Esteban 12-18 years

Esteban’s relationships have been very important to his social development, emotional well-being and his school achievement. Although he had many instances of peer conflict such as one time when he was on

the Internet and he suddenly became very angry and unleashed some bad language. Over the next few days, Esteban was engaged in a titanic instant messaging battle, hurling insults at a former friend, and receiving hostile messages from a couple of kids I hadn't ever heard of. I did have to restrict him from using the computer just to calm things down. There were still a lot of test messages. Another time, Esteban skipped school for 3 days to hang out with some friends. Esteban always seemed to come out of bad situations better than he went in and overall, negative peer relationships never out-weighed his positive peer relationships. He seemed to learn from his mistakes and turned out to be a great young man. He never had any issues that I would not label as “typical” teenage issues. With the exception of two C’s his freshman year, Esteban consistently earned A’s in honors Spanish, honors Language Arts and honors History classes and B’s in science, math and electives. He seemed to be able to keep his peer relationships separate from the focus that he maintained on his school work. He was accepted into several colleges and chose an in-state school. Esteban had a long-term girlfriend and was very mature and responsible in that relationship. He seemed to outgrow his emotional outbursts and went through what I would call “typical” adolescent moodiness, but was never consistently down, angry etc... due to peer relationships. He was a very resilient teenage boy.

When Esteban was about 14, he became more interested or at least more in tune with peoples’ cultural differences and his values and beliefs. One time Esteban mentioned that he had a long conversation with another student on a bus about all kinds of issues on which they disagreed, such as religion and politics. Esteban listened to the other person's point of view, but when he came home, and told me all about his own viewpoints. I listened to Esteban’s views and find that they were fairly close to my political, moral and spiritual views. I kind of joked with him and said, "So you have been listening to us all these years!" I also discussed the differences between him and his friend. We had a great discussion about differences and peoples’ rights to believe what they wanted to believe. I think it brought us closer together and it helped him to better understand where his friend was coming from.