Essay on Adolescent Cognitive and Emotional Development: A Playful Approach

In most of the cases, words are not enough to prove the adolescent cognitive abilities, emotional, social and development aspects. The best way to know all that is by conducting a play, art, or any other expressive approach session with the adolescent or the child. In doing so, you can observe what the child or teen is doing and then you can notice what they like, what they struggle while doing, and what they don't like. As a student, I was given the task to find a child whom I shall administer with a play or art to do observe how she will do it and her reaction toward it. I was able to find I neighbour girl child who was at grade six and their parents allowed me to conduct the all process with her. The paper will, therefore, explore what I administer to the child and what I learned about the social and emotional development of the child.

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Since the child was a teenager, I asked her to play activities of mask making and art of bag self-portraits. In the mask making, I recommend the child to create two masks. One mask denoted the self she shows to the society, and another one denotes her inner self. The materials that were necessary for the mask masking includes things like paper Mache, feathers, glitter, sequins, paints, scissors, and glue. I required the child after finishing to explain how she acts on certain ways for her to fit in and how acting on that ways is different inside. She will also show if by doing so, she is becoming true to herself or not. The session of mask making was very good because the child was very cooperative and enjoyed the task. The child had cognitive abilities to perform the play and was as well social to me. This shows that the child had developed physically and mentally, and her brain was mature enough capable of thinking and doing things.

When I asked the child to explain how she does to fit the society and how in inside its different inside based on mask making, the child shows a lot of struggle while answering the question because is abilities could not think up to the extent because she is not an adult enough based on my observation. I used a different example to explain to the child how she can handle the task. Although the child did not like it so much, she said that the way she does to fit in the society is by obeying her parents and other people surrounding her. The child as well explained to me that deep inside sometimes it hurts to do certain responsibilities, but they do it for the sake of pleasing the parents. Through my observation, I noticed that the child was able to control her emotion by regulation. I notice that despite the child finding out that the question I asked was boring, she struggles to answer.

Another art was bag self-portrait whereby the child was to make a self-portrait on the place of a brown paper bag. The child created it with the use of crayons, markers, and coloured pencils (Becerra, 2017). The child then went ahead to glue on fabric, hair for the outfit. The child placed the picture of her family inside the bag. On one side of the bag, the child listed her fears, and on the other side, her hopes in life. The child then created a tombstone with a eulogy on the back of the bag and what she wants to be remembered for.

Based on my observation, child linguistic was well developed because she could write what she requires in the bag. The child as well had developed socially, emotionally and physically because she was able to identify important people in her life and as well what she needs in life. The child ability to do so, show exactly that the brain is at least mature in that it can identify what is good or bad. Also, based on my observation, the child seems to enjoy doing bag self-portraits because she was doing with a lot of passion. The child was enjoying maybe because it was not so complicated and it was up to is abilities. The first was quite complicated, and that was the reason the child seems to struggle so much (Roberts & Kaiser 2014)

The interaction I had with the child was very good because she didn't see me as a stranger. As well the child was grown up, and her brain was mature enough and therefore had social competency to get along with me. What also make good interaction was the ability of the child to control her emotion despite the difficult question she encountered from me. This shows that as the child grows her brain mature, and she became social to the people by embracing interaction. As well the child grows physically and mentally, and as a result of that, the child can be able to distinguish what's good and bad.

Conclusion

In conclusion, I can say that as children grow, they became clever because they mature mentally. They can then start to act and do just like the adult people. As well I come to understand that the whole domain of development of the child that is emotional, cognitive, physical and social development are interconnected and influence one another. Also, as the children grow, they have the temperament, attachment, social competence, and emotion regulation towards their caregivers because they are the one that they communicate within many situations.

References

Roberts, M. Y., Kaiser, A. P., Wolfe, C. E., Bryant, J. D., & Spidalieri, A. M. (2014). Effects of the teach-model-coach-review instructional approach on caregiver use of language support strategies and children's expressive language skills. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 57(5), 1851-1869.

Becerra, L. A., (2017). The power of art: The emotional and physiological impact of creating self-portraits using mandalas and human figure drawings.