Another Honor\'s Program paper i wrote as a freshman to categorize my development as a child as it related to fellow thinkers of our time.

1. Colin Henning
HDFS 195 Fall 2008
Me, Myself, and well…Me!
By Colin J. Henning
Keith and Deborah Henning were a happily married farm couple of three years
when it happened. On September 22, 1988 I, Colin J. Henning was brought into this
world by my mother. I weighed 6 pounds and 11 oz’s. My mother, Debbie jokes that
ever since that day she has never had a quiet, or dull moment. Little did she and my
father know but on that day they embarked on the long journey of parenthood.
Ever since I was young they have observed the growth and development I have
encountered, but little did they know that their interactions with me would soon become
one of the greatest influences of who I would soon become.
As I mentioned earlier, my parents were happily married for nearly three years
before I was born. What changed once I came into this world? Well my parents had to
adapt and change to their new lifestyle as parents, just as I had to change and develop
throughout my years of childhood. My growth was affected by the biology of my two
parents, and our lifestyle. It is the classic nature vs. nurture debate and which has the
greater affect on growth. I will not be declaring a winner of that debate today, just
exploring how both aspects has affected my life developments thus far.
Through some of the readings in class, I have learned about the developments
human beings go through in each stage of life.
When I was born additional relationship channels entered the Henning Family
Tree:
Keith----Deb
Colin----Keith
Colin----Deb
And, KeithColinDeb
This simple chart shows the idea of how each individual has a influence, positive
or negative, on each and every other individual in a traditional family setting. Even more
channels arrived when my younger brother Shawn was born. And Ever since then, our
family has been complete; Father, Mother, and two young boys almost exactly two years
apart.
One of the first theorists I looked at to conjure up this paper was Urie
Bronfenbrenner. I chose to write about him first because for the past few years now I
have come to believe that our Perspective is everything. From where we were born, to
what we did for our 13th Birthday, it all matters and accumulates into being who we are.
Urie believed that the environment that kids grow up in is inter-related to their growth
and development. His idea rotated around the belief of Self and how we as humans are
social beings by nature. There were four stages outside of the Self, which is of course
different for each and every person. It includes your feelings, hopes, dreams, and inner-
most qualities. The stages are Micro, Meso, Exo, and Macro. The system revolves
around in a circle, and each stage includes the stage before it. In the Micro System Stage,
direct family and self is included. This is how I related to my parents and brother while
growing up and living with them. The next stage is Meso, which includes social groups
like school, church, and for me the Boy Scouts. After that comes the Exo Stage, which

2. Colin Henning
HDFS 195 Fall 2008
relates to the self, but in an indirect way. It includes outside events and people like my
friends from youth group, and how we interact together. The last and final stage, which
is furthest from the Self includes laws and the media. How I am affected by the media
and economics just like how living my life while abiding laws has shaped my life.
Recently, the falling economy has taken affect to my Macro System and has changed the
way I look at spending money that I could be saving away to pay for college or afford my
own home one day.
To continue along the lines of Perspective I am now going to talk about one of my
favorite theorists thus far; and that is the great Jean Piaget. He created the four stages of
Cognitive Development and mental processes such as perceiving, reasoning,
remembering, and believing. Piaget assumes that as children we learn by doing, and that
the new interaction we encounter becomes part of our Schema. The idea of the Schema
is what interested me the most about Piaget, because it is known to organize our
perceptions, thoughts, and behaviors like how a desk organizer files office supplies. It as
if that desk organizer continue to grow with you because according to Piaget the schema
is an adapting process because you are always growing and learning new things, which
can be perceived (and filed away) as different items. As a child sees a new object, they
perceive it the way they already view things. For example, my mother tells me that when
I was little the first restaurant I ever went to was McDonalds. Yes I loved the Chicken
Nuggets, even though back then they weren’t made with all %100 white meat. In the
months following my first trips to McDonalds, whenever we would eat out I thought we
were at McDonalds. When someone tried to tell me different I threw a fit. I truly
believed that if you ate out, the only restaurant was McDonalds. That is the way I
perceived this until I finally learned better, but in my experience at that point in my life,
all my Schema knew about restaurants was McDonalds and those delicious nuggets.
According to Piaget, the intellectual capabilities that a child obtains at a certain
age correlates with certain emotional behaviors. The first stage of intellectual behaviors
is called the Sensory Motor Stage. When an infant is between the ages of zero and two
years they react to the world through reflexive behaviors like sucking, grabbing, and
pulling at your sleeves. When a baby wants something what do they do, they cry.
Whether they need a diaper change or are hunger they cry. There is no consideration of
waking up the parents or how loud they are being, the baby knows it wants/needs
something and crying is the way to get mommy’s attention. I imply that the baby knows
who’s attention they mean to grab hold of because in this stage object association is also
established. If we were looking at this in another perspective, say through the eyes of
Sigmund Freud, he would say that the baby is behaving with a dominant “Id,” but we will
get to that and other great ideas from Freud next.
Piaget’s second stage is the Preoperational Stage, which is usually between the
ages of two to seven. At this stage the child is unable to think logically, but can use their
own perceptions/Schema to make sense of their world. The child still views the world as
if it revolves around them, because this is all they know. They also are very curious in
this stage of life and often ask the repeated, “Why?” question. We have all seen it on
T.V. where the little girl is talking to a parental figure and she keeps answering their
answers with another “Why?” question. This happens because the child’s schema
organizes new information and ideas which is known as assimilation (taking new
information and fitting it into a preconceived notion). This can be seen in the story I told

