An overview of HD 101

I must say that i have thoroughly enjoyed taking HD 101 under Dr. Witte. Like I have stated in my previous blog, there are so many things that I have learned in this class. From child development to life satisfaction in older age; you name, I learned about it! One thing I will take away from this class is that humans are very complex creatures. They are no set guidelines are we develop who we are. There are many theories that state the typical and atypical ways that a person may develop. Humans, although we are hard to understand, are very interesting to study. As long as we populate and dominate this Earth, we are going to need classes such as this to help understand the simple yet complicated evolution and development of man-kind. 

The Development of Little Children

One thing that interested most about this course was how I was able to learn all about the development of children. I realized that a child's brain is both a complicated and yet a very simple subject to understand. Children obliviously think like adults do. Their view of the world is so innocent. That is so beautiful to me. One thing that interested me the most was how children go through the process of self-development and self-identification since they were infants. For some children, their idea of self-identification can come as early as 1 1/2, maybe 2 years old. The are so many things that I have learn about child development that is hard to just pin-point a few things. The theories of child development are very informative as well. Piaget's and Vygotsky theories on child development may differ, but they are similar in many ways as well. One thing i have learned in this class is that the way a child develops is a pretty good indicator of the adult they will soon become. 

"Because I said so..."

In chapter 7 we discuss how important family was to a developing child/adolescents. We spoke about how family systems as a whole effect and impact everyone involved. We also spoke about different styles of parenting. Based on your parenting style- if you are a parent- will greatly effect you child's attachment style to the world around him/her. If you were raised by a certain parent style, take some time now to determine how that effects the way you see yourself and connect with the world around you. The four main parenting styles are:

"•Authoritarian parenting

•High control with little warmth

•Hard work, respect, and obedience are encouraged

•There is little give-and-take and parents do not explain their decisions

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•Authoritative parenting

•Control with warmth and responsiveness

•They explain rules and encourage

•Children of indulgent-permissive parents are often impulsive and easily frustrated

•Children of indifferent-uninvolved parents often have low self-esteem, and are aggressive, impulsive, and moody  

I was raised with a mixed of Authoritarian, Authoritative and Indifferent-univolved parent styles. As you can imagine, I had alot to nagivate through in life. Just from my personal experiences, an Authoritarian parent style works best to produce independent and conscious minded  and considerate children. 

'They're just senile, sweetie.'

I know that title looks so odd to many of you(well mainly because it is.) But have you ever heard your parents or someone your know say something similar to this? I hear this all the time. I have heard this so much that I have come to associate memory loss and old age together. This frightens me because I would hate for my memory to decline as I age. I have an excellent memory and that is some I pride myself on. But as we get older Dementia is something that we have to take an account. It can strike at any moment in our golden years. "•Dementia is a family of diseases that results in serious behavioral and cognitive impairments(Dr. T. Witter, HD 101-005, 2014 )."We discussed in class how tangles in our brains' neurons begin to form. These tangles become to form from old, dying cells and soon they begin to interpret the flow of communication to other healthy neurons. The more tangles a person's brain has, the more they are at risk for developing any form of Dementia. 

 One of the most common forms of Dementia is Alzheimer's Disease. I have seen the effects of this horrible disease first hand and it is not pretty. My paternal great-aunt was afflicted by this disease and it was heart breaking to see her lose everything because of this disease. Alzheimer's Disease is characterized by memory decline, mental confusion and major changes in personality.  The risk of developing this disease increases as we age. Another form of Dementia is one that has been brought by the onset of a stroke. My maternal grandfather is starting to show some signs of Dementia brought on by his two strokes. It hurts when you see someone you love slowly start to lose their memory. This is a very tough stage for an older person to go through. In the long run, everyone is affected. 

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'Live long and prosper...'

All my Star Trek fans out there know that those sage words were spoken by none other than Spock himself. (This is the only think I know about Star Trek, but I digress. :P). I like this quote alot and when I was going over chapter 13, I immediately thought about this saying and made the connection between it and longevity. It's no secret that older people are living longer in the 21st century than ever before. Longevity is the number of years that a person can live. As we discussed in class, there are many other ways to calculate longevity. Some of this techniques include: 

"•Average life expectancy is the age at which half the people born in a particular year will have died•Useful life expectancy is the number of years a person is free from debilitating chronic disease
•Maximum life expectancy is the oldest age to which any person lives(Dr. T. Witte, HD 101-005, 2014)"

Longevity is also greatly influenced by your hereditary, environment, lifestyle and social class. I find the idea of living a longer life so awesome! New medical technological advances have also added years to certain people lives as well. It think that it is amazing how older age has been completely redefined in the last few years. Just because you have gotten older, does not me you stop living. 

'You're making-up that scenario.'

I know that everyone likes to imagine what their life could have been like or what they want their life to people. It is fun to imagine, dream and come up with a creative story-line for how your life should go. In chapter 10-Physical, Cognitive and Socioemotional Development in Young adults, we discussed the concepts of  life story, life-span construct, social clock, scenario,  and possible selves. These concepts all have the same basic theme; they all involve constructed plans that often time will follow a time-line in order for these events to occur. A life-span construct is the unity among many young adults feel with the past, present and future. Social clock is a personal timeline whereby certain or expected life events will occur. For instance, one of my goals on my social clock is to be married before I am 25, have two kids and my PhD. before I am 30. A scenario is basically a thought or expectation of the future. I know for myself that I have developed certain scenarios about how my future and future career will manifest themselves. The concept of possible selves, like I explained earlier, is the thought of what all young adults could be in the future. I definitely can say that I have a strong sense of my possible self. I am a creative person by nature and I like to see how many things I can 'put my hand to' , so to speak. After all, there is nothing wrong with dreaming, right? 

Violence and Relationships.....

In chapter 11 we discussed forming relationship at young and middle adulthood. One of the topics we discussed was that of  relationship violence. There is domestic violence that is called intimate terrorism. It is the violence we have seen on shows like Dr. Phil and various Lifetime movies. It is more real than we think and according to the class PowerPoint, violence occurs in about 25 to 40 percent in imitate relationships. The other type of violence is common couple violence. Although it is called 'common couple violence', does not necessarily mean that it is excusable. This relationship violence differs from intimate terrorism as it does not happen frequently. Intimate terrorism that is used by one partner and done to another seeks to alienate the abused party from his/her family and friends. You can think of common couple violence as an heated argument that a couple may have every now again.  Common couple violence could include cussing, throwing, hitting and various other aggressive behavior. In my own personal opinion, both forms of couple violence is serious enough to get the authorities involved and for the relationship to be terminated. The line between common couple violence vs into intimate terrorism is so thin that the former can transform into the latter. That definitely gives you something to think about, doesn't it?



Since I love taking these online quizzes, I figured I suggest one that anyone can take. Click the link below to test whether you are in an abusive relationship or not...

http://alcoholism.about.com/od/abuse/a/blquiz3.htm