factors contributing to the young man’s situation in the street

factors contributing to the young man’s situation in the street

Question 1

Several factors contribute to the young man’s situation in the street. One concept that explains the young man’s situation is the invincibility fable whereby an individual develops egocentric thoughts. The young man might sit on the streets, believing that his experience is unique and that no one could understand what he is going through. Being a digital native, the man sees everything from a technology perspective, including humans. The fact that only man bothers to give him some change may make him believe that human beings are insensitive to his situation and compare them to robots who act like humans but lack emotions.

The young man’s situation may change depending on whether he is an adolescent limited offender or a life-course-persistent offender. If the individual is an adolescent-limited offender, there is hope that his antisocial behavior may cease in the future. Conversely, it may take a while and more effort to change his antisocial behavior if he is a life-course-persistent offender. One major factor that could have preceded the young man’s situation is the lack of helicopter parents who are always over-concerned to ensure that their children excel in life.

Questions 2

One of the concepts that could be used to explain what the young man is experiencing now is familism. The term refers to a social structure that prioritizes family and family member’s needs. The young man could have come from a family that had little ties and which led to led to his isolation. Besides, the issue of parental monitoring goes hand in hand with the familism since only parents who uphold familism engage in parental monitoring. A parent would be more concerned with their children are doing and thus monitor every step of the child’s childhood and growth. Besides growing in a family that did not have close relations with each other, the young man might have parents who have failed in parental monitoring.

The young man’s situation portrays today’s social context of the community. People have become selfish and only concerned with their lives. In the historical context, a child was communally owned, and therefore, any adult member of the society would intervene whenever they realized a child who was going astray. The issue of fictive kinship was common and gave individuals an alternative person who they could turn to for support whenever they felt family members could not solve their problems. Under other circumstances, the young man could have turned to fictive kin for assistance, or fictive kin could have rescued the young man before ending up in the street.

The concept of consequential strangers also arises in the boy’s situation since good relations with people may bring you either fictive kins or atleast consequential strangers who may prove useful in some difficult situations. For example, if the young man could have established some bond with a local shop keeper or a passerby, he may be lucky to get some help from the person even though they barely knew each other.

Question 3

To improve the young man’s situation, my first advice would be to challenge him to take a high stakes test of his own life. The test would entail asking whether he wanted to change his life and if he was ready to leave the streets willingly. The test would initiate an identity moratorium, which would help him identify who he was, and his abilities that he was not utilizing by begging on the streets. I would assist him in preparing his vocational identity to help determine his life values, youthful goals, and his role in achieving the goals. Vocational identity may as well trigger career identity, which would offer more direction in the young man’s life.

I would also advise him about his peers and the kind of friends he keeps to avoid deviancy training. The training refers to a process in which peers share antisocial ideas more frequently to the extent of making them sound normal among them. Allowing the young man to engage with friends who promote antisocial behaviors may cause him to relapse and maybe go back to the streets again. I would also advise the young man to avoid risk factors that may cause him depression. Moreover, I would suggest for his problem-focused techniques of managing stress, for example, by improving his relations to the extent of developing fictive kinship ties and acquiring consequential strangers who might be useful in the change process. This can be achieved using Sternberg’s triangular theory, which emphasizes three components of love, which include closeness, bondedness, and connectedness when building relations. The young man should also use emotion-focused techniques like lowering his expectations from people. Most of my advice to the young man woud be based on Erik Erikson’s intimacy versus isolation concepts, which discourages isolation as it may lead to depression while encouraging intimacy as it leads to solutions to problems. Lastly, I would encourage him to avoid the entity theory that intelligence is unchangeable and adopt the incremental theory believe that his intelligence could be adjusted and believe in the theory as he pushes for his life goals.