PEPSI PROJECT

Devin Gallegos
EDU220 Professor Richardson
 Teenagers prove to be an interesting case study. I have chosen to examine a

subject that will be referred to as child A. Child A is a 15 year old student. He is

attending his freshman year at Durango high school in Las Vegas Nevada. The child

comes from a bit of a rough background. The child has 2 siblings, the two of which

are fraternal twins. Child A originally had a twin of his own. Unfortunately, during

the pandemic the child lost his twin due to Covid 19. During the past year, the child

lost an uncle who was basically a father figure to the entire family. Recently, the

child’s parents have been forced to relocate due to insufficient funds and outright

bad financial choices. Most of the income comes from the child’s step father who

makes a just above average income. The child’s mother does not have employment

at the moment and collects money through welfare and section 8 income. The child

is shy and a little uneasy meeting new faces. Once the child gets to know a person,

that person will see a kind soul and polite individual.

Physically the child must endure challenges that I’m sure only a few children

have to deal with. If we look at the numbers, the child stands at approximately 5 feet

nine inches and must weigh about close to 400 lbs. One might guess the child is not

physically active. While not a supreme athlete, the child does have a physical

education class and has a small interest in boxing. I thought this might be linked to

aggressiveness. According to a study done by the international behavioral

development journal, it was shown that overweight teens are quicker to aggressive
behavior. (KW Tso 2018) I don’t think the love of boxing comes from aggression

though. Child A is someone I have known for a while, and I believe the child wants to

be fit for himself. I think he sees boxing as a pathway to health. As he has grown up, I

noticed the child has started to care more about his personal hygiene and

appearance. In an article from PsychologyToday.com it states that most teens start

to care about their appearance from ages 9-15. (Pickhardt 2016) I concluded that

Child A is not happy with his current body. Besides the cards he was dealt, life isn’t a

cake walk. Even before the tragedies, the child had to face ridicule from fellow

classmates. Because of the child’s size, the child constantly fell behind physical

education standards. The entire family of child A all share the same problem with

obesity. I started to wonder if there was a connection between their poor living

situation and their physical health. In a journal entitled “Journal of Applied Research

on Children” it’s stated that not only are the cases of obesity high with

disadvantaged families, but it also has to do with the family structure.( Augustine

2013) Given the lack of a biological father for child A, that makes sense. Overall, I

would say child A is at the bottom of the spectrum physically but is trying to

improve on that.

Emotions could be all over the place and confusing for a 15-year-old. This is

the time in life when a teenager might start discovering their sexuality, might feel

their voice change, and a bunch of other puberty related problems. I wondered how
puberty could affect child A’s emotions. I noticed that child A, while shy, does tend to

get frustrated more often than not. A lab study done by scientists at the child

institute of London showed that puberty does trigger an emotional response to the

brain. (Goddings 2012) Another quirk to child A is something I touched on

previously, his shyness. Up until maybe 2 years ago, I just thought child A was only a

bit shy. Recently I felt his shyness has become more anti-social. One would think

that his twin dying would have a massive effect on him. While I’m sure it does, Child

A never talks about it. A journal about twin loss suggests that one of the hardest

parts for a surviving twin is that they develop from patterns based off each other.

It’s literally losing a part of oneself. (Withrow 2005) Losing a sibling is hard but to

lose a twin, must be soul crushing. Most of Child A’s life was spent hand and hand

with his family. He’s gone to public school his entire life but Child A was mostly a

home body. One could begin to wonder if staying at home all those years could also

have an impact on the child’s emotions? Psychologist Sophia Dembling wrote an

article on introverted teens. She states there is a fine line between shyness and a

preference for being alone in teens. (Dembling 2013) This makes it hard to

determine child A’s real emotions. Even though life is hard for the child, he hasn’t

stopped trying.

