Family Life Education Series
Training children to reach higher ground

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Most people would agree that 'change causes anxiety', whether in a positive or a negative way. For example, getting married and losing a job, both events will result in anxiety of a different nature or level; however, they are both nerve-racking so to speak. How do our children face daily changes in life and do we know how to assist them? In this article, Whole Person Development Institute Chairman, Dr Wong Chung Kwong, explains how through accepting changes in our own life we will be able to train our children to achieve higher expectations.

This is an era of rapid paradigm shifts and keen competition. Keeping up is hard enough, 'marching to higher ground' is even more difficult. A commonly shared wish of parents is that their children excel them. In other words, we hope our children will do better than we did and that they will reach higher ground. What quality and ability must they possess in order to survive and master the world of change?

In order to reach higher ground, people must be prepared to let go of their old ways. They must face up and adapt to change. Change is in fact against human nature because human beings are habit dependent creatures. 'Habit' refers not only to 'behaviour', but also to 'perception', 'emotion' and 'self-value'. Readers may recall that over the last 11 issues I have frequently referred to these four psychological functions. They continuously interact with one another to form each individual's 'personality functioning'. They form very powerful feedback loops and strongly resist change. For example, when people start to do something differently [behaviour], they often feel very uneasy or even insecure [emotion]. The outcome of their 'behaviour' may appear disconcerting [perception]. They may also come to doubt themselves [self-value].

To take another example, when people try to interpret something important in a new way [perception], they often feel uncomfortable [emotion]. When they try to behave according to their new interpretation [behaviour], they may feel even more uncomfortable [emotion]. The end result? They stick to their old habits Ñ their old ways of seeing, thinking, feeling and behaving.

This is why we need a method to enable us to take control of our 'personality functioning'. The model of ICAN serves that purpose. ICAN is a circular self-empowering process. It starts with 'Insight'. 'Insight' urges us to look inward to understand and take control of ourselves, and to look outward to understand and take control of life situations. This is followed by 'Confirmation', 'Abilities' and 'Nurture'.

Parents naturally want to do the best for their children and protect them. However, a time will come when we are no longer able to do so. So, it is important that we equip them with the attitude and skills of empowering themselves.

Training

Based on the model of ICAN, Dr Wong has developed a curriculum on 'Whole Person' education for secondary school students. Dr Wong and his staff have also been training secondary school teachers to teach this curriculum. So far 180 teachers have been trained. In the academic year 2003/04, each of the 180 teachers will be teaching one class of secondary school students to master the model of ICAN.

This is the 12th and last article in the present series and focuses on child socialisation and child-parent relationships. Dr Wong has made use of his ICAN model to illustrate his perspective in these topics. We will upload all these 12 articles onto the Healthy Lifestyle Website of POINT for easy reference by our readers.