Final Blog Post LP's-11, 12, 13

Semester Review
Wow it's the end of the semester already! I will have to say I really enjoyed this class, but I won't lie I am glad I will have some of my summer back before the fall semester. The best parts of this class is that we got to do projects and not just all reading out of the book and discussion boards. I also did enjoy writing these blog posts. I think it is a good way to express our thoughts and share what we have learned. I like how we had short quizes every few LP's I think it was easier and less overwhelming. The parts I liked the least was having to do the group projects online. It was hard to get everyone together to work on it. I think if the groups were smaller or everyone did their own I think would make this online class easier. I pretty much found everything I learned interesting. The things I found most interesting that I have learned over the semester were about infants and younger school age children. I think it was most interesting because I knew very little about them, but adulthood etc. is interesting because I now I understand myself better now and know what to expect in the future. It really surprised me how smart children are at such a young age. I enjoyed the video about language development, and how infants can distinguish different sounds when words are spoken. I now can apply what I have learned to my life like that my teenage cousin Dalton has the same feelings as every other teenage boy or girl, which I learned from the radio interview. Or that when I go through menopause it won't be as traumatizing as it is made out to be. The toughest things to learn were all the different theories like Kholberg's stages of moral development.

LP's 11, 12, 13
I liked ch 11 about about emerging adulthood because I am in this age group right now and it is relateable for me right now. I can relate to some of the 5 key factors of emerging adulthood. the two I most relate with are identity exploration. The book's example is in love and work and for me right now I have two careers narrowed down but am still exploring my options. The other is feeling in between. At times I do feel like I am an adult, but at times since I am only 19 I don't feel like it because I don't have a full time job, my own home etc. What I found surprising is when they talked about creativity. It says early adulthood is a great time for creativity and that 80% of creative products were created by people age 50. To me I would think a person would be more creative when they are younger. I guess maybe I think this because I always think of how children seem to be more imaginative and creative than adults.

I think ch 12 was interesting because of all the different types of love. I had learned about this in Psychology of Human Relations, but it still fascinates me, because before this I though love was love. I mean obviously you feel a different kind of love for your family and friends than you would a husband/boyfriend or wife/girlfriend. In the chapter they talked about rapport talk and report talk. It stated that women tend to like rapport talk and men report talk. For being a woman I can say I can agree with that and I would say I want to have a connection and a relationship with someone if I am talking about something important with someone so I know they have an understanding of what I am feeling. I am glad to hear that the number of people who say their marriages are "very happy" is increasing, because it seems that everyone is getting divorced these days and if they get married it doesn't last long.

Ch 13 was good because I have grandparents in this age group, so I can see it happening. A lot of the signs about aging like height and weight, strength, joints, and bones, and hearing and eye sight didn't really surprise me. I think it is your standard things you think of in aging adults. It also didn't shock me that the top two causes of death for middle adults was heart disease and cancer. My great-grandfathers were older than this age group when they passes away, but two died from heart problems and the other cancer well and probably old age.

That's all folks!

Thank you steve for being understanding of all the problems I had throughout the semester. Thank you to my group members who actually participated and pulled through to help with the group projects, even though I know you are way more busy than me. Hope to meet some of you in person this fall. :-)

***Amber Schmidt***

***LP 9 & 10***

I really liked ready chapters 9 and 10, because I'm 19 so my adolescence I can remember well.

Teenage sleep from NPR- I found this interesting because of my own sleeping habbits. I had no idea that our internal clocks shifts to a later sleep time. I have heard not only in this interview and other places that a person should go to bed and wake up at the same time every day. After I thought about it this makes a lot of sense. If I think back to when I was little I had a bed time and I usually got up early and had lots of energy. Now that I am older and go to sleep when ever and can get up usually when ever, I feel tired all the time. I feel it has gotten worse since I started college because I don't have classes everyday and they don't always start at the same time so my sleeping schedule is all over the place. The doctor in the interview also said to take out T.V. and computers from the bedroom, which isn't the first time I heard this either, and is also part of my problem because I sleep with my T.V. on. I did think she had some good ideas on how to make you feel more awake and sleep better. I thought the idea of listening to soothing music sounds like a good alternative to the T.V. I also thought the visor that gives you more light to wake you up was a cool idea.

