Psychosocial Interview Essay

Adolescence is the transition from childhood to adulthood, which lasts from about age eleven until nineteen or twenty. During adolescence, changes occur within the physical, cognitive, psychosocial and social areas. I interviewed my two roommates on if they considered their adolescence “normal”. My first roommate, Dale, stated that through adolescence her physical and cognitive maturity was considered normal. However, her psychological, and social areas of development differ from the norm due to a move brought on by an internal family problem. First we will discuss her physical growth. According to Papalia, the average age of menarche for girls falls in-between ages 10 and 16½ (2015). She fit the norm for commencing menstruation at age 13, which was nearly right in middle of that age spectrum. In regards to appearance, she began growing more hair by the time she was 11 which is in direct relationship to levels of androgen increasing in the stage of adrenarche. Following this stage is gonadarche, another step in which her breast and genital tissue started to grow also at age 11. Both of these processes follow the norm when compared to the rest
Prior to her move, she was a very shy and introverted person. Once she moved, her group of friends was taken away from her. Through this transition, she learned the best way to get people to like her was to be friendly, smile, laugh, and be genuine. She quickly became a people pleaser, but she would never extend past my boundary of being good. By this I mean she never smoked, cursed, drank, or lied because she felt she still had to be the good child in the family. Dale could be considered a social butterfly, and she had many differing groups of friends. I would say that this situation was abnormal for most adolescents. She found she has friends that she was definitely closer to, but she didn’t just have one stable friend