(Despite pulling a quote from the beginning, I did read the whole thing.)
I'm not intrinsically against the idea, but if you're going to teach children this sort of skill, the teachers themselves are going to have to be a bit more brutally honest with themselves about what the children actually deal with, or it really will just be one more feel-good exercise of no value.
Recollecting himself, Reedhom sat up straight. βMommy,
I donβt like it when you scream at me,β he announced
firmly.
βGood,β Wade said. βAnd maybe your mommy will say: βIβm
sorry, Reedhom. I had to go somewhere in a hurry, and I
got a little mad. Iβm sorry.β β
Let me tell you what the kid is hearing here, or at least what a lot of the kids are hearing: "If I say 'Mommy, I don't like it when you scream at me' Mommy will just stop screaming and I can get away with whatever it is I may have done to trigger it." Or, Mommy might just as well scream back "DON'T YOU TALK BACK TO ME LIKE THAT." and keep on going; what then? If you're not going to address either of those issues, you're just adding another place to the curriculum where the children will learn to parrot back at you what you want to hear without actually changing anything about their lives. Honestly, we have enough of those.
If this is going to work, the teachers are going to have to step out of the fuzzy-wuzzy bubble of school and address the real world interactions the children might actually experience, and not slant the coverage, so to speak.
It is acceptable to teach children "emotional intelligence" and to say that children are poorly behaved and need to be medicated[1] or sent for reprogramming or need behaviour modification plans. For some reason it's not acceptable to suggest that some parents need parenting lessons.
Thus, we teach children to say "Mommy, I don't like it when you scream at me", and we don't teach parents how to deal with children so they don't get to the point of screaming at them so often.
And while that's going on we have children being raped and murdered by their parents. About 5 children per day die in the US because of abuse or neglect. (http://www.childhelp.org/pages/statistics/)
> In 2010, an estimated 1,560 children died from child maltreatment(rate of 2.1per 100,000 children)
> Of the children who died from maltreatment in 2010, 40.8% experienced multiple maltreatment types, 32.6%
experienced neglect only, and 22.9% experienced physical abuse only.
> Of child maltreatment fatalities in 2010, 79.4% occurred among children younger than age 4; 11.1% among 4-7 year olds; 3.6% among 8-11 year-olds; 3.8% among 12-15 year olds; and 1.8% among 16-17 year-olds
[1] Obviously some children do need to be medicated. But there's a worrying amount of over-prescribing of strong psychoactive meds among young people without much evidence of efficacy or need.
However you may wish to teach parents about this sort of thing, I believe you'll agree that's it's a hopelessly uphill battle to try to affect parent's behaviors by anything we could conceivably teach the children in school.
This is part of what I mean by brutal honesty. There's a nontrivial percentage of the children who will be going home to an environment in which nicely expressing your own feelings is, to put it nicely, not going to work. However much this fact sucks, it needs to be faced up to and handled. A curriculum that assumes all parents are perfectly enlightened liberal angels all the time is going to end up anti-teaching the children. (After all, even the most enlightened of us get frazzled at one time or another.) A curriculum that could do that would actually be extraordinarily useful, which is why I say I'm not intrinsically against the idea... but I'll cop to believing that the actual educational institutions and educators we have are ill-suited to this, though.
But that is impossible. There's also an uncomfortable truth about kids that needs to be taken into account :
Kids are completely amoral. And as attractive as that sounds to some people here, let's just say that without adult oversight it won't take more than a week or so until the first murder happens (depending on age, but at 3-4 years, definitely).
So teaching children to be more closed and more sophisticated makes them more dangerous as well as better able to deal with the world. You may want to wait until the idea that you can't just kill, steal, and so on has sunk in (we're talking 7-8 years at least, preferably later).
The parenting you're asking for here is just (usually) unscientific "behavior modification plans" and "reprogramming." Most things boil down to operant conditioning.
Source: raised by the daughter of a behavioral scientist.
