[Consumerwide - HueSoung Jun Reporter / Yohan Bok Reporter]  A Conselling Single Parent Families event was held for 50 single parents who are currently caring for children from infant to teen at the Communicty House Masil Livehall at 3 p.m. on May 17. The event is a part of a project to support the self-reliance of single-parent families and is facilitated by BAT Rothmans and the Korea Welfare Services. Choi Sungae, the writer of Emotion Coaching and the director of HD Happy Lab (phd. in Human Development at Cicago University), offered the effective ways to nurture children based on sharing emotions and trust and spent time with participants listening to them and coaching individually.

On that day, Kim Munju, the director of KWS, said, "BATRothmans has been corportating the single parent family project of KWS for the last 9 years, while also supporting the self-reliance of teens. The seminar is one of the single parent support projects initiated by KWS, and we are planning on covering more areas in the future. Over 60 people came, and I hope you all will enjoy today, reminding us that this time is only once in a lifetime."

During the Conselling Single Parent Families event, they offered a lecture by Choi Sungae and customised individual counselling essions. The director, Choi, emphasised that a parent can nurture children upright and healthfully when they are parented with emotional coaching.

The director, Choi, said, "The chatbot answered that a happy child maintains emotional, social, and self-intelligence, and their happiness is not measured by IQ. A child with high emotional intelligence says the child is capable of understanding themselves, managing their own emotions, understanding the emotions of others, and managing stresses, thus responding to any social situations accordingly. Emotion coaching is the way to nurture the emotional intelligence referring to the chatbot. Emotional coaching is a technique that is used to improve emotional intelligence, and it improves capacity for healthy relationships with people around them based on growing to recognise and express self-emotions while also understanding and sharing emotions of others and managing their own stresses."

Choi, the director, emphasised that when children are nurtured with the emotion coaching, whether they are infants, teens, or adults, they can build good relationships with their parents and people around them.

She said, "Children are familiar with the action coach, which is the way their parents or teachers used to handle children. The action coaching gives punishment for bad actions and awards for good actions, such as giving stickers for good behaviour or performance and giving punishment in the way that the child feels unworthy or uncomfortable, aiming to fix the behaviour of the child. This trend has been ongoing for the last century. But it resulted in negative aspects."

The director, Choi, has demonstrated the negative aspect of action coaching on that day. There were cases such as a child swearing at their parents, taking parents out of the house by changing the password of the door, being rebellious, or threatening parents ("saying I will kill you").

Choi, the director, said, "The action coaching is fixing the action of the child by award and punishment. However, children brought up in this way are likely to feel that they are controlled to learn the good ways without any choice, which will eventually break the relationship between carers and the children. In the emotion coaching, the parents teach children that they can understand their emotions and be able to handle them. This is the core of emotional intelligence, and ultimately it guides them to choose to take the right actions. We help them to learn by themselves by developing inner control capacity, which is a very relational method. Just like learning to swim or bike, the emotional coaching becomes theirs, which means they will have high capacity to grow as good dad and husband with emotional coaching capacity in the future."

Choi, the director, has advised them to clearly demonstrate the limit to their actions, though their emotions are fully accepted. Without limit, children will think they can do whatever pleases them, which will even harm themselves or others.

"The parents, or grownups, have got to stand alongside them in order to help them learn to control their own emotions, share emotions, and communicate with people around them. Just like children go through crolling, standing, and walking before running. They can coach their own emotions only after multiple sessions of practice in real situations that involve emotions. This is similar to the way of training to swim in a water environment.

Today, if you fail to communicate with them or are not able to see even their face, I encourage you to number 50 positive things about them. If you don't find any, start by finding yours. When you discover 50 good things about yourself, you will soon discover of others as well. After that, write the 50 positive things about them on a sheet of paper and stick on the doors or entrance door. This will open the door for your relationship with them."

During the individual counselling session, Choi, the director, answered with the importance of emotional coaching for children.

Mr. A shared that he had to stop the games and YouTube watching of his son, who is in the first grade of elementary school, as he won't stop the whole day long. And this resulted in an uncomfortable relationship between them. And Choi, the director, advised, "Children will eventually do what they want to do if you simply stop them. Thus, I recommend parents find other activities, which may bring so much fun, so that they won't find their smartphones again because their current time is worth more than the phones."

Ms. B shared that her children would constantly talk back to her instead of listening. And Choi, the director, responded, "Talking back is a good sign, which we should welcome. If children stop talking, who's going to fill the gap? It can be more serious. Once you get to talk with them, I encourage you to tone down your voice, and that will make them tone down as well naturally."

Kim Geonhee, the director of BATRothmans, said after closing the event, "We BATrothmans, which company bears variety and embracement as primary values, have been supporting this event for the last eight years in order to bring good impact amongst the single parents. We will continually support and make extra effort for them."