psych350reflection

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Reflection Notebook #6

Dear Professor Ly, Over the past semester, I have learned a whole lot.  I didn’t think a lot about developmental psychology before I enrolled in this class. The only things I really knew and thought about development were developmental milestones. In this class, we later learned that there is no set timeline for development. I knew nothing about the systems approach and developmental framework until I took this class. There are some things that impacted my ability to meet my own goals for learning and achievement. This was my first semester back in a school setting since my freshman year, so it was hard into the swing of things. It was also my first semester taking 18 credits, so I had to learn how to really manage my time, hence why I had to take advantage of the 12 hour grace period a few times. A lesson that I’ll take away from my experiences in this class is that everyone develops at their own pace and that people’s development can be affected by so many different factors. I also am now more aware that parents are developing as well, which I have to consider as me and my parents grow older.

I really enjoyed your class. Thank you for a great semester!

From,

Meg

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Reflection Notebook #5

I read the article “What Paternity Leave Does for a Father’s Brain, by Dr. Darby Saxbe, a psychology professor, and her doctoral student, Sofia Cardenas. This article was written very recently and was published earlier this month. After reading this article, I had some thoughts about in what specific ways becoming a father is considered a transition point in development for fathers and how this article's content relates to a systems way of understanding fathering. Most of the readings or articles we read on Perusal solely focus on mother-child relationships and how mothers parent their children. Studies usually focus on and only involve mothers and it seems like fathers never have a say, so I thought this was very interesting.

Becoming a father is considered a transition point in development for fathers because their whole life changes. They now have to provide and care for another human, changing their social life, schedule, and relationship with their co-parent.

The content of this article relates to a systems way of understanding fathering because fathers develop in many different ways. Their brain develops once they become fathers, so they develop intellectually. A study of new fathers found post-birth remodeling of a part of the brain linked with social cognition, and greater neural change predicted stronger responses to infant images.

The picture I shared is a photo of me and my dad when I was a baby. While doing this reflection notebook, I asked him if he had got any paternity leave. I am his only child and I was born in 2000. He said he got “0 weeks, 0 days” and had to use vacation days when I was born early and unexpectedly. He also said he got lucky because I was born exactly a week before Christmas and two weeks before New Year’s so his company was giving a few days off for those holidays. My dad and I are not as close as my mom and I because he had to work long hours so my mom could be a stay-at-home mom, but I wonder if we would’ve had a closer relationship if he had access to paternity leave.

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Reflection Notebook #4

The learning goals for this class include applying the principles of life course and systems theories to understanding individuals and real-world situations and recognizing and challenging assumptions about human development in ourselves and others.   Keeping these goals and what I have learned so far in mind, I have thought about development differently than I used to. Before taking this class, I had given some thought to how babies and children developed. Something I never thought about was how parents develop after they have children. Once someone has a baby, they are influenced by the baby’s behavior and other people around them to find their own parenting style.

An example that illustrates this change in my thinking is that becoming a parent is a transition point in life, which we talked about in class. In 1987, Galinsky emphasized the development of parents and how they respond to their child’s developments. I knew parenting was challenging but had never really thought about how parenting is a big part of a person’s development. It causes changes in the mother or father’s life routine and forces them to change their roles. If they have more than one kid, every child they have will cause different changes in their life and identity. 

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Reflection Notebook #3

I read the article “Why Is Raising a Child in the United States So Hard?“ by  Spencer Bokat-Lindell. The content of this article helps us understand how environmental influences can both directly and indirectly affects a child's development because the US and other countries have different family policies. Family policies never took off in the United States, while European and Latin America they did in the early 1900s. Now, the US and Papua New Guinea are the only recorded countries with no required paid parental leave. People born before family policies started in the 1900s probably developed differently intellectually because there was no daycare or preschool to advance education earlier. Now, since public education starts at age 3 in Europe, they probably intellectually and mentally develop earlier and faster than kids in the US since public education doesn’t start to 5 or 6.

My thoughts relate to the life course theory principle of time and place because how you develop depends on the time you were born and raised and where you grew up. They relate to a systems framework because many elements including where a person is born, how and when they are educated, and other factors all work together and can influence how a person develops.

  My mom stayed at home while my dad worked, so I was lucky enough to have one parent at home. The article states that “Half of Americans live in places where there is no licensed child care provider or where there are three times as many children as slots I never attended day care, but there were many places in my town that provided childcare. It also stated that “. One in three children also doesn’t attend preschool.” I personally went to preschool through the preschool program at my local high school,that I later attended again when I was older. I attached a screenshot of the website as the top picture to show more information. It was ran by a teacher and high school students who were interested in elementary education. It had very good reviews. There was a long waitlist, and it was very inexpensive since it was basically run in a classroom.  Looking at the website now, it says it is $180/year, so it must’ve been even cheaper back in 2004. I don’t think this is common in a lot of areas.  I was lucky enough because I lived in a good area to attend this preschool for cheap when other kids did not have the chance to attend a good cheap preschool and might have skipped preschool altogether.

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Reflection Notebook Entry #2

A monolith is defined as "a group of people who are thought of as being all the same", while Dr. Barbara Rogoff writes that she "focuses on people's participation in their communities' cultural practices and traditions, rather than equating culture with the nationality or ethnicity of individuals." Dr. Rogoff’s quote goes against the standard definition of a monolith because peoples cultural practices and traditions are not all the same, and I agree with her. In the New York Times Article “How it Feels to be Asian in Today’s America”, someone interviewed talks about how they are always labeled as Asian-American but they are so much more than that because they are also sikh, punjabi, and south asian, so they have different experiences than other people who are classified as just Asian, Unfortunately, when I went to read the article I could not view it because it was behind a paywall.

This informs my thinking about human development because it shows that development can be different in different communities. Not every white person in America develops the same even though they share the same ethnicity and nationality. It depends on their family life, the environment and setting they grow up in, and many other factors.

I come from an Irish family because my grandma and the many generations before her were all born and raised in Dublin, Ireland. Many people think all Irish people are the same. Irish stereotypes are usually that they are all red haired, very pale and white, and always very drunk. Obviously there are Irish people of color contradicting that stereotype. The picture I chose to show is when my family from Ireland came to visit my Grandma in DC a few years ago. As you can see, none of them have red hair and while some of them are drinking wine, they are not totally out of control drunk. Every one of them have a different personality and participate in different cultures and traditions with their own families.

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What does taking a systems approach to understanding human development mean to you?

To me, taking a systems approach to understanding human development means realizing that we are never not developing even if we can’t see it physically or realize its happening because we develop from the moment we start breathing until death. I obviously don't remember my baptism as a baby, where this picture was taken,  but I know I was developing. 

We read a case about development milestones for this class. I was around 3 months old in this picture when I was baptized. So at the time of this picture, when I was 3 months old, I was beginning to babble (visual and hearing milestone), open and shut my hands (movement milestone), and starting to enjoy playing with people (social and emotional milestone).