When tackling the philosophical evaluation for Child A, I thought to look at

the definition of philosophy for help. “The study of the fundamental nature of

knowledge, reality, and existence, especially when considered as an academic

discipline.” I thought to myself “how does child A see the world?” I think despite the

child’s shortcomings, he believes there’s a lot in life to live for. The child seems like

he is open to trying anything, however, I think the friends around the child influence

him a lot. Though The child is not peer pressured in a normal sense (like with drugs

or alcohol) he might be peer pressured in other ways. For instance, I never knew the

child to not like police until maybe a year or two ago. An article written by Arioone

Nettles suggests that kids start to view police different as they get older. (Nettles

2019) I still don’t know if this attitude is because of the time period we are in or

because of the subject’s group of friends. The subject’s mistrust of police aside, child

A does seem to be trustworthy of those around him. I asked child A what was the

most important thing to him regarding school and the child said “my friends.” When

that quote was said, I remembered my time in high school and how important

friends were. At times I believed that my friends were more important than my own

family. Was that because I was secretly rebelling? An article compares the

relationships between teens and their friends versus their family. Research showed

that while boys feel more secure with their parents, girls feel more secure with their

friends (Mallet 2021) One concept I do not want to skip over is child A’s heavy trust

in his friends. Because the child has a sweet soft spoken demeanor I worry about

kids taking advantage of him. I feel child A can be naïve at times, as we all could be

at that age. I started to wonder about the effects of peer pressure on teenagers.

Researches did a study in turkey that showed that peer pressure had an influence on
how students approached school. (Toraman 2019) After diving into the philosophy

of Child A, I started to ask myself what was the biggest influence on the child? That’s

just it, I don’t think there is one overlapping influence here. I think a combination of

factors such as time period, friends, environment, and personal challenges all shape

the philosophy of the subject.

It is important for all adolescents to develop social skills early on. Child A has

a lot of reasons to shy away from being social. That being said, child A always puts

forth a tremendous effort to be social. No matter how shy the subject always was,

the subject always found a way to make friends as soon as the subject was old

enough for elementary school. The same could not be said for the subject’s siblings.

Both are now home school and they seemed to be suffering socially unlike child A.

Before I was even considering being an educator, I always wondered how home

school affects social skills. According to research I found, I made a wrong

assumption about home schooled kids. In fact in this study, they were found to have

more social competencies than public school kids. (Madar 2021) I still think public

school has had a positive impact on the child. I always think there’s a positive

correlation between the subject’s ability to be physically active and his social skills. I

found an article that may prove my theory. A test was done on 60 children with

autism to see if there was a correlation between physical activity and social

behavior. Most of the subjects were found to display more social skills after being
physically active. (Memari 2017) child A also enjoys hanging out with his friends

virtually. Like most kids his age he plays online video games with his friends. Even

though some skeptics might say video games diminish social skills, I argue that

these cooperative team-based games are helpful in building up attributes like

communication and teamwork. What I found through research was that video

games motivated over weight teen. According to the university of Oklahoma, video

game are shown to inspire obsess teens.(Lindsay 2012) I do believe child A is at the

normal level of social interactions. The subject has a good solid group of friends that

he looks forward to hanging out with. This in turn gives the subject motivation to

keep pursuing education and grow as a young adult.

Intelligence is a subject that I find subjective. I don’t think that intelligence

should only be measured by IQ or grades. There are a lot of factors that can be

considered intelligent when describing an individual. That being said, it is important

to know that child A is in special education. Though never properly diagnosed I

suspect a learning disability. I remember when the subject was very young it was

hard to get them to grasp basic concepts early in the development cycle. I remember

observing the living situation at the time and it was not ideal. The subject lived in a

2-bedroom apartment with 7 different people, 6 of which were obese. One must

wonder if his poor living situation had an effect on his cognitive development. It was

found that areas with high poverty levels do produce low test results in some cases.
(Carter 2017) With the family being as large as they were, the kids were pretty

sheltered. Child A and all his siblings never left their mother’s side. Child A on the

other hand was never allowed to anything unsupervised until this year. That

includes playing outside, staying at home, or sleeping at a friend’s house. At the

time, I thought it was strange, but I just chalked it up to over protectiveness on the

mother’s part. Is being overprotective a big problem? One article written by

researcher Mary Ann Manos states that its common for “helicopter parents” to stay

the same all the way to adulthood. (Manos 2009) It is my personal opinion that

young people need the chance to explore and make mistakes. Another important

thing to note is that while child A does have a large family, his biological father left

his family at a young age. He did have a stepfather but the step father wasn’t too

involved in his early learning development. Most of that job was done by a single

mother who had child A when she was 24. Let us not forget she had to raise two at a

time. I wondered if the twins have a harder time developing cognitive skills. The

article I researched about twin lost stated that twins develop base off of each

other(Withrow 2005) whatever the case is, the child has shown much improvement.

