QUEST CAMPS OF SOCAL: The Importance of Social and Emotional Intelligence

Saturday, May 28, 2011

The Importance of Social and Emotional Intelligence

The Importance of Social and Emotional Intelligence

Information Provided by Robert Field, Ph.D.,
Founder/Director of Quest Therapeutic Camps,
the original Quest Camp in the San Francisco area since 1990.

There has been much excitement about emotional and social intelligence in recent years. This is in large part due to research that has shown that emotional and social intelligence are more predictive of later success than IQ and academic achievement. Emotional strength and social abilities, which includes logic, emotional stability and morality, have been highlighted as key areas for success in life.[1]

Emotional intelligence has been defined as:
The ability to take risks that are logically sound but may fail.
The ability to handle failure without loss of self-esteem.
The ability to learn from mistakes and develop further actions.
The ability to accept that life is not fair and too bad!
Resiliency-the ability to come back and try again.
Social Intelligence includes:
Social cues- the ability to read others' actions, words and nonverbal cues.
Social interaction- the ability to interact successfully with others, understand communications and articulate well.
Social understanding- the ability to observe, relate and understand the results of these interactions.
Daniel Goleman is considered to be one of the main experts regarding emotional intelligence. He has postulated that social neuroscience details how multiple lanes of knowing and doing spring into action as we engage with others. Goleman focuses on abilities like social cognition, as well as synchrony and attunement, social intuition and empathic concern, and the ability to demonstrate compassion. He describes these abilities as non-verbal and intuitive, noting that they occur in the span of micro-seconds, and have the power to shape the very platform for a smooth social life.[2]

[1] Cherniss, C. (2000). Emotional Intelligence: what it is and why it matters. Paper at the Annual Meeting of the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology, New Orleans, LA, April 15, 2000
[2]Goleman, D. (1998). Working with emotional intelligence. New York: Bantam.

No comments:

Post a Comment

ABOUT QUEST

Quest Therapeutic Camps of Southern California offer 7 weeks of summer day camps and rock climbing therapeutic social skills groups throughout the school year in Huntington Beach for children with mild to moderate social, emotional, and/or behavioral difficulties. Children who participate in Quest programming often have diagnoses of ADHD, anxiety, high functioning autism (previously called Asperger's Disorder), depression, learning disabilities and/or social problems.

Quest Summer Camps provide individualized behavior plans, group therapy, occupational therapy services, a 6 to 1 camper to staff ratio, parent meetings with home therapeutic goal development, and consistent positive interventions, while engaging in fun activities such as rock climbing, soccer, arts and crafts, and field trips such as high-ropes courses, trips to Knott's Berry Farm, the bowling, Boomers, and beach days.

School Year Therapy Groups

Ten-week afternoon therapeutic groups are designed to provide therapy by specifically targeting individualized goals for our campers. A minimum of one hour includes therapeutic activities that heavily target the development of social skills, emotion regulation, and positive behaviors, while the next hour focuses on further skill development by providing a variety of experiential activities as part of a group to create opportunities to observe the child in a natural setting and intervene to facilitate change.

Option 1:Evening

Therapy Group

Some quarters provide a special emphasis to improve skills, while other quarters have a more general offering based on the campers' interests and often include programming in areas such as video game making, drama, art, movie making, etc.

Option 2: Rock Climbing Therapy Group

Canceled for the time being due to ClimbX closing

Quest has been found to significantly reduce hyperactivity, impulsivity, aggression, and inattention, while improving peer relations, family relations, athletic competency, behavioral control and self-esteem. Quest has also been found to improve social awareness, social cognition, social communication, and social problems.