Let's phrase it this way. How often is it reasonable for a parent to raise their voice at a child? For example.
Child goes to touch sharp/hot/poisonous item
My likely response would be "Leave it alone" or something similar, in a considerably louder and more imperative voice than normal instruction. Why? Because the change in tone conveys importance, and the shock will institute an instant response from a child.
This is entirely separate from telling a child off for a misbehaviour already having occurred, which I agree rarely (if ever) should require "Screaming" as a method of conveying displeasure and attempting to prevent recurrence. Inevitably it will happen, because parents are human too and make errors of judgement and lack patience.
You reject his statement but then you say that children "almost never need...", so you accept that sometimes they might need?
I am lost.
Why is screaming almost intrinsically "bad"?
You are trying to quantize behaviour and, sorry, it cannot be done. Would you ask how many times it is good to kiss one's mother? One? Ten? One hundred? Every time the child leaves? Just once? Uhu?
Perhaps you've never been screamed at. Where by "screamed at" I mean "the recipient of uncontrolled, unfiltered, absolute maximum strength, irrational, untempered, terrifying rage." I don't believe that's ever appropriate.
As someone who worked in a school all of last year, I disagree too. I never screamed at any child, and I had fewer problems with discipline than the teachers that did.
For me it is better to explain why I am angry or disappointed with a child's behavior in private, and if I don't see a change then implement a punishment like missing recess, changing seats, or sending the child to talk to a counselor/principal. I worked with younger kids, so these were pretty effective punishments.
If you resort to screaming right away, the child won't open up to you about problems at home, problems with teasing, etc. that are important to understanding why they might be acting out. If the child trusts and likes you, they'll try harder to behave for you... it's really not very different than an adult relationship.
OK, so I don't quite have kids yet but I would tend to disagree... it's possible to be firm without screaming. I mean what is screaming, basically? It's expressing frustration or anger by "me-me-me"-ing your environment: blocking out what anyone else might be saying or doing, potentially while demanding them to behave how you wish them to. Not so different to a politican or an Oprah argument, really. Isn't that exactly the kind of antisocial habit that parents should be teaching children not to engage in?
I am assuming they are teaching the kids to make "I" statements.... don't make excuses, don't argue, don't blame other people, don't yell back. It's a skill I was lucky to learn later in life. (marriage counseling).
Another thing they are likely to learn... disconnect yourself from the outcome. Yeh your mom may not react the way you want. But at least you have been honest about your feelings and not disrespected the other person. You can only control what you do... not how others react.
I've sunk a fair amount of time thinking about this as well (therapy) and agree with you completely regarding only being able to control what you do. For adults, I think this also includes listening and acknowledging other's feelings, but not feeling like it's your problem fix the problems that cause them to feel they way they do. If you are like me and ended up having to prioritize your parent's problems over your own, you might do well to read this book: http://www.amazon.com/The-Drama-Gifted-Child-Revised/dp/0465.... I'm glad someone else figured this stuff out so I could learn from it!
I did not grow up with any sort of crazy parent situation but I imagine I am not unique in the fact that if I asked my mother to "please stop screaming", I would have received about 20 more minutes of screaming + a wooden spoon. I really like the idea of teaching EQ, however, I agree that the example you point to is entirely unrealistic.
This is one of the problems with teaching emotional intelligence. It's subjective, and most people feel very strongly that they way they were raised was the (only) right way.
From my perspective (and probably that of most psychology and behavioral science researchers) that behavior on the part of your mother is unhealthy and not to be tolerated. You are also unlikely to find support among academic for the notion that a grown woman's inability to control her emotions justifies inflicting severe pain on an largely helpless child. (There is some research supporting spanking, but almost never out condoning spanking while upset.)
One more reminder that normal is different for everyone I suppose.
Talking back is a cardinal sin in the south. It is not how I will raise my kids, but my parents even grew up with corporal punishment in catholic school, so I don't really blame them.
