From: May Sarmac
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Date: 12 Oct 1996
Time: 18:49:29
At Barrios Unidos this week, the main theme of the events I observed seemed to be dominance. On Wed. I was helping two girls, who also happen to be cousins. Their names are Mairssa (8) and Mariel (10). They were palying CD Rom gmaes on teh computer. Marissa has a computer at home and Mariel does not. So whil ethey were playing, Mariel tried to get on the computer as much as she could, but Marissa sometimes wouldn't let her. When they got tired of playing the game, they wanted to write about themselves on th computer. Since Marissa knew what files to open and how to use the keyboard, she tried to decide the fonts and the color of the fonts. She also wrote about herself first. When it was Mariel's turn, Marissa kept telling her not to copy what she wrote an dtelling her what she can't write. Mariel got fed up with Marissa and told her to just read what she wrote. After a while, Mariel left the computer to do something else. On Thursday, I noticed that Marissa and Mariel didn't play with each other on the computer. Instead, they played games with other people. There were two other boys I worked with that had the same dominating ordeal. See Kyle and Alex are the same age. When I was helping them fill out some paperwork, Alex kept telling Kyle what to write. Kyle didn't know what to write and preferred to leave some questios balnk. But alex kept insisting Kyle write what he said.Kyle looked like he wanted to cry. So I told them it was okay for Kyle to leave questions he didn't know the answer to blank. I guess I noticed these incidents because in both cases, there was a child getting dominated to a point they were upset. For one child, her reaction to her dominator was to tell her to leave her alone. For the other child, his reaction to his dominator was to remain silent.