Emotional Development Dominick Platt Emotional Development What I

Emotional Development Dominick Platt

Emotional Development (What I Know) Emotional development is key to how people interact with the world around them. It’s key to forming human relationships, which is an important part to any story. For the sake of this Power. Point I’m going to focus on the emotional development of adolescents, as this is where autonomy is created from the parents. The progression from dependent to independent is a key part of both normal life and the hero’s journey.

Emotional Development (What I Know) “Just as infants must have a secure base if they are to explore, adolescents seem to need the security, as well as the encouragement to explore, provided by supportive parents to become independent and autonomous individuals” (Sigelman and Rider 469). The progression to an autonomous being is essential to growing up, to changing. This is seen in the hero’s journey when they must leave the safety of their mentor and venter out on their own. Change is both an essential and inevitable part of the human experience, and it’s something writers have been crafting stories around since the dawn of humanity.

Emotional Development (How it Relates) In a study done with a high school theater program surveying the emotional development of the actors, it found: “the youth reported learning… was functional knowledge about the unfolding of emotional sequences. This included knowledge of how personality, stress, physical states (etc. )… in turn influenced thought processes, motivations, and group social dynamics” (Larson and Brown 1094). This study illustrates the amount of emotional knowledge adolescents must learn about themselves and others in order to develop healthy human relationships. The ability to create and maintain relationships is key to any character and their story. Almost every story ever written is about the relationship between two people.

Emotional Development (How it Relates) Emotional development and Identity go hand-in-hand with how a person sees themselves and the world. “Which crowd or crowds an adolescent belongs to has important implications for their social identity and self-esteem; it is easier for them to feel good about themselves if they’re ‘popular’ or a ‘jock’ than if they’re a ‘dweeb, ’ a ‘druggie’, or a social isolate…” (Sigelman and Rider 470). While social isolates could make for some interesting characters to write about, the lack of association with ones peers can lead to resentment and dehumanization of those around them. We all feel like outcasts from time to time, but what’s really compelling is maintaining the importance of human relationships.

Emotional Development (How I will Use it in the Future) How one creates and maintains human relationships, and the feelings the one has in them, is an essential tool to creating compelling characters. I’ll be using the knowledge I gained from this class to strengthen the depth of my characters. A character is not created in a vacuum, they have a biography that goes back to the time they were born, and a good writer makes sure that timeline makes sense according to their behaviors at the time of the story.

Sources Study: Larson, R. , & Brown, J. (2007). Emotional Development in Adolescence: What Can Be Learned from a High School Theater Program? Child Development, 78(4), 1083 -1099. Retrieved from http: //www. jstor. org/stable/4620691 Sigelman, C. , & Rider, E. (2015). Life-span human development (Eighth edition. ed. ). Stamford, CT: Cengage Learning.