In other words, teachers themselves must have sufficient skill in emotional intelligence.
EQ, I think, is best taught as the emotion arises. But if you're going to actually teach it as a cirriculum, you can't simply use words. That misses the point of the emotional aspect of the interaction.
Instead, use roleplaying where you have to move your body, as if you are in a play. And actually be able to generate the emotions coming up so that you feel it, and it leaks out as body gestures and facial expressions. Otherwise, it won't even be a "feel good" exercise, merely a checkbox to tick off on paper.
Absolutely, but just consider that modern neuroscience is still new, and scary, to the vast majority of teachers. When you consider their sole job as brain training, emotions very much included, the profession is made much simpler in many ways. The problem is we are likely looking at another two decades before these brain science methods are more mainstream. IMHO growing brains is the exact and, dare I say, only purview of educational programs.
That's a misconception. "Growing brains" is the idealized intent of educational programs. The actual function of education is to indoctrinate future citizens and condition obedient workers.
It is far, far easier to control a society when the people have very little emotional intelligence.
Coincidentally, I was browsing through my copy of Robert Greene's 48 Laws of Power:
Look at the part of a person that is most visible --
their greed, their lust, their intense fear. These are
the emotions they cannot conceal, and over which they
have the least control. And what people cannot control,
you can control for them.
In the same chapter, Greene advises one to find the "helpless child". Pretty much all emotional vulnerabilities come from childhood hangups. You find the conditions that will regress someone into a helpless child, and they will come to depend upon you.
Those who understand power dynamics have no incentive to teach emotional intelligence. And for most people, actually working with emotions is very difficult and brings up a lot of ugly stuff. People generally don't want to.
I've heard the term "ecologically valid social skills"[1] in the world of child ASD social skills training. I think much of the information from successfully teaching skills to children with ASD would apply to teaching normal children.
Emotional control can, most certainly, be taught. But it rarely is in our society.
When I was a kid, I learned from observing my father that being a "real man" means shaping the world according to your view of how it should be-- taking control, avenging wrongs, showing strength. In my 30's and 40's I've been totally reshaping my ideal of what a real man does, and it involves the opposite in many ways: making people feel safe, having excellent self control, and outstanding control of my emotions and attitude. The shocking thing to me is how often the behaviors I know as right according to my new ideals make me behave in ways that my father would see as pathetic and weak.
But it's completely possible to re-train one's own emotional composition and approach to life. That's what Stoicism is all about. I wish someone had taught me about this when I was young. A few things I wish I'd known about when I was a kid:
1. The No Complaining bracelet challenge[1]. This was life changing to me, because through this exercise I learned that "letting it all out" doesn't really help much, and what really helps is reshaping your own mind. I'm still doing this challenge today, as a life habit, even after several years.
2. Stop worrying and stop living[2]. You can boil this book down to a few pages, with a lot of stories that help you understand why and how. I did this book on audio during a long car trip. Also life changing for me.
3. Stoicism. Reading Letters from a Stoic[3] taught me that there was an entirely different way to look at friendship that I'd never considered. And it taught me that there are people who constantly practice controlling their emotions in a positive way, the way a martial artist constantly practices how to move his body.
Giving children a voice. Being a Heat Start teacher I can tell you that it is EXTREMELY important. Instead of just making sounds or cry when Billy kicked or pushed him the child says, "Stop I don't like that." Changes a person from being a victim to being an advocate for themselves. If everyone could learn how to express their emotions into words we would never have Jerry Springer Show.
This - and the article itself - doesn't seem to address the other half of that.
"Stop I don't like that."
"Too bad." Shove.
"Stop I don't like it when you yell at me."
"TOO BAD! NEXT TIME DON'T DO SOMETHING TO DESERVE IT!"
A child can't control teh reaction to advocating for himself. And if he does so and the reaction is negative, he will quickly learn not to do so.