The Secret Lives of Boys from NPR- Wow what a cool interview. Considering I am a female I thought it was good to get a some what inside perspective of the male mind. What I thought was good was that it showed that no matter if your a teenage boy or girl you have a lot of the same feelings and problems. I can really relate to the part at the beginning of the interview when Saval said the boys said "Nobody gets me. No one is listening. I'm all by my self." I think as a early adolescent and even now I still feel that way often. I think a good example of this is the boy who got put on Prozac after he came out as being gay. To me it sounds like no one was really understanding what he was saying because they said he was "acting out", when no he wasn't he was just gay. Another interesting point that was made was that a lot of teens are accepting of themselves and it is the adults that aren't accepting of the teens. Now what kind of message does that send a teen? I think being a teen is emotionally hard enough without having the adults around you not being ok with who you are. Well there are so many things I could still talk about in this interview, but I am hoping that people reading this book come to realize that boys are emotional, care about their looks, etc just like girls and that it is totally OK.

Ch 9

In chapter 9 there was a good review of info about puberty. I also was suprised at how high adolesecnt pregnacy is in the U.S. I think the media doesn't help this either. I think it is good that there are programs like Girls Inc. for mothers and daughters to go to to learn about how to prevent adolescent pregnancy. As far as the leading causes of death for adolscence (accidents, homicide, suicide) I wasn't supprised that accidents is the leading cause of death considering many teenagers are usually reckless at one time or another.

Ch 10

I thought the part about dilinquency was interesting. I thought Erikson made a good point that some teens do delinquent behavior to get attention, even though it is negative attention. I was watching Dr Phil last night and they had 2 teens on who both were dilinquents. After they talked the boys said that they did because they wanted attention etc.

Chapters 7 & 8

Chapter 7 and 8 were both really good chapters. What I really liked about ch 7 was creative thinking. I am glad we had a discussion about it because I do agree kids don't know how to think critically or creatively. I know in school we were always told to think outside the box, but it is hard to do that if you aren't taught how. I really think my Intro to Counseling class helped me think more creatively and use divergent thinking. It really helped when we had to do an assignment about, for example what you would do in a certain situation in a counseling session. I found out real fast there is never one right answer in counseling. It also helped when we had to do our mock counseling sessions because you had to think on your feet and be creative if you didn't know what to say to the client.

The thing I found frustrating about ch 8 was Kohlberg's stages of moral development. I understood it, but there is soooo much to remember and I have a bad memory. I liked the section about family and friends/types of children. I was happy to see a section about step families. The family dynamics in a step-parent household is interesting to me and that's why in an earlier LP when we had to say what we would want to study that's why I picked it. I was hoping to find some insight on my problem, but they didn't discuss half siblings. What I was happy about is it says 70 percent of kids in step-family households say they feel close to the step parent and it said most adjust to the situation fine. This makes me feel better because my half sister has a step dad and our dad just got engaged so now she will have a step mother too, and I worry about her a lot since I don't see her often and don't always know what is going on with her life. I liked reading about types of children to see what I was. I would say I was/am a neglected child/adult. I always had very few friends because as a child I was painfully shy. I still am pretty shy, but I have deffinately come a long way. I really liked that we got to write the test this week. I think it helped me look deeper at the material to really find the main points. Well and I won't lie writing a test is just a heck of a lot more enjoyable than taking one. :-)

LP 5 & 6

Wow as I read in our text it really facinates me how much children know at a young age. I have two cousins that are both 3 and born a month apart and it amazes me how smart one is over the other...I don't want to compare because they are both very smart, but one is more exposed to older kids(which probably makes her learn things 3 yr. olds shouldn't know) and a lot more things than the other and that seems to be giving her an advantage over my other cousin. In chapter 5 they talked about how young children do self talk when playing I now notice my young cousins doing this often when they play. Also in this chapter they talked about Head Start, Child-centered kindergarten, and Montessori approach. I went to a Head Start program when I was little and I think it really helped me in my development. I was an extremely shy as a kid and still am at times, but I truely believe going to preschool helped me in becoming less shy. I personally think any of those three types of preschools would be a great idea for all children to attend because not all kids have other kids to play with, and I think it is a good place to learn how to work with others, become more outgoing and just be exposed to people other than in your family.

