***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.