3. Colin Henning
HDFS 195 Fall 2008
earlier about my trips to the local restaurants and how I had to adjust to new experiences
by changing or revising my prior idea about them, this is called accommodation.
I will be combining the third and fourth stage in Piaget’s process of Cognitive
Development as Concrete and Formal Operations. The ages for the Concrete stage is
usually seven through eleven. Children are now able to have complex thoughts and
perform common mental operations like math. An experiment Piaget performed involved
children in both the Preoperational Stage and Concrete Operations Stage. He filled two
glasses with the same amount of water, one was thinner but taller than the other.
Children in the Preoperational Stage said that the taller glass had more water in it, even
after showing the water in two cups of the same size and then pouring the water from one
of the cups into the taller glass. Those children had not yet reached the Concrete
Operations Stage and could not comprehend that no water was added or subtracted to the
experiment. The other group of children did understand that both cups contained the
same amount of water and that is because at this Stage a child can think backwards, or
mentally reverse the situation. The fourth stage is Formal Operations where kids enter
adolescence between eleven and sixteen and think more systematically. I do not agree
with this stage because I feel the developmental process continues much longer than to
the ages of mid-adolescence.
Along comes Sigmund Freud, the next in our lineup of discussion. As mentioned
earlier, newborn babies are typically considered to be Id driven. The three types of
behavioral components are the Id, ego, and Superego. The Id is life’s urges and desires,
like the baby crying for its parent or me wanting to go out on Thursday instead of
studying for an exam. For many people this includes the impulse to shop, and our sexual
interaction is located within our Id. Often times the spontaneity of the Id leads to negative
consequences, but not always. The Ego is the balancer, or judge between the Id and
Superego. It is the part of your behavior that makes you want to fit within local social
norms and help others, like volunteering. Lastly, the Superego is your conscience. It is
an inner institution of maturity. I like to compare it to an overbearing mother that always
knows what’s best for her kids. In many cases the Superego drives people to strive for
perfection, and when perfection is not established, shame and even self-mutilation can
occur. Many other problems like Alcoholism can arise if people are totally Superego
driven. I like to see myself as Ego driven. It was hard to define on paper but I see it
more in my life. I like to have fun and goof around, but work usually comes first. I
strive to do well; not perfect and I think that is the key. I always try to accomplish tasks
quickly so I can have the occasional day to slug off. These traits I received from my
family because my mom knows when to work and when to play. On the other hand, my
father has had one solitary day off in a few years. My father is much more Superego
driven, but I believe that comes with the job description. That is another reason I am Ego
oriented because growing up on a farm I have had responsibilities since a small child and
that has helped me to become goal oriented with a great work ethic. If I do not let my Id
show through I may become stressed or too tensed up. I see my father some days and
you can just see the stress get to him. So I like to live in the moment and be more
spontaneous and maybe shift over slightly to the Id side of the spectrum as I continue to
mature.
While I like to think that I have my life under wraps, Freud goes on to tell us that
we are not always in control of our lives. Plans change and accidents happen. He did his

