Emotional Intelligence, Emotional Skills And Social Skills At School Age

Emotional Intelligence - Concept

The main components of emotional intelligence are (Catrinel, Kallay, 2010, p. 11):

•the ability to properly understand and interpret emotions of self and others; •the ability to acknowledge and express emotions that can facilitate thinking; •the ability to properly understand the emotionally charged information and effectively

use the knowledge about emotions;

•the ability to manage their own emotions towards intellectual and emotional development and to achieve wellbeing.

For the learning activity, positive emotional experiences represents a premise to achieving

academic success. The success of learning activities is encouraged by the intensity of the emotional

experiences, their duration, the expressiveness of emotional feelings that allows emotional

communication and the educator’s call to empathy as an ability to transpose themselves in someone else's

situation.

Emotional skills are developed largely by involving children in discussions regarding emotions,

expression or inhibition of emotional manifestation, attitude towards events, facts and queries from social

and educational environment.

Social skills refer to the children’s abilities of forming functional social relationships, easing

positive interactions, appropiate to the socio-cultural norms, thus reaching their goals, respecting at the

same time the needs of others.

The main risk factors in the development of emotional and social skills in children were grouped

in intrapersonal and interpersonal factors (Catrinel, Kallay, 2010, p. 38).

The intrapersonal factors can be further biological and cognitive .

Biological factors relate to the genetic, innate component, influencing how the child reacts to

environmental stimuli (internal or external), being visible through the behavioral reactions. One of the

genetic components is the temperament, manifested by predispositions at the level of emotional and

behavioral characteristics.

A brief analysis of the main temperamental manifestations at children, made the division into three

categories possible:

•children with easytemperament (well adapted in social terms, interrelate easily, follow the rules, effectively manage their emotions)

•children with difficult temperament (not respecting the rules, have difficulty following the instructions, are aggressive and show anger when they do not get what they want, have

difficulties in managing reactions of anger and aggression, are frustrated in situations in

which they must wait their turn)

•children with difficult to start temperament (are withdrawn, avoid interactions with others, express emotions and desires rarely, often need encouragement from adults, are shy,

prone to social isolation, sad).

It is well known that temperament cannot be significantly changed over time, but providing

appropriate behavior models at the right time, that children can acquire, can counteract the innate

shortcomings of the reactions. Experiences and how children learn social behaviors are a source of

compensation of possible deficits.

The second category of intrapersonal factors is represented by the cognitive ones, who have the

strongest impact on emotional and social skills. They can be divided in turn in two categories: the

theory of mind and language development level.

The theory of mind

The theory of mind represents the ability to read the minds of others, the child's ability to

understand that other people may have thoughts and emotions different from their own, which can

explain the behavior of others, based on less obvious cues, such as desires or beliefs.

Children with underdeveloped mind theory have difficulties initiating and maintaining

relationships with others, do not cooperate, do not offer their help, their social experiences are

characterized by failure, frustration and can reach mental health problems.

The adequate language development provides a more shaded verbal communication, increasing

the chances of higher quality social interactions.

Children can initiate discussions about emotions, which facilitates the understanding and

recognition of their own emotions and those of others, may require explanations and clarifications from

adults, can establish the relationship between cause and effect of events - emotional reactions -

behavior. Children with poor language development or who have speech disorders are far less likely to

interact effectively with others, having limited chances to acquire the skills necessary to an optimal

socio-emotional adaptation (Catrinel, Kallay, 2010, p. 39).

They could be stimulated to develop their emotional skills in classroom activities through:

•conducting activities in which students have to recognize and describe positive and negative emotions;

•encouraging students to write in a journal about their own emotions and feelings;

•recognizing the emotions of others and within their own emotions - description of characters, different role playing, dramatizations that can access many resources inner child;

•learning new coping and negative emotions managing strategies through discussion, role play, that one can analyze and apply alternatives to replace the states of rage, anger,

anxiety and sadness;

•modeling - teachers represent examples of emotional balance by how they defuse and manage negative emotions and moods.

Acquiring the social and emotional skills requires an optimal interaction of all the intra- and

interpersonal factors, that can represent a source of protection, ensuring an efficient adaptation of the

child to the environmental requirements. On the other hand, the improper interaction of these factors can

contribute to a deficient development of these social and emotional skills, that can develop into sources of

serious mental and emotional disorders.

In our view, the optimal emotional development represents one of the most important components

of adaptation, being necessary to maintain mental health and influencing the development of social

relations.

Awareness of the emotions is the basic ability to purchase all the other competences, allowing the

understanding of self and others emotional experiences, which favors, on one hand, sending appropriate

messages with emotional content and, on the other hand, the correct interpretation of messages with

emotional content received from others.

Both, pre-school and school children, learn about emotions and about the way they can be

managed properly in the context of social interactions. Emotional competencies influence the

development of social skills, being difficult to initiate and maintain relationships with people around in

their absence. In this regard, empathy represents the substrate of the cooperation development and of the

aid offering, necessary to the group integration.

Social competencies refer to children's ability to form social functional relationships with other

children and with adults in their lives, facilitating positive interactions, appropriate to cultural norms, so

as to attain their own ends, while respecting at the same time the needs of others.

Intrapersonal social skills are closely related to emotional skills, and acquiring emotional

regulation strategies favors the capacity to exercise control over their behavior, being essential for

establishing and maintaining relationships with others.

Same age children may be different in terms of the level of socio-emotional skills development,

which in turn are strongly influenced by a number of intra- and interpersonal factors. The development of

socio-emotional skills is the result of environmental influences the child is born and lives in, as well as

the family and educational environments, acting on the genetic component the child is born with.