I don't have a solution, but I know that simply teaching this more appropriate method of self-advocacy isn't enough. And depending on the circumstances, it can easily backfire.
Any half-decent emotional curriculum will teach that you can't control other people's emotions. (And that there's a lot you can't know for sure about those emotions - which kids are shown as picking up in the article.)
When someone is using their fists against you, no words are going to protect you. While I do believe our society resorts to violence too quickly, there is a time and a place for the use of force, and I fear that we're swinging too far in the other direction.
I'm not sure I understand how we can simultaneously be resorting to violence too quickly and also swinging too far in the other direction.
I could be mistaken, but the former sure seems like the more pressing problem in practice. Are there advocates of taking it too far in the other direction? Of course, but there are advocates of just about everything. I would tend to save my worries regarding those advocates until the problem of resorting to violence too quickly recedes some, and the opposite problem becomes more prevalent outside of mere advocacy.
> I'm not sure I understand how we can simultaneously be resorting to violence too quickly and also swinging too far in the other direction.
A generation ago, many conflicts in elementary through high school - especially between boys - were solved by physical confrontation. Two generations ago, it wouldn't have been uncommon for young adult men to come to blows. In neither of these cases would law enforcement have even been considered.
During my own time in public school, I saw the attitude change from "don't start a fight" to "if you get into a fight, both parties will be punished".
> I could be mistaken, but the former sure seems like the more pressing problem in practice.
Aggressive personalities are being shunned in our culture. Being "Alpha" is being construed as a negative thing, as a deficiency in some set of social skills that are presumably teachable.
> Are there advocates of taking it too far in the other direction? Of course, but there are advocates of just about everything. I would tend to save my worries regarding those advocates until the problem of resorting to violence too quickly recedes some, and the opposite problem becomes more prevalent outside of mere advocacy.
We're teaching our children that using violence represents a failure. I strongly believe the employing violence in defense of self or of a third party is entirely appropriate and in some cases the only morally coherent response to the violent aggression of others.
Instead, we should be showing our children how to form a rational basis for their actions and to consider their emotional responses in light of that.
Prefrontal cortex is still developing through our early twenties. Mitigating the effects of emotional responses takes work, just like any other discipline. That work grows synapses and it's the reason mental health therapies change connectivity patterns in the brain. Leaving the word 'emotion' out (which some here seem to have strong reactions to), self-regulation is well-understood.
It may also make children smarter. Davidson notes that because social-emotional training develops the prefrontal cortex, it can also enhance academically important skills like impulse control, abstract reasoning, long-term planning and working memory. Though itβs not clear how significant this effect is, a 2011 meta-analysis found that K-12 students who received social-emotional instruction scored an average of 11 percentile points higher on standardized achievement tests. A similar study found a nearly 20 percent decrease in violent or delinquent behavior.
It's less about mitigating the effects of emotional responses and more that, people are habituated to react emotionally rather than responding. To respond, you have to be fully present and mindful of the emotions as they arise -- too really feel the emotion -- without becoming consumed by them. That may or may not have anything to do with the prefrontal cortex.
My startup is indirectly dealing with this - some schools are currently testing out app that helps children (and teachers for that matter) identify and manage emotions.
Early signs are that children can be 'prompted' to apply empathetic reasoning with the right interfaces, and this can be more effective than average teacher-guided instruction.
It's really tricky stuff to get right but there's definitely potential for improvement in this area. There has been (in Australia at least) a focus for the last few decades on teaching the definition of emotions - this is what sadness is, this is what anger is - and hoping that students get enough out of that to learn how to apply it in day to day like. Focusing on context and leaving it open enough for children to work it out for themselves seems to be more effective. Really tricky to actually pull that off in a classroom though.
My daughter goes to middle school in Moraga, CA. In the last 6 years since my son was in a nearby school, they've introduced a concept for making it easier for the children to tap into school counseling resources. Kids can visit the school's psychologist by pulling out a "Felt" card and giving it to the teacher. It serves as an emotional opt-out for whatever happens to be causing stress at the time and allowing the child to go talk about it to someone who has the skills and time to listen.
