1.08 Parenting Skills

1.If you have (or have had) grandparents, or older adults in your life who fulfilled the role of grandparent, identify the various roles that these individuals have played or are currently playing in your life.

My grandparents have tremendously impacted my life with constant warmth, love, affection, and motivation. They have served as caregivers when my parents were at work, so I began to build some sort of attachment toward my grandparents. When I was younger, for example, I would ride the school bus to my grandparents’ house after my classes while my parents were at work. My parents worked until 12am, so I would basically only see them when it time to drop me off at school that morning and on the weekends. In the meantime, my grandparents

They also served as caregivers, but not to the certain extent as my grandparents. In my opinion, the more uncles and aunts that are involved in the child’s life, the more influence they will have on that child. Also, it helps boost self-esteem. In other words, constant encouragement and motivation from various sources more than likely will boost self-esteem because a child will have so much influence on his or her life that pessimistic comments will not cause the child to become socially isolated from those around him or her. This very concept applies to my life. I have over 18 aunts and uncles who provide constant encouragement every time we converse. Their motivation constantly changes as I progress to a more mature adult. Today, I am receiving constant encouragement and motivation because I will be graduating college soon. As a first generation college student, this motivates to become look beyond the horizon to seek new opportunities to make them proud. Although aunts and uncles’ involvement does not equal the involvement of a grandparent per se, their loving attitudes coincides to help me better myself and this mindset all started with the initial involvement they had in my life as a child.

2. In your experience or awareness of the death of an older person (such as a grandparent), what have you observed regarding the effect of that family member’s death on the relationships of his or her adult children? Is it similar

There is, however, an emotional attachment that is broken and this can cause mild depression as well as anti social tendencies, but not as much as it would affect a child. Children depend on their parents for basic needs and after a death of a love one, their whole lives become shattered and they may feel that their world has ended. This sort of tragedy tends to cause a major depression stage as well as the ability to readily engage in anti-social behavior to cope with the emptiness the child feels. Through observation, I have learned that children who have experienced the death of an older person who was close to them tend to become delinquent and become more engaged in criminal activity. After speaking with a friend who mother had passed, his exact words to explain his behavior were, “My momma is gone. I have nothing else to live for.” It can be inferred that the death of an older person is substantially different that the death of a parent because that emotional attachment to the parent has much more meaning than experiencing the death of an older person. Most people may be able to cope within a few months and continue their lives after the death of an older person, but the same may not be true for parental