My Life Span - Personalized essay of a 19 year old girls life told from her perspective. Normally PDF

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Personalized essay of a 19 year old girls life told from her perspective.
Normally a Straight A student!...

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Traveling to Adulthood Join my journey as I take you through some short chapters of my life while moving around and learning to enjoy the things I have. Like every person, I went through the stages of child development and was taught valuable lessons along the way. Each stage has its ups and down’s with memories that are personal to that person or child. Every stage in child development is important to each child to help them grow into maturity, helping them succeed in the future. As I go through some of my personal stories and experiences, you can see the theories of Vygotsky, Piaget and a few more, come to the surface throughout my life.

My first two years Every parent knows the feeling of excitement of their newborn baby coming into the world for the first time. Although my parents were excited to have me, their excitement was soon replaced with worry and fear. I arrived on July 19, 2000, in Fairbanks, Alaska and was a very expensive baby. I was immediately taken into the NICU because of a lot of complications and my lack of breathing. When I got out of the hospital, despite my eventful arrival, I was a calm and shy child. I am the second youngest out of seven kids in my family, so my parents had a lot of help taking care of me. I was constantly engaged with objects, motherese (pg.175) and exploring the ground around me practicing my gross and fine motor skills (pg.150-151). I had no worries and was an “easy child” according to my parents. One day, when I was able to crawl and was getting pretty good at climbing my mom lost track of me. Naturally, my mom panicked and had everyone searching for me. I went into the garage and climbed a two-story ladder all the way to the top. My mom about had a heart attack

when she found me, sending my big brother up to get me down. During the time of the story, my little mind was driven by curiosity and my sensorimotor intelligence (pg. 164). This was also when I started to become Daddy’s little girl (Electra Complex, Pg. 302), and there was nothing that my dad could not do that wouldn’t make me smile (in-class notes).

Early Childhood As we pass the “terrible twos”, I started to use many hand gestures to tell my older siblings and parents what I wanted. I did this so much that I didn’t start talking until I was four years old; my two-year-old sister started talking before me. My younger sister (the two-year-old) would often tell my parents what I (four years old) wanted, so I had more of a reason to not talk. I guess you can say I was a late bloomer. It also didn’t help that I just recently moved from Fairbanks, Alaska to Victorville, California (moved twice in California). During this move, there were a lot of changes like how I wasn’t able to attend my Special Pre-school for the special needs any longer. Instead, I began preschool in a regular classroom with special help. During the age of three to four years old, I developed executive function (pg.259) and a prominent imagination. I over-imitated (pg.256), exaggerated a lot of actions, constructing many explanations on an idea (Theory-Theory, pg.260) and loved dancing with my sibling’s in the kitchen and living room. As I grew I little older was able to recall a lot of what my parents and siblings said. My experience with Fast-Mapping (pg.265) was more extreme (according to my parents) than my other siblings. Although my family didn’t know what was going on, all my parents and older siblings knew was that they had to watch what they said. As I continued to absorb everything around, learning how things worked and what to do, I soon adjusted to a routine that is somewhat like what I do now. These schedules and routines (in PowerPoint notes) helped me focus and

learn more around me. Routines also helped me understand more, developing good habits that have helped me for years. On the other hand, I have also developed habits that weren’t as good as others. In Erikson’s third stage (pg.282) I felt guilty that I didn’t succeed, and it led to a lack of extrinsic motivation and more intrinsic motivation (pg.284). Let’s just say, it was hard to potty train me.

Middle childhood Middle childhood can be a very exciting time. When I was seven, I moved from Victorville, California to McKinney, Texas. I finally got into the groove of going to school and made some new friends as well. Now, because I was seven years old, I understood more about moving. I was excited yet scared to join my new school and be in a new place. I soon had a group of good friends in my neighborhood that I would play with. Like every seven-year-old in the church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, I was so excited to become eight and get baptized, make covenants, and receive the holy ghost. I also had a princess birthday party, which was very important to my eight-year-old brain. Right before third grade, I moved again to Prosper, Texas; there, my parents bought a house and enrolled me in the Prosper ISD school district. Here I didn’t do the best thing and I stayed inside myself, only having a few friends to talk to. I was quite an intelligent (pg.320) little girl and took pride in it. At this healthiest time in my life, I learned like everyone else, yet I secretly became jealous of the gifted and talented group. I wanted to be in the gifted and talented group, it was where all the cool kids were and they were smart too. Besides wanting to be in the gifted and talented group I did pretty well in school creating an aptitude (pg.320) towards math. I was drawn towards math because my father encouraged me so much (didn’t have a good grade in it at the time). This is also when I was torn away from English and memorization

