PCE Club - Report on 41th Monthly Event

PCE Club jumpstarted the year of 2007 with its 41st monthly event. This marked another success for sharing and improving parenting skills with the participation of more than 50 club parents and their children. The event participants had the opportunity to enjoy the performance of the children and the insights from our panel discussions.

The PCE Club is a non-profit, non-religious and non-political educational organization. Its mission is to provide learning and sharing platforms to parents and children for their emotional intelligence development and their intercommunication improvement. This January event was held at PCE's regular site at the Asian Cultural Center, Edison, NJ. Dennis Wu (Club's Treasure), Angela Chiu (Club's Online Forum leader) and Cindy Yu (Club's President) organized the event. As usual, the night was broken down into two consecutive sessions: Children Talent Performance and Education/Sharing Seminar with children programs.

Children Talent Performance session was hosted by Cindy Yu. On this event, the clubbers had the opportunity to listen to a very talented 4-year old storyteller. Everyone, children or parents alike, was so attracted into her story and performance that you can hardly notice anything else existed. She's truly talented. We also had other 1st time comers to showcase their wonderful piano performance and singing.

After the talent performance, PCE Club Teacher Zhao gathered the children to upstairs for a fun-filled night while the parents got started on the parenting teaching and discussing sessions hosted and organized by Angela Chiu. Tonight's subject is: Coaching and Training Children's Behavior - Beyond Bribes and Threats: Alternatives to Controlling Children's Behavior

Dr. Angela Chiu first introduced the 5 panelists: Ms. Sandra Liu, Dr. Bonnie Liu, Ms. Yingting Zhang, Dr. Lewei Shang, and Mr. Sin-Kie Tjho.

Angela's open remarks promoted the purpose of the behavior training is to have a happy, competent and responsive child. As parents, we are confident that we all can parent well and should be with the mindset that we can all learn to be better at it. We should view parenting as gardening with most time to observe and understand and seize the opportunity to prune/fertilize using reward/discipline.

Angela then asked the panelists with questionnaires:
1) A good understanding of our children's temperament and development stages and our own temperament builds a good foundation for effective behavior training. What are the main temperament traits? (Sandra)

2) What are the main types of rewards and how effective are they? (Bonnie)

3) How to make a praise or criticism constructive? (Yingting)

4) What are the main types of disciplines and how effective are they? (Lewei)

5) Please share your general philosophy and experiences in behavior coaching and management (Sin-Kie)

Sandra candidly shared her own experience in dealing with her daughters growth issue at age 2 to 4. Every kid has unique temperament, or, even unique issues. Parents must first understand your kids' temperament, or trait, in order to find the appropriate way to interfere with your kids' behavior training using praise and discipline. The understanding part itself can be the biggest help a parent could give to a child. With the understanding, and with the right attitude of viewing parents as merely gardeners, we would already have the fundamentals. Then comes the detail skills. Her touching story moved the audience.

Bonnie in her usual scholarly way talked about rewards types to children. She talked about outer and inner rewards. Outer rewards include material stimulation and emotional/social reward. Inner rewards are the motivation and self-fulfillments. She promoted inner motivation to sustain good behavior. Self-esteem, a true mirror, knowing one's strength and weakness, comes from competence, it's not the same as feeling good. There is no need to shied kids away from disappointment and frustration.

Yingting shared her stories and experience for parents to build self-awareness. She thinks the parents' behavior directly impact the kids'. Setting up the right role model for the kids are parents' responsibilities. She shared many useful tips on making praise/criticism constructive, enlightened by the book "Mindset". We should separate the person from the behavior when we praise and criticize and the consequences need to be directly related to the behavior.

Lewei feels self-awareness and self-criticism as well as criticism are very important to mode the right behavior of the kids. As parents, we need to help our children to understand their true self. So the parents are to help balancing the emotions of the kids by either pushing or pulling depending on the needs of the situation.

Sin-Kie described to the audience his family system, which composites healthy development of ethics, intellects and physical abilities. The temperament of a child reflects not only his/her own genetic inclination, but also the subtle and not so subtle influence of the environment he/she is subjected to, especially the family setting where the combined as well as individual temperaments of his/her parents exert a powerful influence on the psychic of our children, and which by itself is an another very complicated dynamic system that could not be easily modified for the benefit of our children. Once we can truly appreciate all inner working and inter-locking forces that shape the behaviors our children, we would be in a much better position to formulate a more realistic and more effective strategies for managing and coaching/training their behaviors. A well constructed family system would enable children to understand what they are expected to behave and perform and their responsibilities as family members, as well as how a family can function as a cooperative unit.

The parents in the audience exhibited great interests in the conversation with questions about how to deal with their own children's behaviors in the parenting discussion. After their fun class, the children were all proudly showing their parents the paper-flowers they made with Teacher Zhao.

Our next event will be held on Feb 10th on the subject of teenager. Hope you can mark your calendar. To learn more about PCE Club, please feel free to sign up for the free emailing list at joinpceclub@pceclub.org. Or visit us at our website www.pceclub.org or http://groups.yahoo.com/group/pce_club/

一月十三日,父母子女俱乐部在亚洲文化中心举办了一次讨论会. 这次活动将以嘉宾列席的座谈方式探讨如何超越用处罚或奖赏的方法来引导和培养孩子的行为。
讨论会之前, 孩子们表演了自己的拿手节目. 最让家长和孩子们感动的是一位四岁的孩子 - 她把小红帽的故事不仅一字不差的讲了出来而且有声有色, 让每个人身临其境. 看完表演, 孩子们跟着俱乐部的招老师渡过一个愉快的晚上. 家长们则专心地参加讨论会.

讨论会是由邱岚博士主持. 嘉宾包括刘向群女士,廖冰博士, 张颖婷女士, 商乐维博士, 曹新基先生. 邱岚博士抛砖引玉, 给嘉宾们提出一些问题. 每个嘉宾讲述了自己独特的见解和经验教训. 这给大家提供了良好的引导和培养孩子的行为的参考意见. 听众也积极地参与和提问. 最后由于时间的关系, 讨论会带着大家的疑问和收获圆满结束.

请大家注意 - 2007年二月十日的活动已在准备之中. 议题是关于青少年的成长. 届时, 将会由青少年作嘉宾讨论和分享.

有兴趣参加的朋友请尽早报名，时间：2007年1月13日6:00-11：00pm; 地点：Asian Cultural Enterprises center，1876 Rt. 27, Edison, NJ, 08817。欢迎大家报名参加。有兴趣者可电邮至registration@pceclub.org。欲了解更多有关俱乐部的信息，请参阅俱乐部网站www.pceclub.org 或注册我们的免费通讯录可电邮joinpceclub@pceclub.org