This past year he managed to get on the A/B honor roll for his class. I’m not sure if

he will make it out of special Ed because he has been in special Ed since 3rd grade.

Despite that, I believe the child will continue to try hard and improve. I see

graduation in his future. The recommendation I would give is to keep the child on

the path of improvement. Stay in special Ed and do not transfer into public school.
 Citations page

Augustine, J. M., & Kimbro, R. T. (2012, November 30). Family structure and obesity among
U.S. children. Journal of Applied Research on Children. Retrieved April 2, 2023, from
https://eric.ed.gov/?id=EJ1188843

Author links open overlay panelAmir Hossein Memari a b, a, b, c, d, AbstractBackgroundFor the

first time this study aimed to examine the association of cognitive and social function with
the physical activity behavior in a sample of children with autism spectrum disorder
(ASD).MethodSixty eight children with ASD aged 6–16, Voss, M. W., Themanson, J. R.,
Smith-Seemiller, L., Romine, C. B., Pan, C. Y., Memari, A. H., Mark, A. E., Kamijo, K.,
Hassmén, P., Batey, C. A., Association, A. P., Bandini, L. G., Bellini, S., … Freedson, P.
(2016, November 4). Cognitive and social functioning are connected to physical activity
behavior in children with autism spectrum disorder. Research in Autism Spectrum
Disorders. Retrieved April 2, 2023, from
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1750946716301118?via%3Dihub

Carter, T. (2017, February 28). The impact of poverty and school size on the 2015-16 Kansas
State Assessment Results. Kansas Association of School Boards. Retrieved April 2, 2023,
from https://eric.ed.gov/?id=ED580965

Dembling , S. (2013). Introversion and the Teen Years. Psychology Today. Retrieved April 2,
2023, from https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-introverts-
corner/201308/introversion-and-the-teen-years

Goddings, A.-L., Burnett Heyes, S., Bird, G., Viner, R. M., & Blakemore, S.-J. (2012). The
relationship between puberty and social emotion processing. Developmental Science,
15(6), 801–811. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-7687.2012.01174.x

Lindsay. (2012). Video Games Bring Benefits For Obese Teens. Journal Pediatric Obesity.

Manos, M. A. (2009). Helicopter parents: Empathetic or pathetic? - proquest. Phi kappa forms .
Retrieved April 2, 2023, from https://www.proquest.com/docview/235184061

Miljkovitch, R., Mallet, P., Moss, E., Sirparanta, A., Pascuzzo, K., & Zdebik, M. A. (2021).
Adolescents’ attachment to parents and peers: Links to Young Adulthood Friendship
Quality. Journal of Child and Family Studies. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10826-021-01962-y

Nettles, A., & Eng, M. (2019, August 27). Having 'the talk': Expert guidance on preparing kids
for police interactions. NPR. Retrieved April 2, 2023, from
https://www.npr.org/local/309/2019/08/27/754459083/having-the-talk-expert-guidance-on-
preparing-kids-for-police-interactions

Pickhardt , C. (2016, September 5). Puberty and preoccupation with personal appearance.
Psychology Today. Retrieved April 2, 2023, from
 https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/surviving-your-childs-
adolescence/201609/puberty-and-preoccupation-personal-appearance

Toraman, C., & Aycicek, B. (2018, December 31). An investigation of the relationships between
attachment levels to school and the variables of the perception of school life quality and
peer pressure among high school students. Journal of Education and Training Studies.
Retrieved April 2, 2023, from https://eric.ed.gov/?id=EJ1200427

Tso, M. K. W., Rowland, B., Toumbourou, J. W., & Guadagno, B. L. (2017). Overweight or
obesity associations with physical aggression in children and adolescents. International
Journal of Behavioral Development, 42(1), 116–131.
https://doi.org/10.1177/0165025417690265

Unger Madar, M., & BenDavid-Hadar, I. (2021). Does home schooling improve creative
thinking and social competencies among children? home schooling in Israel. Journal of
School Choice, 16(1), 136–163. https://doi.org/10.1080/15582159.2021.1977584

Withrow, R., & Schwiebert, V. L. (2005). Twin loss: Implications for counselors working with
surviving twins. Journal of Counseling & Development, 83(1), 21–28.
https://doi.org/10.1002/j.1556-6678.2005.tb00576.x

PEPSI
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30

25

20

15

10

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Physical Emotional Philosophy Social Intelligence

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