due to my third-grade teacher. It was the end of the year in third grade and the class was expected to memorize a speech for a specific historical person (mine was Susan B Anthony). When the day came to participate in the ‘living museum’ I still was unable to memorize my speech. The other kids quickly wrote theirs down on note cards and stuffed them up their sleeves, I wasn’t about to cheat. When my teacher found out that I was stumbling and not able to memorize my speech, she yelled at me, telling me I was dumb. My teacher called my mom to come pick me up and for the next several hours I cried. This is the point where my love for school turned against English and memorization and I increased my incremental theory of intelligence (pg.448) towards math as a subject I would soon love. One thing that made me stand out from all of my peers is that I used a lot of logical thinking, both inductive and deductive (pg. 433). Most people said I was wise and smart, yet all I could think of was that I was just using reality and common sense in problem-solving situations. Even though people commended me on this attribute, it seemed like it wasn’t enough for the adolescent years to come.

Adolescence Oh, teenage years, these are always the most difficult years in our life. Because of all the things that change so fast and so dramatically. Teenagers typically get confused and try to catch up with everything that is going on. I know that’s what I did and trying out my identity (pg.458) as a person. Even though I don’t like admitting it, it sent me on an unexpected rollercoaster of mind-boggling who knows what. I don’t remember exactly when I got my Menarche (pg.403), but I do recall that I was embarrassed on top of the embarrassment I suffered about my chest size. This is the time when I developed poor body image (pg.417) and I was very self-conscious. I thought everyone was

looking at me, judging me and talking behind my back (Adolescence Egocentrism/Imaginary Audience pg. 430-431). I didn’t help that I stopped growing (height) in seventh grade. While I watched all my classmates start to use makeup and gain secondary sex characteristics (pg.420), yet I was a stick. Sadly, people still describe me that way, no curves and skinny means I was a stick, and I began to accept that. My body Image plummeted and so did my social interest. I slipped into minor depression and bulimia nervosa (pg.418); even though they were minor it still hurt tremendously! As I became more anti-social, I buried myself in my schoolwork and my grades. I ended up blocking everything out and put my life in the grades I received. As you can guess this did not help my self-image nor help my depression, I became anxious and that fed me in the wrong way. As I grew older, my depression and anxiety got worse as well as my body image. I felt like I only had two choices: separate myself from everything I know and everyone I know or commit suicide (suicidal ideation, pg.473). I felt as if my life was falling apart and that I was slowly being choked and drowned. I was diagnosed with MDD (Major Depressive Disorder, pg.472) and I didn’t like the attention that came with it either. Soon learned coping mechanisms and tricks to keep me busy. I still struggle with these things and I will for the rest of my life, but as a trail, it has taught me things that wouldn’t have even thought of.

Where Am I At Now? Now that I am 19 years old, I’m technically still a teenager, but I’m an adult as well; that’s just confusing itself. Right now, I’m in college trying to become an independent adult, yet I’m still figuring things out and struggling to do them as well. Moving to college to be alone was a huge step, but surprisingly easier than I expected. Doing all the adult-ish things wasn’t the problem; the problem was that I didn’t believe in myself enough that I could do the workload,

schoolwork, bills, self-care, socialize, and still receive great grades in my classes. I look at my list of things to do, I get overwhelmed and my anxieties rise. To be honest, I still don’t know how I do it, but it just happens (I pay credit to my planner, and time management skills). I have learned to work hard and endure to the end though everything I do. There are some days that I struggle to get out of bed, it takes all my energy to get up do basic self-care and eat, but that’s okay sometimes I just need those days. Following Erikson’s fifth stage of development (pg.496), In the near future, I want to be able to find a spouse to share the rest of my life with. I also want to be a mother and have a family to raise and love. This is one of the main reasons why I decided to take this child development class in college. I want to be able to understand children more and know what is going on inside of their heads so I can be the best mother I can be. This decision has always been very important to me, along with my other goals and dreams like receiving a college degree. I am still learning every day, growing my testimony of my Savior and Redeemer Jesus Christ, and learning to love and accept myself as I am. All-in-all, becoming an adult is hard and it’s scary, but we all have to do it sometime. As I try to figure everything out and prepare for the future, I have to decide what my priorities are.

Conclusion I have a long way to go and a lot to learn as well, but I do love this journey and path I am taking. I am almost 20 years old, that’s two decades! This journey has already held so much experience and service in it from when I was climbing up that ladder when I was less than a year old to now as I am writing this final essay for my child development class. These stages of life have helped me be the best I can be and holds the experience and strength I need to succeed in life. Understanding where I am coming from and the roots of how I think is so important to make

my dreams a reality. I want to be a great mom, and I feel that it is much more possible now that I have this knowledge behind me....