There's something new everyday. Friday morning I had an interesting chat with a young alumnus from Tianjin. They have two children, the older son being 10 years old. They sound worried about the boy.
They said, the boy is very special with high IQ and low EQ. Any teacher who has taught him says he is smart, but he has a bad temper, a strong personality and is always at odds with others. They believe his main problem is that he does not care about anyone or anything. True, he cares about our family but he cares more about his own feelings than that of others.
When I suggested that writing can help boost his EQ, they said, he is weak at writing and feels uncomfortable about writing. He is excited when it comes to mathematics or programming, having a strong partiality toward one subject.
Clearly the boy has a unique set of strengths and challenges. What would I do if he were my son, I asked myself. I would try the following:
(1) Encourage and support his passion since he loves math and programming.
(2) Find ways to sneak in writing skills with his interests in math and programming, like asking him to write a coding project or coding story.
(3) Develop his emotional intelligence by emphasizing the importance of understanding and empathizing with others' feelings.
(4) Teach him the proper way of anger management and conflict resolution. This he definitely needs to learn.
Ultimately he needs to learn to manage himself. The boy is only 10 years old. They still have time, but the window is closing fast.
A Chinese proverb resonates with this situation: 授人以鱼, 不如授人以渔。(Shòu rén yǐ yú bùrú shòu rén yǐ yú.) Teach a man how to fish is far better than giving him a fish. The moral lesson here is: If you give a man a fish, you feed him for only a day; if you teach him how to fish, you feed him for a lifetime."
As a parent, I believe it is very important to empower the child with the skills and knowledge to meet challenges on his own. Parents can't be there for the children all the time. While we nurture the child's interests, we also need to teach him valuable life skills, and guide him to develop emotional intelligence. This will have a lasting impact on his life.