Heart Matters: the Science of Emotion
This course takes a fresh look at the pivotal role played by children's emotions in behaviour and development. There is a lot of focus today on children's emotions - the terms emotional intelligence, emotional self-regulation, emotional well-being, and emotional-social learning are being bandied about like never before. Emotion, long dismissed as a nuisance factor, is now confirmed by neuroscience to be at the core of development and mental health. Yet little is being taught about the nature of emotion and the implications for parenting, teaching, or treatment. In this course, Dr. Neufeld puts the pieces together to make sense of emotion, revealing the emotional roots of many behavioural problems; clarifying the challenges for parents, teachers, and helping professionals; and showing the way through.
Topics include:
- 3 keys to emotional health and maturity
- why the brain depresses emotion
- what happens when children lose their vulnerable feelings
- walking a child up the 5 steps to emotional health and maturity
To make sense of emotion is to make sense of us all. This material is foundational for understanding human nature. While the focus is on children and youth, the material applies to everyone.
The sixth session was recorded using Adobe Connect after the completion of the course proper. In it, Dr. Neufeld does a critique of several common approaches to problem behaviour, then looks more deeply into the emotional origins of those behaviours. It is optional because it may not be to everyone's taste as a presentation, but the material contains unique insights of particular interest to helping professionals or anyone interested in psychology.
Making Sense of Preschoolers: What every young child needs us to know about them
No one is more susceptible to being misunderstood than the preschooler. Endearing, impulsive, delightful, brazen, obsessive, anxious, precocious, unreflective, dogmatic, generous, aggressive, resistant, compulsive, and anything but consistent – the preschooler could qualify for any number of personality and behaviour disorders. Unlike infants and toddlers, preschoolers bear a resemblance to grown-ups and therefore fool us into thinking that they are much more like us than they really are. Projecting adult psychology onto them is a typical mistake.
Using his many years as a developmental psychologist and his mastery of the developmental literature, Dr. Neufeld leads us into the interior landscape of the preschooler. He will provide insight into their separation anxieties, shyness, resistance, aggression, oppositionality and more. Making sense of these confusing yet wondrous creatures lays the foundation for intuitive and fruitful interaction with them
Topics include:
- the three characteristics of a preschooler that make them different from adults
- the three irreducible needs of the preschooler
- three characteristic behaviours of the preschooler that adults want to nip in the bud – and why we shouldn’t
- six common mistakes we make with preschoolers
This material is copyright and appears here courtesy of the Neufeld Institute