Child development II, Personal Reflection Assignment Description
BOOK TO UTILIZE is THE DEVELOPING PERSON THROUGH the LIFESPAN
BERGER ELEVENTH EDITION
Students will focus on the course materials and how the information from the course is related to their own lives. Reflections, for our purposes, are designed to answer three general questions. 1). What happened? 2). What did/do I think/feel about what happened? 3). How does it relate to the concepts from the text? These reflections will be guided reflections, focused on a specific topic related to the course material, as follows:
Emerging AdulthoodIntimacy vs. Isolation
This reflection requires that you explore your experience with intimacy or isolation during your emerging adulthood years. You will need to discuss two non-romantic and non-sexual relationships. Describe the relationships and explain how intimacy was demonstrated. If you experienced isolation in relationships, you will describe and discuss that instead. Note that as you are giving examples of “intimacy” (or “isolation”) in the relationships you’ve chosen, you must include and discuss a majority (more than half) of the qualities listed for either status.
Intimacy: the desire and ability to fuse one’s identity with another and engage in “the mutuality of mature devotion”, the ability to “love”.
Concrete affiliations
Ethical strength
Sacrifice/Compromise
Vulnerability
Self-understanding
Self-expansion
Mutual caregiving
Secrets shared/kept
Forgiveness
Empathy
Isolation: the fear of remaining separate and unrecognized, the retreat into promiscuity or “exclusivity”
Self-protection
Self-absorption
Avoidance/ambiguity about lifestyles, values, relationships
Jealousy
Loneliness
Dishonesty
Inability to compromise, compete, or cooperate
When you write, remember that you cannot be in both “intimacy” and “isolation”. You can move from one to the other over the course of time, but you cannot be in both. Choosing to separate yourself from an individual that was once a friend is NOT an example of “isolation”. When you isolate, you demonstrate several of the characteristics listed above in all your relationships. Please keep these distinctions in mind when you write.
