Emotional intelligence is the ability of our children (and ours too, but let’s focus on the kids) to understand, manage, and express their emotions effectively in a way that serves them in life. This sounds like a great and noble goal, but what do you do with this promising message when your child is throwing a tantrum on the floor at the mall or hitting their younger sibling?
Sound familiar? Are you also struggling with how to foster your child’s emotional intelligence but find it difficult to come up with practical answers and tools to help you with this task? In the article below, you will find a detailed and benefit-focused explanation of the subject, along with a variety of parenting strategies that will help you help your children effectively. Feel free to read, implement, and share.
As you’ve understood, emotional intelligence is the ability to understand, manage, and express emotions optimally. Fortunately, it is a gained skill, something like an “emotional muscle,” that can be developed and strengthened from a very young age, making it a wonderful and beneficial skill for our children and an important and worthy parenting task for us.
So, what are the factors that influence your child’s emotional intelligence? And how does each one of them help guide your children toward more effective and beneficial behavior?
Emotional Intelligence: 4 Key Components and How They Guide Your Children to Optimal and Realistic Behavior
Emotional intelligence comprises several key components, each playing an important role in our children’s emotional development:
- Recognizing Emotions
Recognizing emotions is like having an emotional dictionary. There are seven basic emotions that children learn to recognize and identify from a young age: fear, anger, disgust, surprise, love, sadness, and happiness. Over time, they will learn to recognize and name additional emotions, deepening and enriching their emotional intelligence with all its elements.
The more your children can recognize what they are feeling, the better they will understand and learn how to respond appropriately to what is happening around them and within them. Awareness of different emotions and the ability to recognize them in real-time will help them avoid acting out of past habits that may lead to behaviors that do not serve them well, and likely will not help them reach their desired goals.
- Managing Emotions
Managing emotions involves the child’s ability to regulate their emotions and adjust them to the relevant situation proportionately. Managing emotions means knowing how to identify the emotion taking over, understanding that it doesn’t serve them, and knowing how to calm themselves when the intensity of the emotion is disproportionate to the situation.
For example, a child who used to react with anger when they didn’t succeed at something or who burst into tears every time something didn’t meet their expectations–after learning to recognize, manage, and regulate their emotions–will reduce the intensity of the anger or frustration and control their response effectively.The ability to manage emotions and regulate the child’s reactivity is very important because it helps them avoid extreme situations that don’t truly serve them and that they might regret later.
- Recognizing the Emotions of Others (Empathy)
Empathy is our ability to understand that other children (or adults) may feel differently than we do and to empathize with their feelings despite the differences.Children with well-developed empathy, can recognize when a friend or parent is sad and will try to understand the situation and comfort them.
These children are also likely to form better social connections than those who do not recognize or pay attention to the emotions of others. Recognizing the emotions of others is thus a very important tool in life, helping us to create strong connections with the surrounding people.
- Behavior Management
The fourth component of emotional intelligence is the ability to choose how to behave, with an emphasis on “choosing” rather than acting on “autopilot.”
Children with emotional intelligence are those who can combine what they feel, think, and understand socially, in order to cope with unpleasant situations resourcefully, meaning effectively. Instead of acting out of defense mechanisms like “fight, flight, or freeze,” children who manage their behavior and emotions in a controlled way can pause in the face of emotional situations to think, analyze their own or others’ emotional situation, and choose the most effective response.
Children who are aware of their emotional world and the emotional world of those around them will express their emotions appropriately, in words and actions. The practical implication is that children who learn to recognize the emotions within them and then manage and regulate them in a way that leads them to desired outcomes will know how to manage their emotions in the same way as they grow up.
They will use their emotional intelligence to help them succeed in life in many areas, such as effective communication with friends, academics, and later in life with partners and in the workplace.
Even if right now you melt every time, they either shed a tear of frustration or lose your temper when they throw a tantrum in the middle of the mall, remember that emotional intelligence is not an innate ability but a gained one, much of which is in your hands.
So, let’s see what you can do to help your children develop meaningful emotional intelligence and reap all the benefits we’ve mentioned.
Emotional Intelligence: Parenting Strategies to Help Develop Your Child’s Emotional Intelligence
Even if you are not yet aware of it, let me update you: the key to your children’s future is in your hands, and you have a crucial role in developing their emotional intelligence. Yes, it requires effort, and sometimes it can be challenging, but the result is worth it because when we help our children develop the ability to recognize, manage, and understand their emotions, we give them incredibly powerful tools that will affect and support them throughout their lives.
Here are some practical strategies you can implement:
- Help Your Children Recognize Emotions (Self-Awareness)
Recognizing emotions is the first step in building emotional intelligence. Only children who learn to recognize and name their emotions can truly understand what they are going through and progress from there.
