Essay Instructions: For your Unit 9 Assignment, you will write a paper that helps you review the cognitive, social, and emotional developmental theories studied in this course. You will create a profile of a hypothetical client using one or two of the provided scenarios. The purpose of this paper is to challenge you to use your formal writing/thinking skills to evaluate your chosen scenario using the developmental theories you have studied. Your paper should be between 6 and 8 pages long (for the body) with a title page and a reference page (an additional two pages). Successful papers are written using proper English conventions, are in APA format, and include synthesis of theory and information from the scenarios.
Suggested paper structure:
Title page (first page)
Body of paper (6-8 pages, double-spaced)
Reference page (last page)
Select either scenario 1 or 2 for your paper and then write your essay to respond to the questions found below the scenario. Assume that you work for a child and family services agency in the family intervention division. Your job is to help families whose children are in state care to rejoin their parents in their home.
Scenario 1: James (23-year-old father of two children)
James comes to your office as part of his plan for family reintegration. A year ago, his two children ages 2 and 8 were taken from his home because he and the children?s mother were abusive to each other and to the children. Both he and the mother of the children have completed mandatory domestic violence counseling and parenting classes. He should be ready to have his children return home; however, you still have some concerns based on James? past.
As a child, he was left with an aunt as an infant because his mother was incarcerated. He was the youngest of seven children in the home and was raised by the older children and various strangers who lived with them during his toddler years. He did not attend preschool until he was five years old and was already six years old when he entered kindergarten.
Family services visited his aunt?s house often while he was in elementary school because of reports of drug activity (his aunt and her friends used cocaine and marijuana) and abuse. James was often beaten by his aunt?s boyfriends for misbehaving. He did not trust adults and began to act out in middle school. He got into trouble in many of his classes as an early adolescent. He told his teachers that he was too stupid to be in school and was waiting till he turned 16 so he could drop out and get a job. His grades were too low for him to participate in sports, though he was one of the best athletes in his class.
During his adolescent years, James skipped school a lot until he turned 16 and dropped out. He joined a gang and earned money robbing stores and selling drugs. By the time he was 17, he had fathered a child and, by 19, four children with two different women. He was arrested for armed robbery by age 20 and was in prison for two years. When released at age 22, the mother of his two youngest children asked him to live with them to help pay the bills. James was hired to work at the local grocery store and has done well in the last year and a half, receiving a promotion to Assistant Manager of the meat department. He has just finished probation for the robbery and is attending GED classes at night. However, as a young adult, he still suffers from deep anger issues that relate to his childhood and that continue to affect his actions as an adult.
Scenario 2: Anna and Jojo
Anna is a 19-year-old mother of a 2-year-old toddler (Jojo) and both are clients of yours. Jojo was taken from her mother 3 months ago because of neglect, though this client?s problems are different from any of the others whom you have worked with before. Child and family services became involved with Anna and Jojo because of a report made by Jojo?s Head Start teacher that Anna was not feeding Jojo appropriately. In fact, the investigators discovered that Anna thought Jojo was too fat and only fed her water and bananas to help her lose weight. She apparently fed Jojo like this for three weeks before the teacher noticed a change in Jojo during school time. When the teacher noticed that Jojo was rapidly losing weight, she contacted Anna, who told the teacher to mind her own business. Because Jojo continued to lose weight and was hardly able to move during class time, the teacher filed an abuse report for neglect. Jojo was removed from Anna?s care and placed in a foster home.
Jojo gained weight and began to thrive in foster care. Whenever she visited with her mother, she cried and ran away from her. There was no evidence of abuse when Jojo was examined by the doctor, but still, it was clear that Anna had some parenting issues. Anna was referred to a psychiatrist for further assessment. It was discovered that she suffered from depression and suicidal ideations as well as an eating disorder.
In your work with Anna, you discover that her earliest memories of her mother are of her telling her that she was fat and lazy. Anna remembers checking her image in the mirror every day and wishing that she was skinny like her mother. During Anna?s elementary school years, her mother only fed her yogurt and diet food and encouraged her to exercise many times during the day. Anna became fanatical about what she ate and began to take diet pills while in middle school. She threw herself into school activities, trying to be the president of every club and the top student in all of her classes.
However, during this time, she started dating a football player who convinced her that she was too ugly for him to date. He encouraged her to become sexually active to keep him interested in the relationship and told her that no one else would ever want her. She believed him and soon became pregnant during her junior year of high school. Because of her poor nutrition, her doctor had her hospitalized during the last trimester of pregnancy to ensure the health of the baby.
Once Jojo was born, Anna tried to lose weight quickly (though she had very little to lose) and became thinner than ever before. Her eating disorder has gotten progressively worse and she has only just started working with a doctor and a psychiatrist as a part of her agreement to reunify with her daughter.
Questions for paper (use either scenario as a guide for your responses):
Using either scenario 1 or 2, explain how James or Anna?s current adult problems are a result of cognitive problems developed during at least one specific time in their lives (e.g., infancy, early childhood, middle childhood, and/or adolescence). Explain this using information from either Piaget?s cognitive development theory or information processing theory.
How was your hypothetical client affected by social pressures from parents and peers during their early childhood through their adolescent years? How did your client?s response to that social pressure create their current problems?
Using information from our readings and Discussions, explain how your hypothetical client mishandles his or her emotions. What problems is the client experiencing in his or her life now because of lack of emotional regulation?
Provide some suggestions for appropriate interventions that can be used to help your client to be a responsible adult and parent.
Please follow instruction as I cannot afford to have a bad paper.
Thank you guys so much.
