Emotional Intelligence to Young People is an Essential Requirement
The enduring cycle of young people engaging in violence, childhood depression, eating disorders, anxiety disorders, and increasing rate of teen-pregnancy shows the disintegration of safety and civility on a daily basis.
The world is currently more isolated than it has ever been before, The tradition of young adults leaving their families to seek better opportunities elsewhere causes isolation and anxiety to rise.
Emotional intelligence ranges from having confidence, optimism, resilience, and delaying gratification to managing one’s own emotions effectively, fosters healthy relationships, and possesses strong interpersonal skills.
— Rien Shin
As what this week’s news brings us:
- A kindergarten-aged child was allegedly one of three young boys who broke into a home in north-western NSW while the owner was sleeping to steal her car keys.
‘In Bourke … we had a five-year-old child with two 12-year-old children breaking into a property and stealing a car,’ Paul Pisanos, deputy commissioner of regional field operations for NSW Police, alleged.’
‘I’ve never in 30 years of the police service seen anything like that.’
- A 14-year-old boy who had a “fixation with knives” stabbed a man to death, a court has heard. He is alleged to have attacked Mr Edgington after arguing with him in the St Pauls area of the city on 21 June. Bristol Crown Court was told the boy was overheard saying “I’m going to kill” before Mr Edgington was stabbed.
- Teen loneliness is on the rise, but why? Experts believe that loneliness could be why we are also seeing an increase in depression, anxiety, and other mental health problems in youth. The report from the Surgeon General found teens are spending 70% less time with their friends than they were 20 years ago.
- A number of youth have experienced and are going through the unfortunate reality of teenage dating violence. Thus, in 2010, the United States Congress declared February to be Teen Dating Violence Awareness Month. MPD Lt. Sadie Weekley said the department, on average, works a handful of cases every year. However, like with most domestic violence cases, teen dating violence is widely underreported.
These news are undoubtedly true and are hard to swallow, but it’s the bitter side of the world. Such heinous acts at a young age can damage the child’s mental health later in adolescence and adulthood.
Young people that are antisocial, isolated, and anxious in their highschool years, which are completely unsupervised at home starts to get engaged in drug taking, drinking, and engaging in petty crimes, such as theft and shoplifting. While for the girls, they don’t get involved much in violence — they get pregnant.
The key message here is to halt these, and by doing so, young people can acquire the skills needed to master emotional intelligence.
To prevent the occurrence of youth violence cases, Providing life skills would help them avoid being impulsive and maintain harmony with their peers.
Young people’s living standards may have drawbacks. Poverty puts them in a precarious position, and the child’s parents is more likely to disengage with the child’s feelings. Mothers who live in impoverished areas, (who are often single and jobless) are more prone to be anxious and violent, lecturing their child by yelling, hitting, and physical threats.
The child may find themselves in more challenging situations due to poverty. However, those who exhibit resilience and optimism typically possess essential emotional skills, namely the ability to have a long-term relationship with their peers, self-confidence, adaptability to any challenges, and an easygoing personality.
Mental health programs are offered in schools, but basic information and alerting a child to dangers are not sufficient to teach them how to prevent doing it.
Alternatively, courses that address more comprehensive topics such as ‘social development’, ‘life skills’, and ‘social and emotional learning’ can provide them with a broader understanding by utilizing cognitive skills such as managing their emotions, self-talk, and understanding. the perspective of others, instead of using the affects to educate them.
Emotional Learning Programs like commonsense.org is a digital non-profit organization that sets young people up to learn the basic concepts of emotional skills they can use to navigate relationships with their peers and develop self-awareness. They offer various courses to parents, along with the teacher and the child, and they use different teaching methods. Examples could include interviewing the child, presenting animal cartoons, and engaging in activities that aid kids in recognizing and managing theirs and others’ anger.
124 million families signed up for the program. It is also the digital tool for emotional learning used around the world, and is a go-to resource for millions of parents and caregivers, researchers, and advocates. Our EQ needs to be developed just as much as our IQ, and it matters more than ever.
”One book, one pen, one child and one teacher can change the world.”
-Malala Yousafzai