Nurturing Students with Psychology —— SUIS Qingpu Middle School Psychology Expert Lectures

Adolescence is a very important time in a child’s development. It is a time that brings both physical and mental changes. As an important part of the school’s moral education, SUIS Qingpu’s Middle School offered regular professional psychological support services for students and parents throughout the semester, inviting psychology experts and professors to the school to provide professional lectures for teachers, students, and parents.

Getting to know the child,

understanding the child

In middle school, parents can find that their children are becoming more opinionated, disobedient, or even silent and rebellious. On the afternoon of the 24 November, Professor Chen Mo, a supervisor with East China Normal University’s Counseling and Psychological Services Center, came to our school to give a special psychological lecture entitled, “How to be a parent of a middle school student”, talking to parents about growing up and adolescence.

Professor Chen Mo is a renowned expert in child and adolescent psychoeducation, and has long been engaged in child and adolescent psychoeducation and counseling. She is the author of “What’s Wrong With You, Children?” and “Middle-school Students in the Family”, among other works. Over the past 30 years, Professor Chen Mo has been invited to hold thousands of lectures for parents and training courses for teachers all over the country, and has studied more than 13,000 cases of family counselling. Her online course has reached hundreds of thousands of families across the country and has been watched over 18 million times.

Professor Chen Mo introduced her lecture sharing some cases she had worked on, spoke from a parent’s perspective, and used humour to engage the audience. She has observed that many children can be rebellious, causing problems for their parents. Professor Chen distinguished between ‘hard rebellion’, a display of rebellious behavior, and ‘soft rebellion’, which means to give up. She advised parents to look at the bigger picture when looking at their children. She urged them to appreciate how hard their children are working despite the pressure they are under. During adolescence, children gradually explore the formation of self-identity and place peer relationships as more important than parent-child and teacher-student relationships. Professor Chen also asked parents not to exaggerate problems but to look at their children’s growth, complement their peer relationships with healthy parent-child and teacher-student relationships, and guide them to establish their own social support system. She presented typical case studies of early love, phone addiction, anorexia and anxiety, guiding parents on how to give their children advice on some specific issues. By the end of the lecture, our parents had gained some useful tools to support their children through this challenging time.

Knowing Yourself,

and Loving Yourself

Entering puberty, children slowly find that their bodies and minds are changing, and some of these changes may take children by surprise and cause them anxiety. On 15 January, SUIS Qingpu’s Middle School invited expert Ms. Chen Shuanghong to hold a special psychological lecture for our students entitled, “Adolescent Sex Education – An Essential Lesson for the Growth of Adolescent Children”. During this lecture she talked frankly about the topic of sex.

Ms. Chen Shuanghong is a AACTP certified instructor of The American Association for the Certification of Training Program, a senior lecturer in sex education, a youth education instructor, a national psychological counselor, and a special guest psychologist on Shanghai TV. Being deeply committed to the field of youth mental health education, she also offers youth sex education workshops all year round.

Ms. Chen delivered two lectures with her usual warm style. She designed the two lectures’ content separately, focusing on the different needs of the boys and girls. Middle school students learned about physical health and sexual safety, aiming to help them to better understand their own bodies and their own growth as well as understand their own changes, all in a safe environment. She aimed to present a healthy concept of sexuality from a professional and scientific point of view. Adolescence is a time of life full of change and exploration. Equipping our children with a well-rounded knowledge of sexual identity prepares them to face changes with a positive and healthy mindset, and helps them to understand and love themselves. They are then better able to protect themselves, respect others, and recognize growth and responsibility.

Middle school students are going through a time of great change, and their emotions are strong, impulsive, and changeable. To support their mental health, SUIS Qingpu’s Middle School will continue to work with students, parents, and teachers, to focus on communication, universal mental health education, and preventive psychological guidance. We are looking forward to accompanying our students during this time of great change, and of being a positive support to their health and their mental growth.