Child Interview

2096 Words5 Pages

The interview I conducted took place in the courtyard of my complex in Smallville, with the interviewee and myself. For the purpose of his paper and to protect the adolescent privacy lets call her Regina. Regina is a fourteen-year-old adolescent female of Africa American descent. She is above average in height and carries a very shy and nonchalance deposition. She is a very attractive young lady and does above average work in her school setting. She appears to be a normal every day child with a lifetime of experiences awaiting her. Regina was the daughter of my life long best friend and he approved of the interview, however he was not present during the interview. The Interview took place on February 10 at about 5:00 pm it lasted approximately two hour with small breaks in between. The weather was cool and the sun had started to set as we started. I sat with Regina and asked her several questions that I thought were significant in the process of this interview assignment. Regina demeanor was that of a juvenile delinquent being question about a crime. I new this was not a way to get close to her nor establish a bond of trust that would be necessary for her to open up to me. So I decided to play a game that required her trust, this proved to be a icebreaker as she started to open up slowly as I started the questions. The following questions are the questions that I presented to her: 1. What makes you, you? 2. Do you enjoy school 3. How do you select your friends? 4. What makes children Popular at school? 5. Is there violence at your school? 6. Do you feel safe at school? 7. How is your self-esteem? 8. Would you consider yourself happy and joyful or depressed and down? 9. Have you ever or thought about using drugs or alcohol? I started the interview off by asking a very arcane and confusing question to Regina; what makes you, you? She was flabbergasted and didn’t know how to respond. She stumbled and stuttered to say almost nothing for about three minutes. Then she started to talk and talk she did. She summarized her comments with “People grow up all coming from all different kinds of places, backgrounds and families. They will all have different identities. Gender affects the decisions made by people. Their identity and the nature of the person make them act the way they do. Nobody is the same and ... ... middle of paper ... ...ers to what she believed were problems. She was very mature for a 14-year-old child. After we talked she simply went inside the house and returned to the normalcy of a school age child. Bibliography Cepulkauskaite, Ieva. Drug Addiction of Teenagers: Myth or Reality? 1998. March 23, 2003. Clarizio, H.F., & Payette, K. (1990). A survey of school psychologists' perspectives and practices with childhood depression. Psychology in the Schools, 27. 57-63. Dubuque, S.E. (1998). Fighting childhood depression. Education Digest, 63, 64-69. Fuller, T. (1992). Masked depression in maladaptive black adolescents. School Counselor, 20, 24-32. Huesmann, L.R. 1986. Psychological process promoting the relation between exposure to medial violence and aggressive behavior by the viewer. Journal of social issues 42, 125-139. Janzen, H.L., & Saklofske, D.H. (1991). Children and depression. School Psychology Review, 20, 139-142. National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Prevention. School Health Policies and Programs Study. September 30, 2002. April 6, 2003. Yarnell, T. D., (1999, August 15). Build your Child’s Self-Esteem. Psychology and You [Online].

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