Emotional Intelligence In Early Education - What the Experts Say
Undoubtedly you’ve seen the viral tweet going out by now. We’ve shared it too. Courtesy of Megan K. Stack her bio on Penguin Random House describes her as a reporter that has reported on war, terrorism and political Islam from twenty-two countries since 2001. She’s an award winning author, editor and now, she’s attracted the attention a different crowd. In case you happen to have missed the original tweet, here it is again.
If you believe it to be a profound take, you wouldn’t be alone. The sentiment struck a chord with many in the twitterverse with the tweet getting hundreds of thousands of likes, tweets and replies. It’s not hard to see why. Harsh parenting and strict teachers have been the wallpaper of many of our lives and in some cases the ‘suck it up’ mentality felt like the norm. So, when you hear today that young children are being taught coping mechanisms that prioritise their mental health, it can invoke a lot of feelings in adults today that have had negative memories associated with the topic. The below reply to Megan’s tweet is only one of many echoing the sentiment.
What really caught our attention was the conversation and attention it brought to early childhood emotional intelligence. Experts in the field have been speaking about the topic for years and fighting to change the social stigma of ‘boys don’t cry’ and ‘girls are made of sugar, spice and everything nice’ into normalizing raising compassionate adults that are aware of their emotions and not weighed down by societal expectations of what they should feel. They’re the ones that have flipped the script from tough love to learning emotional intelligence.
In one instance, Dr. Haneefah Shuaibe-Peters, in her TED talk at Union City emphasizes how preschools should be moving towards teaching children how to interact with one another and be ready for interpersonal interaction even at those early ages; instead of focusing on academics. She argues in her talk that life skills need to be taught before the age of 6 rather than the early focus on mathematics and literacy.
Click on the video below to watch her insightful and engaging talk.
Early Education and Care via Emotional Intelligence - Lael Stone
Further driving the point home is the Creator and Director of the About Birth Online Education Program, a pioneering way to learn about birth and early parenting, certified Aware Parenting Instructor, author and TEDx and Resilience Project speaker Lael Stone.
Lael takes a very compassionate stance on what she calls the lack of emotional literacy in our culture. She cites statistics on mental health in adults and draws connections between early childhood learning of emotional coping mechanisms to coping with distress as adults.
In her TEDx talk she wonderfully presents her case that every person, whether in the field of early childhood education or not can relate to. She also presents some helpful teaching and coping mechanisms for educators, parents, teachers and guardians of young children that can be well translated into adult situations.
See her talk below.
“How do we expect children to have empathy and compassion for other people if we don’t show them how?”
Lael frequently speaks on growth, development and helping those caring for young minds grow with them. To see more of her programs see her official website.
For the aforementioned Resilience Project click here.
Lastly for the birth online education program, click here.
