Foundation of Emotional Development
Conrad Ho (Hong Kong, China) July 24, 2014
This was the second day of the Movement Enhances Learning Camp (M.E.L. Camp). The theme was about the preconditions and motivation of learning. Learning motivations included self image (e.g. children seeing themselves as losers) and their impressions of learning (e.g. children felt that they were tortured by teachers in class), etc. Preconditions of learning included the sense of balance, proprioception and tactile sense. The children slowly showed their real characters after a day of playing and getting familiarized with one another yesterday. In addition, we had the first inter-group competition today. This fostered the conflicts of vying to be the leader, complaints of wrong decision-making, and anxiety over winning and losing, etc. We began to see arguments, throwing things around in anger and even one or two cases of close call to fighting.
Conrad Ho told the coaches that these were common events in the M.E.L. camp. In many ordinary summer camps or in the average classroom, the most common reaction of coaches and teachers was to suppress such incidents, trying to keep peace and harmony, at least at the surface. Alternatively, they might divert the attention of the child by soothing him with a prize or they would ask him to think of the virtues of others, etc. In the M.E.L. camp, as long as the circumstance was safe, I would let the matter took its natural course, allowing ample time for the child to feel thoroughly about what had happened within him, and then let him solve the problem on his own initiative. Coaches should keep giving factual feedbacks to provide the child with more perspectives so that he would not perceive the matter only from his usual point of view. Finally, there would be time for sharing during the daily evening gathering, enabling the child to express his feelings openly, gain understandings and make peace.
Generally, at the end of a day, the child would have a thorough feeling about the matter, and could then talk about it, analyse it calmly and take appropriate action. The action might be an apology or an expression of feelings to the others. Finally, everyone would forgive each other and be friends again. Today, we had just seen an incident happening and ending like this. Probably, more similar incidents would happen in the following few days.
Too much suppression and too early diversion would leave a relatively unfamiliar feeling area in the child’s emotional structure, forming a sensitive spot. Once it was stimulated later on, the person would “explode”. If we give the child time to feel, express, communicate and give feedbacks adequately, he would be able to master those feelings, forming a strong emotional foundation, thereby, facilitating healthy emotional development. Only under such a condition would emotional intelligence be raised.
