Aptech International Preschool Organized a Series of Webinars on “Emotional Intelligence – The Quotient that Matters” and Stress Busters for Parents of Pre-Schoolers

Mumbai: Aptech International Preschool organized a series of webinars for parents of pre-schoolers. The webinar had eminent personalities and speakers from the industry including Fatema Agarkar who is the Founder of ‘Agarkar Center of Excellence’ and Neha Kare Kanabar, Founder, (UNIMO) Universe of Moms alongside a manifestation coach and Riddhi Doshi Patel, a child psychologist and parenting counsellor. The webinars aimed to educate the parents of young children and pre-choolers about the importance of emotion coaching, cognitive development and social skills development offering parents guidance to help their kids with strategies for coping with emotions.

So far, the brand has addressed these important discussions over two webinars, first one focussing on Emotional Intelligence, followed by a one on one conversation with a qualified child psychologist Ms. Riddhi Doshi Patel on ‘Stress busters for parents of pre-schoolers’. With the ongoing pandemic affecting not just the physical but also the emotional health of each of us and toddlers being no different; Aptech International Preschool has put these discussions on priority and intended to reach out to all the parents who can be helped through these webinars via a Facebook live medium.

Panel discussion on Emotional Intelligence and its importance in the life of children and parents

Video Link: www.youtube.com/watch?v=QqiIXmxfOik.

Emotional Intelligence basically is the ability of a person to understand one’s own emotions and others too, the ability to notice, understand and act effectively on emotions. Since the book release, ‘Emotional Intelligence’ by Daniel Goleman in 1995, study after study has proven that, “Cognitive skills-verbal comprehension, memory, reasoning and processing speed-will help academically, but they will only get a person so far in life. To really go the distance, those IQ traits should be rounded out with social-emotional skills like motivation, perseverance, impulse control, coping mechanisms and the ability to delay gratification.” Social skills are behaviours that promote positive interactions among people. It could start of by teaching them sharing, taking turns, cooperating and communicating clearly. Children with poor social skills are often found having a hard time getting along with other children or coping up in general.

Bhavika Chouhan, Senior Vice President & Business Head, Aptech International Preschool said, “What we intended to do with these webinars about ‘Emotional Intelligence’ and ‘Stress busters for parents of pre-schoolers’, is to address these important topics with parents to create awareness about emotion coaching; cognitive development and social skill development of their kids not only to be healthy physically but also to be able to make friends and do better in life in general. Lockdown required young children to stay indoors all the time and hence we felt this is the right time to talk about it.”

She further added, “At Aptech International Preschool, we have prepared our curriculum keeping cognitive development, social skills and emotional intelligence in mind. Through our webinars, we wish to guide as many parents as possible. Only the right guidance to parents can help the pre-schoolers acquire skills that will make a lasting impact in developing their overall personalities.”

Neha Kare Kanabar, Founder, Universe of Moms said, “Today we all understand the relevance of Emotional Intelligence in an adult life as well as in the life of kids, also an emotionally intelligent kid eases a mother’s life in so many ways. We at UNIMO are all about mother’s wellbeing and we all agree that a mother’s happiness is in the child’s wellbeing and that is all the more reason for me to use this platform with Aptech International Preschool to talk about such an important topic. Parents today are more open to having such discussions and I hope this webinar helped them in enhancing their parenting skills.”

Fatema Agarkar, founder of Agarkar Center of Excellence added, “When we talk about education, it is often fixated on performance and those performance goals are always about language acquisition, numerously brilliant, scientific discovery. We often forget that children are all about emotion, it’s how they feel and how they react to how they feel. Unfortunately we’ve all been in lockdown since March 2020 and have had the moments of impulse loss as adults. Imagine the little ones subject to all of this, locked in a house and no body to actually guide them about how to regulate those emotions. Social-emotional learning is a process of development that should begin early-on in life as it is all about self-awareness, self-control and inter-personal skills which would result in healthy mental health as one progresses in life.”

Talking about ‘Stress busters for parents of pre-schoolers’ which happened to be the second webinar by Aptech International preschool, Ms. Riddhi Doshi Patel, a Child Psychologist and Parenting Counsellor said, “There have been two sides to what effect pandemic has brought to parents and children, in a way it has been blessing in disguise and brought parents and kids together, they got to understand each other better. On the flip side we have been hearing about anxiety and panic problems, especially to the kids. This makes it important for us to address this as a serious concern. I am glad that Aptech International Preschool (AIP) picked this problem to discuss, this would help the parents to get a hold on the highs and the lows of dealing with their kid’s emotions at this time and in the future.”

She added, “Children in our generation got to play with mud, pluck flowers run in the field etc. Cognitive development is all about how much space you give to your child to be creative, to go out of their comfort zone and to be explorative. Given current circumstances, you could engage your kids in the kitchen even if the kid is only one and a half year old, give them a wall to play with colours without restricting their creativity. Talking about Social skills, though both cognitive and social skills go hand in hand, it is very important that as parents, you communicate (verbally and non-verbally) with your child, even if it is a one month old baby – this way you instil emotional vocabulary in a child.“

Aptech International Preschool brand has grown to be present in several cities and now has introduced its digitized and improvised model to the preschool segment. Aptech International Preschool is focusing its new curriculum on exposing the children to the 21st century skills also considered as core life skills for child development. The curriculum supports cognitive development, critical thinking, sequential learning and social-emotional skills.