Study On Group Work To Improve The Self-control Ability Of Children

Self-control is formed as an inherent ability when individual self-awareness has developed to a certain stage. The ability is an important factor to affect the individual growth and development in the future. Previous research has shown that the level of self-control ability in childhood could be used to predict the individual academic performance in the future. And it’s one of the most important factors in the individual socialization process. However, the only child who grows up in the self-centered environment, tends to be over-concerned about the excessive demand, and loses a lot of opportunities to improve self-control ability. Furthermore, with increasingly prosperous substances in the society, children are facing more and more temptations. So self-control ability is particularly important. Especially the children who are at the primary school stage, have to face with computer games, cartoon television, entertainment, junk food and other temptations while they must assume the obligations of education. According to E.H. Erikson’s theory, children at the primary level if the task is well done, will form the excellent self-confidence quality; on the contrary, if the task is not finished enough well, they will feel guilty and inferiority. Therefore, the appropriate cultivation of the children’s self-control ability could help children to adapt to community more easily and integrate themselves into the society more successfully.This article is on the basis of one project in a youth service community in Zhongshan, and using the self-control scale for children by Liu Jinhua. Four boys and four girls from430class of the Yaotiao village are found to be the team members. Through the preliminary observations and interviews, some targeted group activities are carried out to solve the main problems in the process and contenting the participators’ expectations of the group. The group contains six steps:the awareness of self-control, attention training, resisting the temptation, changing behavior, interpersonal relationships, and emotion regulation. The Activities include clarification of objectives, warm-up games, themes intervention, the consolidation exercise, and summary reflection. After the event, we can measure again by self-control scale. Through the score comparison of pretest and posttest, the sheet of participators’opinions and the social worker’s observation, the results show that the children’s self-control group can effectively promote the participators’ self-control abilities to upgrade. With the advantages of group work methods, social work should continue to be involved in the development of children’s self-control, actively carry out related work and help more and more children to enhance their self-control abilities.