The interesting topics to me that were talked about in chapter 6 were birth order, effects of TV violence on kids, and the effects of divorce on kids. I have read in this text book and in other Psychology text books that the first born is usually better at acedemics, is more resonsible, and is a leader. Which in my case it is kind of like that I have one sister who is 10 years younger than I, but even though she is the "baby" in the family I think she is quite responsible and very smart. I know these types of things are not always true, but I do think there is some valitity to the whole birth order thing. Here is a web site with some more characteristics of birth order http://www.childdevelopmentinfo.com/development/birth_order.htm. I also do believe that if kids see violence on TV or with video games etc. that they are more violent. When I was in Psychology of Human Relations we had to write a paper about this subject. For this paper we had to watch a childrens TV show and count how many acts of violence were in it. I watched SpongeBob and was supprised how much violence was in that 30 min. show. A website(http://kidshealth.org/parent/positive/family/tv_affects_child.html#) I was looking at about this made a good point, the "hero" in the show can kill the "bad" guy and he gets praised for it, and kids might get the wrong idea even though they know hurting people is wrong. I know my 8 yr. old cousin has always been able to watch what he wanted on TV and play whatever video games he wanted and now he acts out a lot and has behavior problems. I think kids watching violence has to to with indulgent parenting styles because like with my cousin he just gets his way so no one has to deal with him. With divorce I can definately say it doesn't seem to ever have a positive effect on kids. My parents divorced when I was 3 and I think if even after they divorced they would have had better coparenting skills things could have gone smoother.

LP 3 and 4

Wow there was so much interesting information in these two learning plans!

I really liked the To be a Baby article. I have always thought about that...what was it like when I first came into the world? I also wondered if babies knew more than what we thought, because we make funny faces and talk in a baby voice to them. Do they think what weirdos...I'm not dumb. The article did confirm that since Freud and Piaget, researchers have found that babies have powerful learning abilities.

I thought it was cool to find out that expressions are biological. I never thought about it that way because like it said blind people have expressions and they have never seen a face.

I really liked the vidoes even thought it took me all day to watch them because of the dumb dial up internet....oh well it was worth it. The whole thing about how babies learn language is amazing!

Learning Plans 1 & 2

I felt like LP 1 was a bit of a review for me from other psychology classes I have taken. I did learn about some new concepts and people in this LP that I found interesting. I think Bronfenbrenner's Ecological Theory is interesting, because of its similarities to Erick Ericksonson's theory, and I think it makes a lot of sense. I liked our first discussion board question. I never really thought about what I would want to study in psychology if I could, and I thought there were a lot of really awesome ideas. I also like that we have to respond to each other, because of my idea for the LP (which was personal to me) some one could relate and from my experience I hope I could help them.

I also felt like LP was some what of a review of biology in high school and some psych classes, but I did learn some new things and found some challenging. I really find the twin and adoption studies facinating. It is amazing to me how twins can be so much alike and be separated for much of their life. The things that I think are kind of confusing is the stuff about chromosomes, DNA, etc, but it helped I had some background info about it from biologly. I did learn a lot about the different periods in the of development. I never heard of germinal, embryonic, and fetal periods. I do like that I have been able to relate this class to others I have taken or are currently in. Like for example I am also learning about phenotypes and genotypes in my race, ethnic, and diversity studies class.

Introduction

Hi! My name is Amber Schmidt. I am from Merrill. I am in the Human Services Program and hoping to become a counselor or social worker. Some things I like to do are shopping, listening to music, reading, scrapbooking, and surfing the web.