Sha-En Yeo is an author and founder of Positive Education, a company that conducts programmes and workshops on positive education and parenting for both teachers and parents.

People

issue 64 mar 2018

Enable Youth to Thrive, Not Just Survive

Positive education and parenting advocate Sha-En Yeo is the first person in Singapore to be awarded the prestigious Masters in Applied Positive Psychology (MAPP) degree from the University of Pennsylvania in the States. Always on the move to champion positive education in Singapore, she often ponders on how we can help our young children to thrive and not just survive in life. She shares with us her insights on this and how parenting can be made positive.

Sha-En Yeo advocates the three steps approach to positive parenting to encourage young children to thrive, and not just survive, in life.

Getting Started in Positive Education

A former teacher, Sha-En used to observe that students who excel academically tend to lack the necessary skills needed to handle their emotions and often struggle in managing their feelings.

“These students were academically brilliant but they often did not have the abilities to deal with failure,” she shares. “On the socio-emotional and psychological front, I felt that they didn’t have the skills to manage emotions well.” Wondering how she could help her students, Sha-En came across Martin Seligman’s book Learned Optimism. She began applying the strategies (promoting well-being) that she picked out from the book.

“If (well-being) alone can produce such an effect, what will more knowledge of similar concepts of well-being help to achieve?”

– Sha-En Yeo, a strong believer in positive education

“What I found next was that my students’ behaviours started to change,” she adds. Sha-En observed that they started believing in themselves and picking themselves back up when they experienced setbacks. These positive outcomes moved Sha-En to do more. “If a single concept alone can produce such an effect, what will more knowledge of similar concepts of well-being help to achieve?”

Further research into such concepts coupled with a stint in Guidance Branch (MOE) led Sha-En to discover a new domain in psychology called positive psychology. This prompted her to further her studies and focus on how to support students to cultivate the necessary psychosocial skills to help them thrive. As a parent herself, Sha-En also actively put these skills to use in her own home to raise thriving kids.

What is Positive Psychology?

Positive psychology is a relatively new domain in psychology. As an illustration, psychology typically focuses on the bottom of a scale and how we can move an individual up from a negative state of well-being to a neutral state; a state where one is free from having problems. On the contrary, positive psychology focuses on moving people from the neutral state to a positive ten. In this case, in order to enable children to live to their fullest potential and the best possible version of themselves.

Displaying Positive Parenting

“As parents, we are our children’s role model, as cliché as that sounds, but what does being a role model actually mean?” Sha-En says. To her, it means practicing what she preaches to her children. “If we want them to do something, we have to try doing it ourselves too.”

At home, Sha-En often reminds herself to be mindful of her actions and words used because children tend to be natural observers and can easily notice any form of inconsistencies between what was preached and what was actually done. “It is not that we have to be perfect parents. We just need to be more reflective of our actions,” she adds.

One can thus consider positive parenting as a way of life rather than a set of methods or rules that is set in place to ensure discipline. One benefit of such parenting style includes the healthy development of the child because of positive relationship with the parents.

Three Steps Approach in Positive Parenting

“It is not that we have to be perfect parents. We just need to be more reflective of our actions.”

– Sha-En, on the importance of reflection

“There are many ways to look at parenting. For me, I look at it as a three-pronged approach,” Sha-En shares. The three prongs of parenting comprises the self, environment and tools.

Self refers to the parents’ willingness to understand their children’s needs, and then cultivate their own disposition and skills to support them to thrive. This means spending time to reflect on their parenting journey and taking positive action.

“It is important for the parents to first know what they want for their children,” Sha-En explains. “It is also most parents’ goal for their children to achieve happiness and success in life, and be a good person.” Parents should thus also ask themselves: What can I do as a parent to support my children achieve those goals?

Environment refers to the child’s surroundings and settings. As such, it is crucial for parents to create a positive environment for children. An environment that encourages growth instead of one that focuses on the negatives allows the child to be better problem-solvers, feel good about themselves and be more creative. (Read A Positive Environment for Growth to find out how to nurture positivity at home.)

Tools refers to the set of strategies parents can use when interacting with their children that will empower them to thrive. An example is being able to encourage their children when they face a challenge. Very often, the child may feel like giving up; thus, the parents’ role to help them to persevere is crucial.

For instance, getting the child to switch to a different activity when they face difficulties with the first one might send them the message that it is okay to give up when the going gets tough. This message is likely be replayed in their life at a later stage. A better way is to work together with them in overcoming the challenges in the first activity. “We can let our children take a break first and then come back to try another way to solve it,” Sha-En explains.

By applying these concepts of positive education, Sha-En envisages confident children who do not measure themselves against a yardstick of academic results but rather, by whatever they may accomplish with their own effort; they will become children who not just live life, but thrive in life.

A Positive Environment for Growth

Creating a positive environment is essential for children’s growth and development. For Sha-En Yeo, she believes in the power of asking the right questions and listening with interest in what children share as a start towards creating such an environment.

For example, when a child returns home from school, a parent may ask them, “How are you?” and “How was your day?” Often, the reply is a mere “Good” and that is when the conversation ends. By focusing on gratitude, parents can ask alternative questions such as, “What went well today?” or “What was good about today?” Such structured questions prompts can help prevent monosyllabic responses from the child, giving him or her the opportunity to recall the positive things that happened during school.

“We also have to be present with our child when they respond and talk to us,” Sha-En says. Being present simply means putting full focus and attention on them while listening to their stories.

This may be hard to do as phones, work or other thoughts may distract parents. However, through listening, they can better understand their children’s day at school, emotions and troubles. This way, parents can also react appropriately to their children’s stories, which in turn, can help strengthen the relationship.