Use the following tactics:
- Daily Conversations About Emotions: Take a few minutes every day to talk with your children about what they felt throughout the day. You can ask them how they felt in different situations and help them name their emotions. Ask, “How did you feel when you couldn’t complete the puzzle? Did you feel frustrated? Angry? Sad? What exactly did you feel?” … and so on…
- Using Books and Role-Playing: Read together books that talk about emotions or use dolls and figures to present emotional situations. This will help your children recognize emotions in others as well. Ask, “How do you think the character in the story feels now? What made them feel this way?” …
- Simulating Emotional Situations: Present your children with everyday situations that apply to them and ask them to describe how they feel in each situation. Say, “Let’s pretend you want to play with the ball or build a puzzle, but your friends disagree. How does that make you feel?” …
- Help Your Children Understand the Importance of Managing Emotions (Self-Control)
Managing emotions is the stage where your children learn to regulate their emotions in proportion to a situation. This is an important tool that will help them respond effectively to changing situations.
Use the following tactics:
- Identifying the Emotion in the Body: Help your children understand how the emotion manifests in their body. Ask, “When you are angry, do you feel it in your stomach? In your chest? What happens to your body when you are sad?” …
- Naming the Emotion and Examining the Situation: After the emotion is identified, it’s important to name it and examine what caused it. Ask, “What in this situation makes you feel angry or scared?”
- Evaluating the Response: Help your children understand whether their response to the emotion serves them. Ask, “You got angry and yelled when your sister took your toy, but… did that help you? Or would you have preferred to act differently? How?”
- Feeling Different: Help your children find alternative and more effective ways to deal with the emotion. Ask, “What could help you feel better? Maybe taking a deep breath, going to a quiet place to relax, or playing with another toy?” …
- Help Your Children Recognize the Emotions of Others (Social Awareness)
The ability to feel and understand what others are feeling, even when they feel differently than you, is called empathy (stepping into someone else’s shoes), and this is a crucial skill for creating positive and meaningful connections with others.
Use the following tactics:
- Asking Questions About Others’ Emotions: When you see an emotional situation in others, encourage your children to explore the subject. For example, ask, “Why do you think your friend is sad? How would you feel if you were in their place?”
- Observing and Discussing Social Situations: When you are together in social situations, talk about what you see. For example, “What do you think your friend is feeling when they are standing alone? Could it be that they need company?”
- Providing Quiet Support: Teach your children that sometimes all the other person needs is a supportive presence, without words. Suggest, “Maybe they just want to feel that they’re not alone? Do you think they would appreciate it if you simply sat quietly beside them without talking?”
- Help Your Children Manage Their Behavior (Relationship Management)
The ability to manage behavior is the ability to choose to behave in a way that serves the child rather than acting automatically, out of impulse.
Use the following tactics:
- Practicing, pausing and thinking: Teach your children to pause for a moment before reacting in frustrating situations.
Say, “Before you get angry or upset, let’s stop for a second and think about what really happened here.” - Reflecting and Understanding: After the event, talk with your children about what happened and how they could have responded differently. Ask, “What made you react the way you did? Is there another way you could have acted that would have helped you more?”
- Creating Ground Rules: Work with your children to define basic behavior and response rules that can help them manage their behavior. For example, say, “Even when we’re angry, we don’t hit. Instead, we’ll try to talk about what made us angry.”
These strategies provide you with practical ways to help your children develop their emotional intelligence. Beyond that, I’m confident you’ll find that this is a great way to strengthen your bond with your children and provide them with the essential support they need to grow and cope with the world in the best possible way.
Bottom Line:
Our children’s emotional intelligence is expressed in their ability to understand, manage, and express their emotions effectively in a way that serves them in life.
As you have learned from this article, emotional intelligence is a gained skill of great importance to your children’s success in life, based on four factors, some personal and some social, all requiring your active involvement.
While it may require effort, and sometimes feel challenging, the result is worth it because when we help our children develop the ability to recognize, manage, and understand their emotions, we give them incredibly powerful tools that will impact and support them throughout their lives.
The Girl That Brought Spring Back
Emotion management, dealing with frustration, and empathy are integral parts of the emotional intelligence of little Jordana, who steps up to help her beloved tree against all odds.
This is the first book in my “Little Heroes” series, giving readers an opportunity to learn important life skills in a light-hearted way, combined with eye-catching illustrations, precise rhyming, and a rhythmic flow.
This is a particularly empowering book about empathy, determination, and wonderful friendship, equipping your children with practical techniques from emotional coaching to help them face challenges and frustrations as they try to help the tree, against all odds.
Your Next Step to Success
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Click the pink button now and get them the book “The Girl That Brought Spring Back”.
