Why Social Pain Needs a Sick Bay

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Happy children in classroom.  The Social, Emotional and Mental Health of Children

Dr Matthew Lieberman explains why we need to place more emphasis on social pain. Social pain, the pain from being rejected in a social setting or having your ‘feelings hurt’ is REAL pain. After watching this Ted talk, consider how we treat the student who expresses their social pain over the child who falls off the slide. The fall will often follow with a sickbay visit, call to parents and perhaps Panadol from mum when the child goes home. And then there is the child who was offensively and hurtfully rejected from their peer group, usually we ask the child to carry on with their school day and effectively to ‘get over it’, but after hearing this Ted talk, is this acceptable?