Using_Psychosocial_Theories_on_Life_Stories

Introduction Jamie is a thirteen year old boy who has joined a neighbourhood secondary school. During the first two months in school, he has exhibited positive behaviours and enthusiasm in class and mixing well with his classmates. In the first few class tests, he had done pretty well. From the third month onwards, he started to not to hand in his homework and results slipped as well. Teachers also began to complain that he had been rude, disturbing his classmates during lessons and occasionally had minor outbursts of anger when being disciplined by teachers. When these happen, he would throw a tantrum and sat at his seat refusing to talk or do any work until the teacher’s lesson is over. With the disturbances made in class, sometimes he will raise questions on lessons or the mistakes of his work but always he refused to accept teachers’ explanations and insisted that his answer was correct as well. One of major clashes which he had was with his Chinese language teacher. As he was doing his journal during Chinese lesson therefore the Chinese language teacher kept the journal and read what he was doing. Jamie was upset as the journal was to be only read by the form teacher and he talked back rudely to her. In subsequent months, Jamie refuses to communicate to the Chinese teacher and apologise for his rudeness. Due to Jamie’s small stature, sometimes he would be bullied by other boys. The first few times he had retaliated and the bullying stopped. Now, Jamie would often do name calling, taunting or bullying other classmates and they would turn into arguments or nearly physical. Such ‘naughty’ acts gradually escalated into fights and once was caught fighting in class by the discipline master. The final straw was Jamie was caught playing with a lighter behind a particular classroom block during recess time. He insisted that he did not intend to set a fire. Subsequently, the form teacher called Jamie’s mother and found out that actually Jamie’s father left the family for a couple of years and his parents are going through divorce proceedings. The mother works as a kindergarten teacher and is trying to make ends meet for Jamie and his two elder brothers. Jamie’s eldest brother is eighteen years old and had just been released from Boys’ Home. While Jamie and his elder brother often fight at home so Jamie stayed with his auntie, who is a secondary school mathematics teacher, a few days a week from time to time whenever Jamie’s mother felt that she needed a break. Jamie’s mother mentioned that her biggest concern is Jamie to turn out like her eldest son and the trait of bad temper and being occasional violent runs in all her sons. She had also shared that Jamie is conscious of his small stature so had requested the doctor to switch his asthma drugs which stunted his growth. Brofenbrenner’s Ecological Systems Theory According to Brofenbrenner’s Ecological Systems Theory, there are four “layers” of environment which forms a child’s development within the context of the system of relationships. They are microsystem, mesosystem, exosystem, macrosystem and chronosystem. Changes or conflict in any one layer will ripple throughout other layers. Among the relationships that the child has, family is the closest, most intense, long-lasting, and significant on the mesosystem. The influences of the family extend to all aspects of the child’s development; language, nutrition, security, health, and beliefs are all developed through the input and behavior related feedback within the family. (Ryan) Therefore Jamie is a ‘product’ of his family situation. As Jamie’s father left his family for a few years, so there is a lack of parental support, guidance and nuture during that few formative years. And lesser positive traits to model in terms of interests and skills. Within his family Jamie has to face the situation of lacking a father figure to role model and insufficient care, attention and nurture from his mother. This is because Jamie’s mother has to cope with a few stressers on her own. They are financial burden since she is the sole breadwinner and her salary is insufficient, parenting her children and coping with household chores. And, lastly, is likely that she lacked of emotional and social support since she only mentioned her sister to help taking care of Jamie. It is also likely that she is not receiving any aid from Jamie’s paternal relatives since her relationship with her ex-husband has broken down.(David Reiss, 1979) Jamie’s brothers are also influential over Jamie’s lives. As Jamie’s eldest brother just came out of Boys’ Home so is likely that his presence was absent together with the father for the past few years. Since he fought often with his elder brother, the emotion and behaviour that he had from the interaction with him will be anger and aggression. On the environment aspect, home is not a conducive place for Jamie. There is no peace and Jamie had to defend himself since he fought often with his elder brother. Staying at his auntie place does provide the occasional relief but he has to bear with the inconveniences of travelling and carrying his study materials from place to place. With the higher level of financial stress, Jamie maybe denied of resources such as books, computer and has a lower standard of living. Lastly, Jamie may even have to help out with household tasks or be asked to ‘take care of himself’. Therefore, Jamie’s cognitive development is affected. Hence, Jamie’s slipping results is like to be caused by his parents’ divorce. Though Jamie’s parents’ only divorced recently but the breakdown of the parental relationships happened for a couple of years so it is sufficient for the effect to come upon him. It is suggested by researchers that teenagers from divorced families have poorer academic performance (Wolchik et al., 2000). They also come with higher levels of misconduct, and less competence. (Ruschena, Prior, Sanson, & Smart, 2005). The very concern is that these effects on these children often brought into adulthood. In general, children of divorce tend to earn less income and obtain less education over the course of their lifetime (Amato & Cheadle, 2005). Erikson’s Psychosocial Theory Jamie is in stage five: identity versus role confusion. This is a stage which he constantly asks ‘who am I’. He is constantly comparing between himself, his peers, parents and others around him. At the same time, he is going through pubertal developments. According to research, conflicts intensify and reported distancing occurs, particularly between the teenager and mother. Other than that, there is also decrease of positive interactions. The reason