4. Colin Henning
HDFS 195 Fall 2008
research by observing and studying people. He was not well-liked because his beliefs
make us all sinners by nature. I do detect a bit of Christian religion in his works because
it does coincide with the story of Adam and Eve how we are sinners before we are even
born. Young children touching their genitals is brought up as an example, which many
find disturbing. It is in fact normal for children to explore their entire body without
knowing it is socially deviant to do so. Let us look at it this way; almost everyone has
embarrassing photos of them while they were younger sharing a bath with their siblings
or parent. Being naked is a natural thing and while in the early developmental stages
children are going to explore and be comfortable with being naked. My neighbors child
takes off his diaper everyone summer and runs around the yard screaming until he jumps
into the pool where he come up soaking wet (and still naked) with the biggest smile of
satisfaction on his face. This is just another of Freud’s idea of Id at work in its finest
form. The child’s impulse was to run naked and free throughout the yard, so that is what
he continues to do.
Even though many of our texts were written by women, or about women’s
developmental habits (I only call them habits because they are not certainties, or do not
always occur), I found that I became much more open-minded to them over the semester,
and even learned a few things about myself. For example, Nancy Chodorow and her
thoughts on family structure and femininity really reminded me of our family. Mothers
pass on many of their characteristics to their sons/daughters and teach them how to take
care, and nurture of others. My mom is the own who taught me how to hold and play
with my baby cousins whenever the family would get together, and taking care of
children like that is naturally a feminine quality; which Nancy pointed out in her book,
“Family Structure and Feminine Personality.” Although my mom never had a daughter,
she does at times live vicariously through my brother and I. She never had the
opportunities as a child that we have today, and she often reminds us of that by offering
us her advice over our own, and that what she says is best.
The real basic sex differences are due to different environments growing up. As
soon as children are born it is a known fact that boys are picked up less often when crying
than girls are. Chodorow again points out that in general females are nurtured more at a
young age, while boys are respected more. On top of that, while the child ages mothers
are more likely to identify with the daughter because they played house or helped their
mother with the dishes when younger too. It often brings memories to those mothers
with daughters. I have experience with this, but with my father. I had a cousin that lived
nearby who was born about the same time as me and while we were growing up she was
constantly around. Before long she was “mommy’s little girl,” and I was “daddy’s little
farmboy.” I never realized the difference in titles of helping my parents but I was
received higher by the neighbors and friends because I was outside with my father, while
my cousin stayed inside with mother. We were both great helpers, and I know my mom
loved to have our cousin around because she never had that daughter of her own, yet
when she helped it never seemed to matter as much to my grandparents or the neighbors.
Growing up in rural Wisconsin outside labor was seen as more respectable to people in
our area than housework.

5. Colin Henning
HDFS 195 Fall 2008
The majority of our reading that was taken from a book by a woman author was
Joan Borysenko and her novel, “A Woman’s Book of Life.” In our readings we have
covered the development of women from birth to ages sixty-five thus far. Even though
we have not yet completed the book we are well past the age group that has affected me
this far. Early on in her book Joan talks about how men and women are biologically
different, and how that influences our gender differences in other ways. Women
traditionally multi-task and have laundry going, are preparing dinner, and working on
their evening class at the local college all at once. It is amazing how my mother does it.
I fit into the gender characteristic of men that is completely the opposite. Men like to do
one thing at a time and finish them thoroughly. That is where I come in. I never noticed
it much until college but I cannot stand having things uncompleted. This past year has
been terrible for me and my stress level because I am becoming more integrated into my
major and have multiple projects to work on for each class. When things overlap and
don’t fall in order I become frustrated and cannot do anything well. I like to have
everything laid out neatly and follow a plan in order to complete my tasks. This could
partially be because my father is like this as well and I could have gotten this trait from
him, but some days it drives me crazy with all the little things I have to keep in
straightened order.
Joan writes about her hypothetical friend Julia throughout the book at the different
stages of her life. I became intrigued at the section of adolescence where Julia becomes
disgusted with her body image and tries to change. This was during high school and we
all know that kids can be cruel, but it is not just school, the media and advertisements
constantly bombard both men and women t look, act, even dress a certain way.
I will be the first to admit that I have been teased and ridiculed before both in
school and since about something I either wore or did. As a male I have it a little easier
than women do, however there is much pressure on me to conform to the dominant male
persona. I am supposed to be tough, rugged, love football, and do whatever it takes to
show everyone that I am a man. Needless to say that is not my number one priority each
day. There are gender roles that we are guided into by parents and society from birth but
I believe we ultimately have our own choice of how “macho” we tend to be. One of my
favorite television shows to watch is Home Improvement. I enjoy it because Tim Allen is
the funny, family man that is all about his tools and working with cars. He is the essence
of a man. He is seldom wearing anything without a Detroit Lions Football logo on it, and
he often times chooses to spend time at a hockey game or in the garage rather than with
his wife and kids. Tim Allen is over-personified on that television show as the typical
male stereotype.
Getting back to Joan Borysenko, she brings up many events in a woman’s life that
affect men just as much. The age thirty transition is a great example of that. The age
thirty transition is when men and women both feel the anxiety of getting older and doors
closing behind them. I have not encountered that yet; however, I have felt similar when I
turned nineteen and came off to college. I felt more grown-up and that I lost
opportunities to ever be a kid again and do youthful, sometimes childish things. Another
thing I found helpful in her work was that when sometimes when your stressed out you
need to simplify things. Many things in life are supposed to aid us in our day-to-day

6. Colin Henning
HDFS 195 Fall 2008
activities and enrich our lives. Unfortunately, sometimes those small things can get in the
way and add more stress into your life. Our home computer was purchased a few years
ago to make homework easier for my brother and I. We also used the internet to connect
with friends and family and share photos. Since last summer we have had nothing but
headaches and bills with that thing and many times when it breaks one of us has to go out
of the way to try to take it somewhere to get fixed. It is becoming more of a hassle than a
help, and maybe that computer is something our busy family doesn’t need.
From my understanding of ……