Parents and Children Education Association Online Press Release January 20, 2007

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 vividly told the story of her experience as a mother in dealing with her older daughter’s selective mutism from age 2 to 4. It was a gradual process for her to understand and accept it. Sandra then involved everyone around her daughter's life to help her. It was a touching story about a mother's love to help her daughter coming out of shadow of fear of speaking in school.
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. (Angela Chiu)