Life Span, Essay Example

As far as I can remember, in the fifth grade I still had much trouble with my speech. I was going through speech therapy during this time. One of the main issues that I had with my speech during this time was that I had a stutter. It was to an extent where people had difficulty in understanding what I was saying. According to the speech therapist my mind was going too fast and my mouth was trying to go at the same pace but could not. He suggested that I needed to slow down and collect my thoughts before I try to speak.

With this background, I can apply Gardner’s theory of multiple intelligence, how my linguistic intelligence was not necessarily watching up to my physical self due to my stutter. Even through my mind process was going at a certain rate, my physical self could not keep up, creating what was a speaking disability. This can also be associated with physical development and motor skills (Charlesworth, 1998). The text states girls excel in fine motor skills more, which emphasized dexterity. This was what I was lacking.

Also during this time, I remember that   had difficulty in making friends because of my speech issues, especially with my stutter. I clearly remember my peers making fun of me because of my speech. Not only that, it was also because of the fact that I also looked different as compared to them. I have darker skin than most people, and people would assume that I was part Puerto Rican because of my facial structures as well as my dark tan skin. My physical attributes are this way because I have different racial backgrounds in my family.

In connection with the text and bodily make-up; I felt that my physical appearance was hindering me from excelling to my best potential. I was not meeting the physical expectations of myself, and believed that this caused others to make fun of me as well. This was probably paired off with low self-esteem, making me a target for such bullying. This was also around the year where girls and boys are not the same size, as according to the text (Cattan & Tilford, 2006). Yet, I did not seem to catch up in terms of height in the years later. This did not help my friendships. According to the text, friendships are usually built on mutual liking. However, with my stutter and my physical appearances, it was hard to be able to relate to people and express myself. Also, since I was of different races, I could not relate to anyone in that aspect (Honess & Yardley, 1987). There was a sense of not belonging all because of my non-conformity in respects to my physical appearances.

Not only that, I was also smaller in size compared to most of my peers especially when I entered the sixth grade.  This was by far the most terrible year for me. I was picked on, made fun of, used by girls to make their boyfriends jealous. During this time, I also faced much physical abuse from my peers. I remember of times when I was so afraid of my peers that I had made up excuses not to go to school. This happened very often. I would cry to my mother and father, begging them to let me stay home instead of going to school. Because of the immense bullying I received, I hated riding the bus to school so much that I would decide to walk to and from school instead, just to avoid those bullies. It had gotten so bad at one time that during the summer, I had considered committing suicide. The bullying caused me to fail sixth grade that year. This can be related to groups, and group structure. The peers who bullied me may have had a hierarchy within their group, someone who did not like me particularly. This may have caused the rest of them to act the same way towards me with resent and violence (Cattan & Tilford, 2006). I did not have a particular group myself, because of my low-self esteem issues which affected my decisions in making friends (Magai & Haviland-Jones, 2002). These people may have also been subject to peer pressure. I was always rejected in my class. Like in the text, I could relate to Jay more. It seemed that nobody wanted me around no matter what the situation was. Because I was a rejected child, this made me act slightly aggressive, not to others but towards myself. Bandura’s social cognitive theory states in the text that peer rejection can be influenced by the parents. I can relate to this because my parents were not too friendly. It was not that they were mean people or chose to be that way, it was because they came from different backgrounds and could not speak as fluently in English as they would like, causing them to act quite anti-socially, which is probably where I developed my anti-social qualities.

But I had talked myself out of it and decided to make some changes in my life. In that same year my aunt had bought me a weight set for Christmas is than when I started to work out hard. I had got big fast so fast that I end up with stretch marks underneath my arms due to the rapid skin changes of growing big faster than my skin can grow.

That’s when I started to fight back at first defending myself. Then soon, I was getting into fights when I thought someone was dishonoring me or someone who could not defend themselves.  I even got on the teachers and the principle of the school when I thought they were treating someone wrong.  I did this all the way through school.

This highly affected my thought about relationships (Honess & Yardley, 1987). It was hard to trust people after what I had gone through. Thus, I found it in myself to be very defensive with my actions. This is when my aggression grew, according to Bandura’s social cognitive theory. I just needed to wait for the time when I knew I could not get physically hurt by my actions towards others. I was told to be able to deal with my aggression by trying to not show fear. This reflected on my will to fight back and finally stand up for myself. Because of my distance from my peers, it was hard to understand others, and even relate to them. The fact that I was being used by girls only to make their boyfriends jealous placed a negative image of them for me. According to the text, after some time, personality becomes more important that appearance, however because of the constant bullying and negativity which always surrounded me, it made it difficult to develop a type of personality in which other people would relate.

I gained some respect from some of my peers and by most of my teachers by this. I still had trouble with the girls, how I did not trust them and still had low self esteem because of not able to understand my homework and making bad grades, yet still passing grades but not good grades. Because of how badly I was treated throughout the years, I developed depression, and the sense of trust in me was gone. I do not think I could properly discern who was trustworthy and who was not. Unhappiness did dominate my life, and negative concepts of myself brought about my peers seemed to make me feel inadequate and socially and outcast (Cattan & Tilford, 2006). It was hard to grow out of these feelings, that’s why years after, I still had depression and very low self esteem.

References

Cattan, M., Tilford, S. eds. (2006) Mental Health Promotion: A Lifespan Approach Maidenhead, England: Open University Press.

Charlesworth, R. (1998) Developmentally Appropriate Practice Is for Everyone. Childhood Education. 74(5).

Honess, T., &Yardley, K., eds. (1987). Self and Identity: Perspectives across the Lifespan. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.

Magai, C., & Haviland-Jones, J. (2002) The Hidden Genius of Emotion: Lifespan Transformations of Personality. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press.