Independent to the genetically transmitted intellectual potential, it can be "instilled" to children a

number of features, such as self-control, perseverance and activity motivation, which will become in

time, premises for success in life.

Worldwide, making a comparison with previous generations, it can be determined an alarming

development of emotional problems in children, manifested by emotion, anxiety, depression, instability

and aggression, that become very easy determinants of school failure and subsequently leading to dropout

or even aberrant behaviour.

In recent years, were not few the voices of psychologists who argue the need to introduce into the

curriculum courses to enable children to familiarize with the specifics of human qualities, which are

important to the life of each individual, such as self-control and empathy, self-awareness, the art of

listening, the art of mediating and solving conflicts, to cooperate (Stănculescu, 2008, p. 268), which will

allow for future adults, to manage their life through emotional intelligence, contextual cut-out situations

with personal ways of expressing their affective experiences.

There can be mentioned a number of modalities of exercising of the main dimensions of emotional

intelligence (Stănculescu, 2008, p.267):

� awareness of own emotions - involving recognition and naming of a wide range of

emotional experiences, discerning the causes of their triggers, recognizing the differences

between the feelings and the actions determined by them;

� control of emotions - implies resistance to frustration, mastery of the uncontrolled

outbursts and natural expression of negative emotions, without an aggressive manifestation,

building a positive self-image and adopting a favorable attitude towards family and school;

� personal motivation – induces the need to exploit emotions in a positive sense, by

cultivating responsibility and the ability to concentrate on a task;

� empathy - promotes sensitivity to the feelings of others, being possible by:

a) ideative-imaginative transposition in ones interiority and taking over the way

of thinking and achieving the social role (cognitive empathy);

b) emotional transposition, consisting of reliving the emotional-affective states

of one with whom he identifies with (emotional empathy).

�directing interpersonal relationships - requires:

a) cultivating skills to understand and analyze interactions with others;

b) the ability to negotiate and resolve conflictual situations;

c) developing the communication skills (assertiveness);

d) easy establishment of inter-group relations;

e) spirit of cooperation;

f) approaching a pro-social behaviour.

Specialized studies conducted in the last two decades reveal that the emotional intelligence deficit

increases the risk factor in the long term, concretized in failure in the couple life, in the parent role, in the

occurrence of violence, in psychological instability, dependence on alcohol, drugs or food.

It was also found that there was a positive correlation between low emotional intelligence scores

and high scores on the anxiety and depression scales. Children who come from dysfunctional families or

who have been abandoned by their parents, have reduced emotional skills, and those who live in an

emotionally disorganized climate, are very aggressive, impulsive and very anxious.

To achieve positive results, which may be induced by the stimulation of emotional intelligence in

educational practice, a solid research is needed, leading to the shaping of new curriculum materials. The

need to approach certain disciplines to develop social and emotional skills of students, was given by the

desire to prevent violent behaviour, juvenile delinquency, access to weapons, drugs, smoking, dropping

out of school. The results of these classes will be visible where students will learn to control impulses,

anger and will find appropriate solutions in problematic situations.

Karen Stone McCowen, founder of the concept of "The Nueva School " in 1967 in Hillsborough

and San Mateo, California, believes that there should not be a separation between the cognitive

development and the affective development, stating that " emotional literacy " is as important as the

learning of the specific knowledge of exact or social sciences.

Found under different names such as "Skills needed in life", "Self Science", "Social Development",

" Social and Emotional Study ", the discipline concerned discusses topics taken from everyday life, taken

from discussing actual cases, which concern children, such as misunderstandings that may degenerate

into violence, suffering from being marginalized, helplessness in the face of failure, envy, anger. All

subjects addressed by teachers in this discipline are related to the concerns of children, being examples of

everyday life, leading to a better understanding of their self and building the capacity to establish

harmonious interpersonal relationships and making their own decisions correct.

Teaching knowledge about the emotional-affective sphere must be embodied in the curriculum,

taking into account the mentality particularities of the students. An important role in this regard lies with

educators who will teach students to perceive the fundamental emotional experiences, to name emotions

and feelings they are aware of and to express them and using non-verbal language.

Children may be familiarized with more subtle meanings of messages using paralinguistic

elements that accompany verbal communication, such as speech intonation or modulation speed.

Correct perception of own emotions and those with which the child interacts, is the most effective

way to avoid distortions in different contextual situations through effective management of their affective

reactions, being possible to prevent conflicts.

Optimal emotional development is one of the most important components of adaptation, being

necessary to maintain mental health, influencing the development and maintenance of social relations.

Emotional Competence - Concept

The concept of emotional competence defines the human ability to recognize and interpret their

own and others emotions and the ability to adequately manage emotionally charged situations.

Emotional competencies are classified into three categories (Catrinel, Kallay, 2010, p.18):

� living and expressing emotions (awareness of their own emotional experiences,

adequately sending emotionally charged messages, expression of empathy);

� understanding and recognition of emotions (identifying emotions based on nonverbal

cues, naming emotions - "I am happy," "I'm sad" - understanding the causes and

consequences of emotions);

� emotional regulation (using age-appropriate emotional regulation strategies).

Children's experiences in dealing with professors, help them to learn about the rules of expressing

emotions, their recognition and about emotional regulation (Cucos, coord, 2008, p.515).

Therefore, emotional skills develop largely through social practices used by parents (having

discussions about emotions, attitude towards conflicts, expression or inhibition of emotional

manifestations).

Emotional competencies influence the development of social skills, being difficult in their absence

to initiate and maintain relationships with people around. In this respect, empathy is the substrate of the

development of the cooperational and offering aid skills, which are needed to integrate into the group.