Summary Of The Development Of Identity In Children And Adolescents

Summary Of The Contents: The importance of this article was to clarify the development of identity in children and adolescents and how parents and teachers and other caregivers can help motivate identity development. Cheryl Jones is a psychologist that sees multiple cases of children that were not properly guided from childhood in the process of self- discovery. She provides different ideas that will help teachers, and parents guide students on self-identity. Self-identity is one of the trickier aspects of a child’s healthy development because you can’t “do” things to your children to give them their self-identity. Rather, you can only create an environment that allows their self-identity to emerge naturally. Cheryl johns provide four major ideas that will help us

The first one is offering choices, this gives children the idea that they are separate individuals, their opinions matter, and their voices are heard. If children grow up with the idea that they can make decisions on what they enjoy will allow them to get closer to their self-identity. The second is use questions instead of comments, identity is also strengthened by parent-child communication that takes the form of questions instead of commands simply asking a question so a child can come up with their own decision gives them a sense of self identity. The third one is responding to the “I don’t know”, when an adolescent is struggles with clarity of personal thought, then the parent needs to expand on new ideas and self-discovery. The last idea that was discussed was, helping adolescent define their-own lives. The development of identity requires that every young person invests in something to help define his or her life. Whether it is a talent, sport, or outside interest. Overall, I though the material really provided a great way for parents to motivate and increase