Saturday, November 17, 2012

Encouraging Independence


I am going to write about the 4th stage of Family development, which is encouraging independence.  I like his topic because all of us go through the adolescence phase where we start feeling detached from our family and feel more connected to the outside world. As children enter adolescence, they tend to seek greater autonomy.  This is a natural part of their effort to establish identities distinct from those of their parents.  Most adolescents don’t want to develop interests independent of their families and want to pursue them with peers. Often this stage involves some tension between parents and children.  This is an important phase in personal development of the children because they are learning to be less dependent on their families, which is essential to becoming a healthy adult.  Also parents realize that their children need to try their wings and they need to encourage age progressive independence while keeping a watchful eye.

1 comment:

  1. I enjoyed your insight on the fourth stage of family development. Encouraged independence means that we grow up and start to go off on our own. I hit this stage when I went off to college and lived on my own for the first time. I think this is a stage that almost everyone goes through, as our parents do not want us to live with them forever. Society and our families tell us that we should go off and start a family of our own, so we can do the same for our families. It is all part of family development.

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