VietBlog

Susan Newfield writes about her experiences about teaching across cultures and how much humans have in common:

?We are all more human than otherwise.?—H.S. Sullivan

Each time I teach in Viet Nam this quote, from H. S. Sullivan, is confirmed. Having just completed the first week of workshops on Human Development and Behavioral Management, I was again impressed with its truth. The context was an international gathering of social service workers.

This year we were privileged to have Cambodian social service workers join the Vietnamese social service workers and WVU students in our workshops. As I presented concepts related to child development and parenting, I asked each contingent to share their experiences with the topic.

The discussion on parents? expectations for their children demonstrated that there were common desires to have children succeed in all of the attending countries. At times, this desire is so strong that children feel a great deal of pressure and this in turn may lead to depression and anxiety.

Teen use of self-injurious behavior, more specifically cutting, generated the same amount of concerned discussion as one might see in a similar gathering in the United States. Both Cambodian and Vietnamese social service workers indicated that this was a problem in their countries. The discussion focused on causes and treatment. All agreed that self-injury of this type evolves from attempts to numb emotional pain and that it is most important to address this pain with counseling, providing the teen with alternative ways to cope with the emotional pain.

Spanking for discipline also occurs in all of the countries represented. It is accompanied by the same reasoning as is used by parents in the United States. These include: ?I do this because I love you,? ?This hurts me more that it hurts you,? and the belief that if children are not spanked they will not learn right from wrong.

All attendees agreed that this is a difficult social/cultural attitude to change. This evolved into a discussion of the use of positive reinforcement, again with agreement that it is easier to see what children do wrong rather than what they do right. There was agreement that this is important to teach parents and child care workers to utilize positive behavior change strategies.

As I share this journey of learning and discovery with the workshop participants and consider the wisdom of H. S. Sullivan, I leave with the hope that each participant leaves with a greater understanding of these commonalities. I look forward to having the opportunity next year to continue this unparalleled shared learning experience.