according to everyone around me. As a small child I did not understand this and began to feel very inadequate next to him I felt like I had to work to get people to like me and I can see how this has carried over into my years now. I never really thought about how much the first six years of a person’s life can really affect a child. I also feel that this part of my personality could have developed from the fact that my parents separated when I was five as well, this separation I always felt partially responsible for because I felt like I did not behave in the correct manner. Until reading this chapter I had never really given any thought to this part of my personality and why it was there but now I can kind of see why I have developed this feeling of inadequacy and a need to work hard for people to actually like me. I thought that another interesting point in this reading was when Corey and Corey (2008) mentioned Erikson’s idea of a moratorium. I think this is a great idea for society to give our adolescents a time where they can really experience different roles and take time to figure out who they are and what they want out of life. I can remember back to high school graduation how nerve racking of a time that was. I had no idea what I wanted to do with the rest of my life but our society puts a lot of pressure on us to know exactly what we want to do at the age of 18. I think if there was a period of two years from 18 to 20 where these adolescents could really try out different roles and then at 20 I feel like they could more confidently choose a role they want. 

            The Steinberg article I feel could really support this idea of moratorium by showing how the adolescent’s brain is not fully developed for major decisions. I found this article to be very informing. I had never really given any major thought to the fact that during adolescence is when a lot of people are more likely to partake in risky behaviors. I also found it interesting how Steinberg pointed out that all of the sex, drug, alcohol, and driving education programs really do nothing to decrease this risky behavior. It was interesting to find that a lot of this risk taking behavior can be linked back to the brain development that an adolescent is going through. I can remember back to my teen years and as I was leaving childhood I really did start to care more about the reward of an action compared to when I was a child. I just found it interesting how much our socio-emotional brain system (Steinberg, 2008) really does develop and change from a child. The change in brain connectivity and how different adolescents are influenced by peers compared to adults was very interesting to me as well. I found the experiment that Steinberg did with driving simulation was excellent. I remember driving in my high school years and it always seemed that whenever I had friends in my car I was more likely to drive through yellow lights or play my music super loud, overall just try to showoff more for my friends, then when I was driving by myself. 

            After reading and thinking, I am really looking forward to our small group discussions this week. I really felt very comfortable in my small group and I feel like we have trust developing after one meeting already. I do need to work on my confidence with the larger group though. I am hoping that this week I can work on being more comfortable in the larger group discussion and just try to not worry so much about what people think or what I am saying. Trust is something that does not develop easy in large groups for me but I know that I can work on it if I give it a conscious effort.

Corey,G.,& Corey, M.S. (2008). I never knew I had a choice: Explorations in personal     

             growth. (9th ed.). Belmont, California: Thompson Brooks/Cole.

Steinberg, L. (2008). A social neuroscience perspective on adolescent risk-taking. Developmental                Review,   78-106.