Thankfully, we are not robots!

We know ourselves to be social beings who need one another and are reminded of it each day in various little ways. The lockdowns during the pandemic made that fact abundantly clear to us and the whole of society. Our vulnerability and need to be cared for is addressed in an article by Professor Argandoña published recently in the Spanish weekly Alfa y Omega, following the launch of our latest Communication Project.

But in addition to needing each other, we each play a part in various spheres of our lives. But unlike robots, we do not have the capacity to separate some aspects from others but can juggle those differing roles with ease and naturalness. We don’t arrive home placing our professional avatar in airplane mode, or work in the office with our personal antenna switched off. Fortunately, although it may seem like a nuisance at times, our lives develop and overlap on personal, family, professional and social levels. We are the fruit of the combination of all of them.

There are stages in life when some gain more weight than others, but very rarely are there times when one aspect of our life is blocked out altogether. We are born into a family, we interact with our friends at school, we are part of a sports or social group and we work to earn a living.

Our well-being and our balanced lives, both personal and mental, depend on stability and harmony in all these areas. And since this balance is recognised as being so crucial to achieving our true potential, we have entered a research partnership with the International Centre for Work and Family (ICWF) at the IESE Business School in Barcelona, to investigate and analyse the interaction between these spheres of life.

Over the next four years, three researchers from the research centre, led by Prof. Mireia Las Heras, whose credentials you can read about here, will be carrying out extensive research into this field. We will be disseminating the results of this in-depth investigation, which will provide a greater recognition of the work involved in creating healthy and strong home environments and family lives. The objective is to identify individual and collective strengths within the family sphere both in attributes and processes and to discover how they enable human beings to flourish.

We are pleased to announce this joint project partnership which builds on many years of collaboration with IESE Business School.

Needs and Gifts

Last week HRF published our timely communication report ‘Care at Home for those with extra needs.’ The message of the report is very clear one: it is in the home that needs are met and care is not just given but reciprocated. The focus of the report is on those with extra needs, broadly defined in terms of needing extra support for physical or intellectual disabilities.

There is another side of this coin that can sometimes go unnoticed. The specific care and support, not of those with extra needs, but of those with extra or particular gifts. The phrase “gifted children” is one that conjures up for many of us images of musical or maths prodigies, but in fact, a wide range of giftedness can be identified across the curriculum. It might also seem that this is a “non-problem” as surely the gifted are at a natural advantage at school and in later life?

A recent paper in the prestigious International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health suggests things are not so smooth as we might think.
“Emotional Intelligence Profiles and Self-Esteem/Self-Concept: An Analysis of Relationships in Gifted Students” by Ana María Casino-García, María José Llopis-Bueno and Lucía Inmaculada Llinares-Insa, looks at the lived experience and potential disadvantages of being identified as a gifted child. Evidence suggests that depending on the support and understanding offered to such children, emotional responses vary from thriving to vulnerability.

What seems a key driver in this is the recognition and nurturing of students’ Emotional Intelligence (EI). The development of high EI is connected to higher levels of self-understanding and esteem, but also understanding the motivation and needs of others. High EI can help build the resilience and empathy necessary for all children to thrive, but can be seen as particularly relevant for the mental health of intellectually gifted children.

It is the quality of such children’s relationships with others that is “one of the strongest predictors of their well-being.” Negative experiences of feeling isolated from their peers – “singled-out” – can result from being identified as gifted, if the identification is not followed up by appropriate support. The authors cite the importance of teachers and education professionals in this support, but conclude, tellingly, “The most important source of social support is family; family cohesion is essential for life satisfaction.”

The full paper is a detailed examination of the evidence building to this conclusion, but for HRF and our vision we hear the same, strong message: the irrefutable link between home, relationships and well-being. The home is where needs are met and gifts are nurtured – whatever those needs, whatever those gifts.