Personal Determinants

As I age I notice that many of the personality traits that I once had are different.

I realize this about family members around me also as they age. I understand that many factors way into a person's development over their life span and that the people we become today are different than the people we were in yesteryears. There are three types of determinants normative age-graded factors, normative history-graded factors, and non-normative life events ( Hoyer & Roodin, 2009, p 9). I will use these factors to describe my personal development.

Being that I am thirty nine years old I have not noticed many normative age-grade factors that have influenced my development. I think that the normal restlessness that all people feel at eighteen factored into my development. I had big dreams of going to college and making my way in the world with loads of money so I moved out and started to school. I quickly realized that money did not come as easy as asking my father for it so I moved back home. I think many individuals experience that sort of behavior at the age therefore making it fall under the normative age-grade factor definition. Other aspects such as puberty, boyfriends, graduating, etc all happen to most people at the same age but may or may not affect their development or shape the person they are today.

As I grew up through the 70's and 80's I remember not really having to worry or concentrate on worldly issues. There was not much unrest in the world that the United States was involved so as a child I didn't think about it at all. I felt that security of living in the greatest country in the world and never had one uneasy feeling about it. My world consisted of my family, friends and small community that I was surrounded by. I grew up got married and had children with the same secure feeling of being out of the worlds harmful aspects. The day the World Trade Center was struck by the plane my secure world turned inside out. I remember sitting on the couch not believing what I was witnessing on the television. All I could think was there is no safe place anymore. I worried about my husband at work, my children at school and myself at home with no way of protecting anything. The life of security that I had always known was gone and an empty feeling was left. That event on the day changed my life forever. As Hoyer and Roodin (2009) describe the normative history-grade factor I knew that was the influence that I had in my life. I will never again feel 100 percent safe again in this country knowing what happened on that day. I do believe I live in the best country in the world but now I also believe that it isn't impervious to harms way. That was a big change for me and I am sure many people. I probably am raising my children with a different view of this country than my parents did me. I will be very curious to see how this affects the youth of today and their attitudes towards security in this country.

I grew up in a happy family on a farm in a small community. I had a typical family of a mother, father and one brother. We worked on the farm, went to school and played together. I had a normal