Childhood Diversity

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Childhood Diversity

Introduction

The topic of adolescent adversity has attracted endless debates among researchers and psychologists. Adverse childhood experiences contribute to the personality disorders among the youth as they grow to adulthood.  One of the most unsettling times is adolescence period, and the youth undergo numerous emotional, physical, social, and psychological changes that characterize this life stage. Unrealistic family, social, or academic expectations can leads to disappointment, a sense of rejection, and low self-esteem amongst the youth (Loren Toussaint et al., 2014).  In the events when things do not work well, adolescent youths overreact, feel stressed, and confused. In Sigmund’s psychoanalysis theory, these early childhood experiences contribute to personality disorders during adulthood. As young people grow up and undergo adversity, they struggle with self-esteem or even trying to figure out how to cope with youth adversities. Click here to ORDER YOUR PAPER NOW

Early Diversity

Childhood occurrences matter for a lifetime. According to Loren Toussaint and colleagues (2014), the adverse effects of adolescent adversity greatly influence the choices children make in the adulthood. Also, adverse adversity effects increases individual’s negative perception on stress and their reactions to matters in means that generate stressful circumstances, and  conflicts. Additionally, major childhood adversity such as neglect, abuse, and poverty weaken an individual’s brain power (Hammen et al., 2012). Psychoanalysis theory by Sigmund indicates that provision of responsive, stable, and nurturing relationships in childhood years can reverse and prevent the adverse effects of adolescent stress, with lifelong benefits to emotional health.

Adolescent youths who grow up in an unsystematic household can generate poor health. Children learn stress from inside the home place. If parents quarrel, fight, and abuse each other in the presence of kids, children will imitate such behaviors in different environments such as school and play grounds. Youths exposed to harsh conditions learn it the hard way, and practice the harsh behavior both at home and away from home. Research by (Hammen et al., 2012), shows that kids exposed to negativity acquire less support from parents throughout their childhood. This early straining by the adolescent youth in life makes them vulnerable and contributes to irregular stress later in life.

Self-Esteem

Teenage is the most important period of every youth. When the youth are at the puberty stage, their thinking becomes more improved. During childhood adolescence, a lot of body changes occur and these include growth spurts, appearance of secondary sex characteristics, reproductive system development, muscles increases, and body weight redistribution (Moksnes & Espnes, 2012). The older the teen becomes, the more they feels themselves, body changes, and change in social interactions. Also, as the brain develops, increases in emotion, memory modification, and impulse control are witnessed. Self-esteem is a major piece for youths to accept themselves as they grow to become adults (Erol & Orth, 2011). Youths with low self-esteem lack self-confidence about their bodies whereas youths with positive self-esteem view themselves with confidence.

Moksnes and Espnes argue that, self-esteem increases and continues to slowly increase during the adolescent period. However, their studies suggest that self-esteem changes more strongly in adolescence stage that in young adulthood. Certain drastic changes during puberty contribute to development of low self-esteem among the adolescents (Erol & Orth, 2011). Some of the concern issues that adolescent girls suffer low self-esteem during puberty include gain in weight, bullying, sexual harassment, and maturing at a slower or faster rate than peers. On the part of boys, issues such as acne, bullying, slowed maturity rate, and lack of vocal changes cause low self-esteem (Moksnes & Espnes, 2012). These issues develop low self-esteem among adolescent children due to lack of proper guidance and counseling.

Adolescent Coping Skills

In general terms, life in itself is challenging, and as kids are raised by their parents or guardians, they are taught different behaviors and ways of coping with everyday struggle. Proper parental care, guidance and counseling, and advise is every children’s right. One of the best approaches to cope with life challenges and have good health is by forgiveness. Forgiveness is a way to release the hurt and pain from both physical and mental torture (Enright, Freedman, & Rique, 1998). Stress not only impairs the adolescent children’s brain but also tolls their bodies. Some young adults learn to cope by turning to drugs and alcohol abuse. In other times, if they play sports they cease engaging in sporting activities. Forgiveness is not made to take away the factors that occur to establish stress, but set to help in establishing mental rehabilitation.

According to (Enright, 1998), forgiveness releases the negative feeling by enhancing a positive feeling that transforms the emotion and behavior of the offended towards an offender.  Forgiveness helps the stressed adolescent youths solve the problem effectively. Also, management of emotions that entails proper handling of feelings and thoughts that caused the adversity problem is a right skill of coping with adversity challenges. When the adversity issues are uncontrollable, seeking therapist assistance can help rehabilitate the stressful feeling an adolescent I undergoing.

Conclusion

In conclusion, adolescent youths undergo numerous challenges during the childhood. The most common sources of adversity challenges are parental issues, peer pressure, school performance, feelings of depression, and other related life experiences. As a result, this affects their mental power and identity, and leads to stress. If not controlled, the aftermaths of adolescent adversity prolongs to adulthood. Proper guidance and counseling should be provided to the young adolescent in order to eliminate case of low self-esteem. Also, children need to be taught the importance of forgiveness and its benefits in mental rehabilitation. Click here to ORDER YOUR PAPER NOW

References

Loren, T., Grant, SS., Gabriel, D., George, MS, (2014). Effects of lifetime stress exposure on

mental and physical health in young adulthood: How stress degrades and forgiveness protects health Volume: 21 issue: 6, page(s): 1004-1014. Article first published online: August 19, 2014; Issue published: June 1, 2016 Crossref DOI link: https://doi.org/10.1177/1359105314544132 . Published: 2016-06 Update policy: https://doi.org/10.1177/SAGE-JOURNALS-UPDATE-POLICY

Enright, RD, Freedman, S, Rique, J (1998). The psychology of interpersonal forgiveness. In:

Enright, RD, North, J (eds) Exploring Forgiveness. Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, pp. 46–62. Google Scholar

Erol, R.Y. & Orth, U. (2011). Self-esteem development from age 14 to 30 years: A longitudinal

study. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 101, 607–619.

Hammen, C., Hazel, N., Brennan, P., & Najman, J. (2012). Intergenerational transmission and

continuity of stress and depression: Depressed women and their offspring in 20 years of follow-up. Psychological Medicine42, 931–942. Doi: 10.1017/S0033291711001978

Moksnes, U. K. & Espnes, G. A. (2012). Self-esteem and emotional health in adolescents –

gender and age as a potential moderator. Scandinavian Journal of Psychology 53, 483–489.

 

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