My mother gave me many messages throughout my childhood, each telling me exactly who she thought I was and who she wanted me to be. For example, religion was very important to my mother. We were a poor family, so all we had to get us through the hard times was our religion. We always went to church, every Sunday. But when I got to the age where I began to doubt the Church, I no longer wanted to go. However, the look he gave me after I told him immediately silenced me. It was a look of disappointment, disgust and fear. “How could my daughter wander off and become so unfaithful?” It was his constant reaction to my doubts that made me realize that I was the black sheep of the family. It was in the way he praised all my other brothers when they went up to the pulpit to pray. The way he bragged about it, like it was his own doing. His boasting would build their confidence, giving them even more impetus to enter the church. His message to me made me want to adapt to my role, the black sheep. I hid in my room and hid behind books. I began to put an internal barrier around myself, to tell myself that they were right, that I was different. For my brothers, each of them received very different messages. To my older sister, Autumn, she was the good little girl. Every time we did something bad, my mom would say, "Not Autumn, she's too good for that." My mother put her on a footstool, a very tall one. When my sister, who had just turned 18, decided to have "premarital sex," my mother blew the gas, believing that because we were women we weren't allowed to have sex outside of marriage. The image of my sister on a footstool crashed to the ground, and with it my mother's confidence. W...... middle of paper ......n I made it a priority, for their approval and to one day get out of poverty. My peers made me realize that not talking to them did the exact opposite of what I was trying to achieve, which was fitting in. My behavior then became a balancing act, staying out of sight and trying to make friends. Cooley's theory of socialization reflects my development. In his “Mirror” theory, he states that we develop our view of “self” from how others interact with and perceive us. My development fits this mold. I am extremely self-aware, I pay attention to every detail of my peers, I do my best to be perceived for who I want to be. I wanted my teachers to see a good student, so I tried my best to become one. With my peers I wanted them to see someone who could just blend in, so when I noticed that they perceived my behavior as strange, I changed my behavior.