over-identification

Life Stages: Adolescence

In the Early Childhood Stage, we looked at some of the challenges the only child may face when moving into the world of school. We saw these difficulties were by no means inevitable but were common for those only children who had not experienced much peer interaction in their early life, or had parents who found it difficult to separate from their own emotional needs to fulfil the emotional needs of their child. Adolescence is the time when ‘ego identity’ needs to be achieved: this means knowing who you are and how you fit into the rest of society. Peer groups are particularly significant at this stage as they allow for peer identity to emerge through interaction with others and provide the support for the move from childhood to adulthood by separating emotionally from parents. This is why being able to have other children to interact with at an early [...]

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