Children With Emotional Resilience Do Better In School
Aug 12th, 2009 | By marshajacobson | Category: In The NewsA recent article posted on sciencedaily.com entitled “Children With Positive Outlooks Are Better Learners” discusses researcher Martin Seligman‘s contribution at the American Psychological Association‘s convention.
Seligman reiterated the importance of teaching positive thinking in schools as this is linked to overall success and happiness. Teaching resilience, flexibility, assertiveness and relaxation are just some of the coping and problem solving skills mentioned. He also states that it is “important to start in the formative school years.” This is a very interesting article.
Marsha Jacobson is author of "Boom... Boom... Boom...: A Story to Raise Your Child's Emotional Intelligence". She is a regular contributor of mychildfeels.com and you can visit her website at marshajacobson.com.
Hi, Thanks for the link to the article. Very interesting. In my own research we discovered that helping children to think and project ‘beyond’ a difficulty makes huge difference to their emotional resilience. For example when a child is upset or in an emotionally difficult place talking about what to do (positive) after this episode starts to instill the idea that emotions are transitory and non-permanent; that things will get better.
From our research we found that people who not have a lot of emotional resilience tend to get stuck in the moment. Those with greater emotional resilience tend to be able to think and project past the emotions of the situation and focus on successful resolution of the situation and had a belief in a positive future. Hope this helps.
There is an emotional resilience blog at http:www.fearcourse.com/blog which you might find interesting.
David