Entering the adolescence and young adult stage is an exciting yet confusing phase for most individuals as they experience unprecedented changes in their bodies, thinking, and feeling compared to their childhood. Such a change did not spare me either in my adolescence and young adult phase. Growing up in the suburbs of Dallas, Texas, was a bliss for me until I became an adolescent. In the stage, I experienced many different changes biologically, psychosocially, cognitively, morally, among others. Of great interest were the cognitive and psychosocial changes that I will discuss in the blog. I will make use of the constructivist approach to discuss my cognitive changes as an adolescent and young adult. For the psychosocial changes that I underwent during the stage, I will integrate the discussion of Freud's theory of psychosexual development.
Adolescence and young adulthood involve cognitive changes such as more advanced reasoning abilities and the development of more logical thought processes that are backed with verifiable evidence. As adolescence, being left with my younger brother and sister as my parents went for a business trip to New York for a week was a hallmark for my cognitive development. I had to ensure that I took care of my siblings, fed them in good time, did their laundry, and played their games with them to ensure that their sadness regarding the absence of my parents was minimized. As an adolescent, that was a lot to do, and I had to ensure that I covered it with my reasoning skills and logical thought processes.
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Another life experience that marked my cognitive development as an adolescent was receiving a share of house chores during the holidays as my parents went to work. My parents own a restaurant in the Dallas downtown and are involved in the day to day running of the business. Therefore, they are not usually at home most of the time. On one holiday, they relieved our domestic manager of her duties in a bid to train me on how to be in charge. As a teenager, that was plainly boring for me. Still, as an adult, I view that as a component of cognitive development. I had to ensure that I thought of ways to minimize the workload I had daily and spend less time on it.
According to the cognitive constructivist approach by Jean Piaget, human beings are not usually able to immediately process and understand information that they are given (Weimer et al., 2017). Instead, they take time to construct their approaches to knowledge with the information that is provided to them (Meeus, 2016). As an adolescent, I had to take sufficient time to process what I had to do to cover the house chores and take care of the kids in the two life experiences described above.
As a young adult, I decided to develop my business plan to target establishing a flower shop across the street where my parents' restaurant was located. By then, I was growing even more profound and more logical thought processes in line with the discussion of the constructivist approach. With more time and growth, I could come up with more knowledge to improve my life.
In line with the desire to open my business, I decided to take an accounting class to further my knowledge in accounting and maneuver the business world more comfortably. In light of the theory, the desire to expand my knowledge is an essential aspect of young adult life.
According to Freud's theory of psychosexual development, there are five stages of psychosexual changes that take part in childhood. My interest is mostly on the last stage of the change, which points to the genital step (Leung & Shek, 2019). The theory provides more insight into my development of a personal and sexual identity that was prominent during my adolescence and young adult stages (Kornienko, Santos, Martin & Granger, 2016). According to the explanations of the model, adolescents and young adults increasingly put into consideration the viewpoints of other people during their growth, and I was part of the same.
As an adolescent, I had an intense talk with my parents and my favorite uncle regarding undertaking an economics degree at the university. I was increasingly able to interact more with people and listen to understand. The event can further be explained by the psychosexual development approach in which the adolescents can view the perspectives and listen to the viewpoints of the other people regarding significant decisions in their lives.
As it is in the case of most adolescents, I was shy and nervous while dealing with the opposite sex of my age, such as in-class or extracurricular activities. However, as I developed more confidence, I was able to ask my female best friend out, and soon enough, we changed both of our statuses from single to dating. As an adolescent, the thought of dating and especially a girl was a complexity already given the shyness I already had owing to my bodily changes such as growing a beard and even experiencing wet dreams.
Freud's theory of psychosexual development continued to inform the changes that took place during my young adulthood (Allen, 2019). Increasingly, I yearned to create time on Friday nights to hang out with my friends at a bar north of Dallas as I listened to their ideas and inserted sporadic comments time and again. As explained by the theory, I was increasingly able to desire to amass knowledge through listening to my friends, arguing on various issues affecting us.
As I approached my early twenties, I had this desire to develop a more intimate romantic connection with my girlfriend from the adolescent stage. I asked her to marry me, and she said no, unfortunately. I felt broken. I realized that I required a more intimate relationship with her, and therefore I suggested we strengthen it. Years later, we have a family of two children.
References
Allen, B. (2019, March 28). Stages of adolescence . HealthyChildren.org . https://www.healthychildren.org/English/ages-stages/teen/pages/Stages-of-Adolescence.aspx
Kornienko, O., Santos, C. E., Martin, C. L., & Granger, K. L. (2016). Peer Influence on Gender
Identity Development in Adolescence. Developmental Psychology , 52 (10), 1578.
Leung, J. T., & Shek, D. T. (2019). Theories of Adolescent Development: Overview. The
Encyclopedia of Child and Adolescent Development , 1-12.
Meeus, W. (2016). Adolescent psychosocial development: a review of longitudinal models and
research. Developmental Psychology , 52 (12), 1969.
Weimer, A. A., Dowds, S. J. P., Fabricius, W. V., Schwanenflugel, P. J., & Suh, G. W. (2017).
Development of Constructivist Theory of Mind from Middle Childhood to Early Adulthood and its Relation to Social Cognition and Behavior. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology , 154 , 28-45.
