“Youngsters are growing up with too much information to process and not enough down time,” says Luckock. Which is why Brackett, himself a victim of childhood bullying, and Luckock believe the programme could transform the lives of thousands of students in Britain. In a recent Children’s Worlds study conducted by the University of York, England ranked 13th out of 16 countries when it came to life satisfaction in children, with poor body image and issues at school proving the greatest causes of stress. She is now training other teachers in the RULER principles. “I’ve always been involved in the pastoral side of the schools I have worked in and am a firm believer in caring for the whole child to help them thrive,” she explains. Following the unprecedented success of the scheme in the US, Lulu Luckock, a British teacher with more than 30 years experience, is spearheading the trend in the UK, having completed the course last summer. The programme was designed by Marc Brackett, a psychologist and head of the Yale Centre for Emotional Intelligence at Yale University. They are taught to express what has made them feel this way, and then taught how to read their classmates feelings and be empathetic, too. The acronym stands for Recognising your emotions Understanding them Labelling them and Expressing them in a Regulated way.Įvery morning children are asked to plot their feelings on a ‘mood meter’, with red meaning angry, blue for sad, green equalling calm and yellow meaning happy. Like many parents, it’s times like this that made my interest pique when I heard about the RULER programme being rolled out in primary schools across London, to teach emotional intelligence to pupils. It was as if nothing had ever happened.Īny parent will tell you that young children are famously difficult to read, but if Jago had a way of expressing why he had taken against nursery – fear, feelings of abandonment or even an issue with another child – it could have spared us a great deal of worry. We tried every trick in the book persuasion, negotiation, bribery, to no avail until one day, three months later, he moseyed into nursery without a backward glance and normality was restored. He was his usual self at home, and his teacher reassured us he didn’t seem unhappy at nursery, yet his refusal to go became a daily battle of wills. Having skipped into nursery every day for six months, one morning my typically sunny two-year-old Jago dissolved into a fit of rage and tears and refused to go in. New initiatives from nurseries teach children emotional intelligence, reports Kate Freud
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