I Am Nujood, Age 10, and Divorced - Essay Example

I am Nujood, age 10, and divorced: This paper is an effort to discuss the character of the 10 year old Yemeni girl Nujood as told in the book, I am Nujood, age 10, and divorced. This paper attempts to relate the character of Nujood as described in the book with developmental issues and explains how her developmental stage can be related to Erikson’s 8-stage developmental model. Nujood had to develop earlier than necessary both physically and mentally because she got married into an oppressive family with a tyrant old man.

Later she escaped and got divorced at 10. All such worse circumstances of her life influenced her development in a very negative way. Moreover, her development can be related to the young adulthood stage of Erikson’s 8-stage developmental model which typically begins at 20 years but in the case of Nujood, it began earlier as she got trapped in questions like if she was loved and if she should spend her life with that same old tyrant man or escape and move on to live on her own. In this stage, if not given proper attention and encouragement, a child may fail in developmental context and insecure and confused about themselves and others in future (Cherry, 2012).

Nujood’s development differs from a typical 10 year old American child on many levels. Nujood’s hard circumstances caused her to develop pre-maturely both in physical terms and in context of cognitive thought processes especially. Almost all 10 year old American children in the present times do not seem to care much about future life because all they actually do is enjoying life besides studying. As not many significant or realistic problems are faced by them, so their thinking patterns are also not that much mature.

Another thing is that they can be rarely ever found insecure about their lives because there are enough laws for children and other security measures which can be exercised in America for the benefit of children if any harm or offence of any nature is done to them. Nujood, on the other hand, got exposed to such horror of life that she had no other choice but to think ahead of her age demands. Nujood appears to be way old beyond her years in the book (Weatherwax, 2010). She was exposed to insecurity, physical harm, emotional torture, and injustice.

All such tortures compelled her to behave very differently from other American children of her age who do not get married to men or women three times their age while they have not even matured physically, let alone mentally. There is also much debated concern about the influences which might be produced by Nujood’s terrific and appalling childhood on her future life. Nujood was so much tortured and humiliated psychologically by her family behavior which contained lack of emotional support, by her husband’s animalistic behavior, and by her in-laws’ inhuman attitudes that her mind must have changed forever.

When minds are changed on such a big level, the possibility that the dark shadows of past would haunt Nujood forever also increases automatically. There are chances that her past would always haunt her throughout her adult life making her insecure, wary, and hesitant about socializing with people in the rest of her life. References: Cherry, K. (2012). Stages of Psychosocial Development. Retrieved from http://psychology.about.com/od/psychosocialtheories/a/psychosocial_2.htm Weatherwax, E. (2010).

A Review of “I Am Nujood, aged 10 and Divorced” Retrieved from http://www.newenglishreview.org/Esmerelda_Weatherwax/A_Review_of_%22I_Am_Nujood,_aged_10_and_Divorced%22/