EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE

The Importance of Emotional Intelligence

A child who cannot focus his attention, who is suspicious rather than trusting, sad or angry rather than optimistic, destructive rather than respectful and one who is overcome with anxiety, preoccupied with frightening fantasy and feels generally unhappy about himself - such a child has little opportunity at all, let alone equal opportunity, to claim the possibilities of the world as his own.

Heart Start: The Emotional Foundations of School Readiness (Arlington, VA: National centre for Clinical Infant Programs, 1992).

The Practica Program offers parents the 'Big Picture' of parenting and one of the most important puzzle pieces in the intricate picture of child development is labelled 'emotional intelligence'.

Based on the latest research, we believe that secure and effective emotional and social development is the MOST important foundation that needs to be laid to enable a child to develop to his full potential. Love, is in fact, the 'glue' that makes learning stick.

How does the Practica Program teach emotional and social skills?

We start off by helping our parents create an accepting, warm and trusting inner atmosphere in their children during the early years. Our Practica Parents' Guide leads parents to understand where their children are emotionally at the different ages, as they develop from birth up to the age of 7. We explain WHY children act the way they do at the various ages - what goes on in their minds that motivates them to do what they do - and how to bring out the best in them at the various ages.

But we don't stop there - we also supply parents with hundreds of age-appropriate activity ideas to systematically develop the emotional and social skills in their children that researchers have found to link up with the typical traits found in people who are regarded as being emotionally intelligent.

Not surprisingly, an emotionally intelligent person is more attuned to his own feelings and is able to control his mood. He is better at "reading" what other people are feeling and reacting to other people's emotions appropriately. And he can influence other people's moods and actions, while truly validating their feelings and empathizing with them in a controlled and productive way.

Furthermore, if you want your child to grow up to be one of the emotionally 'smart' individuals in our world, science says that you will need to make sure that he gets a lot of opportunities to practice being able to motivate himself, postpone gratification, complete projects, talk himself through difficult situations and be self-disciplined and self-controlled.

The Practica Program gives parents the 'Big Picture' of child development. We emphasize the use of household objects, teddy bears and 'pretend play' to nurture emotional and social excellence in children, but we also provide our parents with a unique EQ board game to use in age-appropriate ways from the age of 2 years onwards.

Parents often report that they didn't think that their children were capable of doing what is listed for their age-groups in the Parents' Guide, but after trying the games a few times and seeing how quickly the kids caught on and enjoyed the games, the parents realized that the children were actually more than ready! They were WAITING!

PRACTICA is a Parent Support Program designed to make one-on-one stimulation more fun and more effective.

The early experiences which you create for your baby will determine how many neural connections will develop and how densely her brain will be wired.

Development unfolds like clockwork

Different areas in your child's brain will be wired at different times, according to a predictable, biologically pre-determined time-table. Your baby will be able to smile socially at 6 weeks because that is when the area in her brain that controls smiling will be wired. Similarly, the areas that enable her to focus on small 3-dimensional objects will be wired at the age of 8-10 weeks. That's why she will discover her hands at that age.

The list goes on and on: at 4 months wiring will set off in the areas that control movement in her upper body, which means that she'll begin to roll over and reach out to objects at that time. At 6 months she'll discover the connection between speech sounds and their meanings, also as the result of new neural networks forming in her brain. Literally hundreds of similarly interesting developments naturally unfold along the human child's developmental journey from birth to age seven.

Strike while the iron is hot

When you know which areas are being wired in your child's brain as we speak, you can deliberately develop extra dense neural circuits in your baby's brain by zooming in on the 'hot spots'. Practica helps you to stimulate your child with games and activities that are MOST appropriate to her needs, instead of stimulating her randomly, as if firing shots in the dark.

MILESTONES

Milestones are the specific physical and mental abilities (such as walking and understanding language) according to age of a child. Milestones are the major focus of Child development stages.

Milestones can be described as what a child accomplishes throughout the different stages in their life. An example of this would be eye-hand coordination, which includes a child's increasing ability to manipulate objects in a coordinated manner. Increased knowledge of age-specific milestones allows parents and other caring adults to keep track of appropriate development.

Crucial aspects of child development include: patience, problem solving, social skills, and creativity. All of these traits should be taught at a young age and practiced frequently. A common concern in child development is developmental delay. This concern involves a delay in age-specific ability for important developmental milestones. Early intervention and prevention of developmental delay are the major focus of research in child development.

DO YOU KNOW ?

A child is NOT born with a fixed intelligence.

Every child is born with genetic potential, consisting of brain cells which are separate from each other. The amount and quality of stimuli you provide cause brain cells to form connections. These connections determine the quality of your child's overall development . Your child has already reached 50% of his total intellectual abilities by the age of four and 80% thereof by the age of eight. After 8 years of age, notwithstanding his education or environment, a child's mental abilities can only be increased by approximately 20%.

WIRING THE BRAIN

From TIME magazine: Feb 10, 1997

A baby is born with loose brain cells - (The brain cannot function intelligently). Stimulation from the environment is needed to connect the brain cells, therefore good quality connections = good quality stimulation.

The Environment determines IQ.

0-4 years: 50% of a person's adult intellectual ability develops.
4-7 years: another 30% develops.
thus 80% of a person's adult intellectual abilities are developed by age 7

Time is IQ

SCHOOL READINESS 50 developmental areas form the key to academic and sport performance. The goal is to get to know your child's strengths and weaknesses and develop every area!
Physical body awareness spatial orientation crossing of the midline major muscle lateraltiy balance	Art & Fine Muscles manual dexterity eye-hand coordination eye-foot coordination tactile perception stereognosis eye movements
Visual Perception visual memory, closure, discrimination, sequence, pattern-following, conceptualising, analysis and synthesis, colour constancy, colour perception, shape constancy, shape perception, figure ground distinction, spacial relations	Language and Thinking memory, creativity, simbolisation, association, classification, general reasoning, sequence of events, active language development
Auditory Perception auditory closure, auditory memory, auditory localisation, auditory sequential memory, auditory conceptualising	Mathematical weight, volume, dimensions, numerical order, numerical conceptualising, numerical relations, calculations, counting skills, numerical symbols, quantity
YOUR CHILD'S SCHOOL READINESS SKILLS
The Challenge All 50 of these skills exist and develop simultaneously from birth to 7 years of age. When a child does activities at school, he uses these skills in various combinations. E.g. a child uses at least 7 of these skills to enable him/her to kick a ball. Because these skills are interdependent, underdeveloped skills have a negative influence on a child's overall performance.
The Problem Parents give more attention to skills that are well developed in their children. Stronger skills are therefore often overdeveloped while weaker areas are neglected. Why ? We buy toys that our children prefer. (Toys that focus on their strengths.) We repeat activities which our children are familiar with and those that we enjoy. (Games that focus on the parents' interests and talents.)
The Goal Only a person who can spend one-on-one time with a child, can truly get to know the child's strengths and weaknesses in all 50 areas of development and unlock his/her full potential through balanced stimulation. Parents do a lot to help their children to develop, but are still unsure whether they do the right things and if they do enough to stimulate and develop their children in a balanced way.
The Solution One frame of reference Practica offers one frame of reference, a single comprehensive structure for stimulation during the first seven years.
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