is maybe due to hormonal changes, changes in physical appearances, roles strained in greater desire for greater autonomy or a mixture of the above factors. (Kroger, 2007) Another aspect which will build up Jamie’s identity is the social development which family plays a major role. Pubertal changes and maturation in cognition bring significant changes to the family system as whole. As mentioned, conflicts between teenager and parents increase and distancing such as increase need for privacy and lesser physical affection, but they will subside later. The conflicts will indeed increase the burden on Jamie’s mother. (Kroger, 2007) As mentioned, Jamie lacked of a father figure at home and his mother is overloaded with burdens and has insufficient capacity to parent him. It is likely he do not experience or experience little authoritative parenting. This means that Jamie missed the opportunity to be built up with greater social responsibility, self-reliance and achievement motivation at a later stage. (Kroger, 2007) Jamie in a father-absent family, he is desperately trying to maintain a masculine identification. So he will acquire a set of loosely integrated responses that appear almost to be an image of stereotyped masculine role. It is shown in research that boys in father-absent families exhibit aggressive behavior. (David Reiss, 1979) It is also shown that having older brother siblings also exhibit more aggressive behaviours since the older brother siblings can be surrogate male role model. (Paul Wohlforda, 1971) Another important group of people which helps Jamie to formulate his identity is his peers. According to Erikson, he said that peer-group affiliations are almost crucial to healthy identity development in teenagers. They allow them to explore interests and ideologies, to test their ability to form intimate peer relationships, and to give up psychological dependence on parents while retaining a sense of belonging. The security and support inherent in group membership is a comforting contrast to the adolescent's uncertain sense of self. Erikson (1968) It was also found that since peers are often deemded as sources of encouragement for antisocial behaviour (Bronfenbrenner, 1967; Huba et al., 1979; Stone et al.,1979), so Jamie being a bully and playing with a lighter maybe influenced by the group of people which he hang around with. This is of a concern as he is only in secondary one and if he continues to hang around with them, it will be more and more difficult to improve his behaviour. Violence and Aggression From the introduction, Jamie tend to be physical with his classmates and he often engage in physical fights with his brother at home and later playing with a lighter in school. These showed that Jamie is often aggressive with the people around him. In studies it was showed that during pubertal period the hormonal changes in teenagers are related some of their emotional dispositions. It was found that testosterone levels in boys are related to emotions and expression of aggression in adolescent boys. (Elizabeth J. Susman, 1987) However, this is not the sole factor for Jamie’s aggression. It has been shown that watching violent television programs and films increase both children's and adults' aggression and hostility. So playing violent computer games may have similar effects. The research on violent computer games suggests that there is, an association between playing such games and increased aggression, and this is seen from there is a preference for playing aggressive games. In addition, playing a violent game, even for short periods, has short-term transfer effects, such as increased aggression in children's free play, hostility to ambiguous questions, and aggressive thoughts. (Kaveri Subrahmanyam, 2000) Strategies to Help Jamie Firstly, I will arrange a face to face talk with Jamie’s mother. The purpose of the talk will be to not only understand better of Jamie’s mother situation but also to give some advice on how to relieve her current load so that she will be able to give more supporting and authoritative parenting to Jamie. As encouragement, support, guidance to be given to Jamie at this period will also help him to cope with the news of official severance of husband and wife ties of his parents and also the transition from primary school to secondary school. Jamie’s mother is a single parent and with the limited income, she may seek some subsidies or financial relief from the Member of Parliament (MP) or even recommendations from the Singapore Workforce Development Agency (SWDA) for higher paid jobs. With time going by, her financial burden will only increase especially when Jamie goes to a higher level of education in future. Next, Jamie’s mother can also work out some arrangement to lighten her household chores either by her sister helping her to clean once a week or even engaging the two older sons to help out. In addition, Jamie’s mother should also ensure that she herself also has emotional and social support in the situation that she is at. Though she feels that her pressing need is to provide for the family, but letting herself being drained will be costing her effective parenting over Jamie. Lastly, if Jamie’s mother has brothers or a male adult who is able to be involved in this family for a period of time, the male adult will be a role model which Jamie can look up to other than his brothers. Secondly, I will send Jamie for counselling and if possible request for a male counsellor. The purpose is not only let Jamie to be heard and letting his emotions and thoughts to be let out in the proper channel but also hoping that the counsellor in school will be able to build up a relationship with him over time since he is only in secondary one. The male counsellor can be a role model to Jamie by showing him how he resolves issues through non-aggressive behaviour. Thirdly, in order to improve on Jamie’s disruptive behaviours in class, applied behaviour analysis can be adopted to know whether Jamie’s disruptive behaviours is to getting attention from the teachers and classmates. Teachers can be affirmative when he displays a positive behaviour. In addition, form teacher can also draw up a contract with Jamie with regards to his attitude towards teachers whenever he asked a question or the late handing of homework issue. In all, form teacher should always maintain his or her communication channels with Jamie’s mother, counsellor and other teachers to do an update as and when. As in order to help Jamie, all the people whom are able to influence Jamie should be of the common level of understanding of him and interact with him in a more meaningful manner. 2206 words