I asked her, "I wonder how many of those get used during dodgeball tournaments?".
A complicated answer to a not focused enough question about a TL;DR Article. The social skills like how to say you dissatisfied by someone's action or reaction is. But is that intelligence ? Affect regulation is closer in my view to emotional intelligence and can be acquiered to some extent but is more akin to language - the earlier the better. And the traits are very dependent on attachment patterns - relationship with caregiver.
"In the years since, a number of studies have supported this view. So-called noncognitive skills β attributes like self-restraint, persistence and self-awareness β might actually be better predictors of a personβs life trajectory than standard academic measures."
Only after practicing did I achieved some success in the above abilities, late in my 20s, and it has a huge impact on general well being, career trajectory etc.
The thing that we call IQ (or g) is a set of cognitive abilities in pattern recognition, problem solving, puzzles, symbol manipulation, and so forth. Insofar as "something" is measured by these kinds of tests, then IQ/g can be said to exist.
Similarly, the set of traits and behaviors collected under the umbrella of "emotional intelligence" are a grab bag of self-regulation, resilience, emotional self-control, insight into one's own mind, ability to form a working model of the emotions of others, ability to "read" the emotions of others, and so forth. These are less well defined than the abilities grouped under IQ/g but insofar as they could be measured through well-designed tests, then emotional intelligence can be said to exist.
Alternatively, there could be a functional or "effectiveness based" definition of emotional intelligence, even if it were less quantitative than IQ/g.
No. "Emotional intelligence" is a label applied to soft things so they can say "But normal intelligence isn't the only kind of intelligence! You can be smart in other things, too!" Or provide quips like "Well, you've got a high IQ, but your EQ has a long way to go."
Arguing over definitions and labels is usually unproductive. I think in this case, it does dilute the idea of intelligence (being able to reason abstractly), while at the same time, increases the emphasis on high intelligence.
We'd all be better off just defocusing on intelligence, as a: there's little control you have over your intelligence, and b: it matters far, far, less than what some of us programming types might think, and c: focusing on an innate skill tends to come at a cost of not focusing on perseverance and work ethic, which matter far more.
Personally, I wish there'd been less emphasis on how smart I was as a kid; perhaps I'd have more discipline. But alas, thinking about algorithms causes far more short-term reward than, say, cold calling, yet the latter is far more likely to generate success for me.
I'm confused by this question. It seems plainly obvious that some people are better than others at understanding the emotional states of themselves and the people around them.
Probably. Personally I like to call it emotional maturity. I'd be surprised if emotional maturity and immaturity couldn't be proven to exist. Obviously the 'norms' of emotional (social) maturity differ depending on society. But clearly there are people who just don't "get it" and don't or aren't able to act in line with the norms.
I can answer this question without reading the article: Yes. And it has to be, for most people. Except some people, who are incapable of it for physiological reasons. And there are some people who are so naturally charming and can read what others want that (but on a superficial level) that they become pyschopaths.
> And there are some people who are so naturally charming and can read what others want that (but on a superficial level) that they become pyschopaths.
That's not the definition of psychopathic trait (or disorder, or anti-social behavior) though. What characterizes it is diminished empathy and remorse, so in fact, it's a lack of emotional intelligence.
The point is that if you're free from remorse but still have a working mental model of other's emotions (like most humans), you can better manipulate other's intentions without guilty or other thoughts influencing your decisions.
We all fall somewhere inside an empathy spectrum, only the ones that fall at one extreme are characterized as bearer of psychopathic disorder, while the functional ones live normal (or almost normal) lives. There's a big chance you work for one actually, these people tend to be successful in leadership positions.
well, if they're charming, they clearly have some level of emotional intelligence that far supercedes what most of us have. Saying that they lack emotional intelligence is like categorically saying that you "lack scientific intelligence" because even though you are smashing at physics - because you couldn't find your way a periodic table.
Intuitively it would seem that if the desire is there, it can be taught. If someone doesn't want to learn, they won't. But if someone has an open mind, they can learn. There are many socially awkward people who bloom in college, or in leadership roles.
Open mind isn't enough. There are no clear unequivocal paths to improve social skills.
I suspect that lack of situational awareness and lack of concentration power/endurance is at the heart of most of these problems.
Knowing what to do isn't enough, you need to do it. But improving awareness and endurance of your awareness is only possible through months or years of training, especially meditation and trying to find more awareness in social situations.
I went through the book "The whole brain child" with my five yr old daughter recently. She absolutely lapped it up. I highly recommend it and the authors other books if you want to explore your children's (or your own) emotional landscape.
"[Goleman] exemplifies more clearly than most the fundamental absurdity of the tendency to class almost any type of behaviour as an 'intelligence'... If these five 'abilities' define 'emotional intelligence', we would expect some evidence that they are highly correlated; Goleman admits that they might be quite uncorrelated, and in any case if we cannot measure them, how do we know they are related? So the whole theory is built on quicksand: there is no sound scientific basis."[1]
So it's a pedantic argument over the usage of the word intelligence. Sort of like your original quip, no?
Locke suggests the use of the word skill instead; however the definition of intelligence is the ability to apply knowledge and skills.
Given that the NICHD is pushing for consensus, and that I am not (and neither are you, given your non-primary source) qualified to determine the status of EI, let's not dismiss it outright.
How about contributing meaningfully to the discussion instead of alternating between trolling and non-authorative copypasta?
I'll dismiss anything outright that is being used by moronic business-school twits that are using EI as a way to bolster their non-skills and nonsense MBA programs.
Another example of the government trying to be the parent here. How sad that the "nanny" feels that it must get it's hands on kids so early by nurturing them against those evil parents.
The government has largely supported things that have torn the family apart, now as the "nanny" it is trying to pick up all the pieces and completely replace (little by little) what is left of it.
Why? well two reasons...
1. To maintain and gain ever larger amounts of power and control (which requires taking more and more freedom, privacy and choices away from the people).
2. To rid the world of God and religion (which is necessary for number one to even be a possibility).
The government must weaken the people and make them dependent on it. Best way to accomplish this is to destroy what creates strong communities. Family and faith.
Belief systems matter more than emotional intelligence. For example, if you live in the Incan empire and everyone believes you're a god, it doesn't matter what your emotional intelligence is.
If emotional intelligence can be taught (which it can't, because the concept is as bogus as those Baby Einstein videos that used to be so popular, but never mind), then smart people will be the ones to master it. Why? Because smart people are good at learning stuff.
Do you have any data that people who are smart (at learning math and computers - I assume that's what you mean) are also good at learning to deal with people, particularly non-math people?
If anything, I have observed a negative correlation. And I know some pretty f*ing smart people.
I'm not intrinsically against the idea, but if you're going to teach children this sort of skill, the teachers themselves are going to have to be a bit more brutally honest with themselves about what the children actually deal with, or it really will just be one more feel-good exercise of no value.
Let me tell you what the kid is hearing here, or at least what a lot of the kids are hearing: "If I say 'Mommy, I don't like it when you scream at me' Mommy will just stop screaming and I can get away with whatever it is I may have done to trigger it." Or, Mommy might just as well scream back "DON'T YOU TALK BACK TO ME LIKE THAT." and keep on going; what then? If you're not going to address either of those issues, you're just adding another place to the curriculum where the children will learn to parrot back at you what you want to hear without actually changing anything about their lives. Honestly, we have enough of those.If this is going to work, the teachers are going to have to step out of the fuzzy-wuzzy bubble of school and address the real world interactions the children might actually experience, and not slant the coverage, so to speak.