Emotional Intelligence Tools: 4 Practical Tools to Help Your Children Develop E.Q.

Emotional intelligence tools can help your kids practice E.Q, but the ongoing effort required deters many parents who find it difficult to make time to nurture their children’s emotional intelligence.

Sound familiar? Do you wake up every morning with the best intentions, only to end the day frustrated, realizing that once again you didn’t find the time for this important task?

Fortunately, there are many practical tools today that can help us help our children cope, manage, and regulate their emotions effectively and progressively. In the article below, you will find a step-by-step guide to implementing some of them. You are welcome to read, implement, and share.

In this article, I’ve gathered practical tools from the worlds of coaching, NLP, and mindfulness that will help you guide your children practically in each of the four components of emotional intelligence.

Emotional Intelligence Tools: Using the “Emotion Map” to Identify and Name Emotions

Recognizing Emotions
The “Emotion Map” is a technique found in various disciplines, all of which share a connection between emotions, physical sensations, and visual mapping. The goal is to help children recognize their emotions,

name them, and refine their understanding by visually representing their feelings.

Here’s how to implement the technique:

1. Preparation: Prepare a piece of paper with a simple drawing of a human body, or draw a body figure together with your children.
2. Recognizing the Emotion: When your children experience a certain emotion, ask them to describe where they feel the emotion in their body. Then ask them to draw or mark on the body map the area where they feel the emotion.
3. Naming the Emotion: Ask your children to name the emotion. Ask, “What made you feel this way? Is it anger, fear, happiness, sadness, or another emotion? What is it?”
4. Characterizing the Sensations: Help your children describe the sensation. Ask, “What does it feel like? Pressure in the stomach? A stab in the heart? Heat in the head? What exactly do you feel? Pressure? Heat? A stab?”
5. Documenting the Findings Creatively: Invite your children to draw their emotions and sensations and give them a visual expression.

Emotional Intelligence Tools: Situational Breathing Techniques from Mindfulness

Managing Emotions
Breathing is a great tool for calming and managing emotions. Different types of breathing are suitable for different situations where children need to regulate their emotions.

Here’s how to implement the techniques:

• Square Breathing: This type of breathing is suitable for situations where children feel overwhelmed with anger or frustration and need to calm the body and mind quickly.

1. Instruct the children to inhale slowly through their nose for 4 seconds.
2. Hold the air in their lungs for 4 seconds.
3. Slowly exhale the air through their mouth for 4 seconds.
4. Then hold the air again for 4 seconds before the next breath.

• Flower-Candle Breathing: This type of breathing is suitable for situations where children need to focus and calm down before a challenging task or after a stressful situation.

1. Ask the children to imagine they are smelling a flower and inhale through their nose.
2. Then instruct them to exhale slowly the air through their mouth as if they are blowing out a candle.

• Diaphragmatic Breathing:
  This type of breathing is effective for general relaxation and reducing anxiety or stress.

1. Ask the children to place their hand on their belly.
2. Instruct them to inhale slowly through their nose and feel their belly fill with air like a balloon.
3. Then slowly exhale the air through their mouth and feel their belly relax.

Emotional Intelligence Tools: The NLP Perceptual Positions Technique

Recognizing the Emotions of Others (Empathy)
Perceptual Positions is a spatial NLP technique where children experience a specific situation from three different perspectives: their own, the other person’s, and a neutral observer’s.

This tool is suitable for viewing misunderstandings and conflicts from different angles, but can certainly help children deepen their understanding of others and strengthen their empathetic abilities.

Here’s how to implement the technique:

1. Arrange three chairs in a circle – one for each represented position.
2. Ask the child to sit in their own chair and describe in the first person how they understand the situation. Record their response.
3. Now, ask the child to move to the “other” chair and describe what they feel and how they understand the situation. The description should be in the first person, as if they are in the other’s shoes. Record their response.
4. Now, ask the child to move to the neutral observer’s chair and describe what they see and what new insights they gain from this position. Record their response.
5. Ask the child to return to the first chair, and discuss with them what has changed: do they see things differently, what have they learned, how do they feel now about the other person, and whether their understanding or behavior has changed.
6. Conclude the exercise with an empowering future outlook, such as, “It will be interesting to see how the deepening you experienced in understanding the other (friend) will help you understand others and other situations in the future.”

Emotional Intelligence Tools: Creating Clear Rules–A Coaching Tool

Behavior Management
Creating clear rules is a coaching tool that helps children manage their behavior by setting defined and agreed-upon boundaries in advance.

Here’s how to implement the technique:

1. Preparation: Sit with your children and decide together on a list of basic behavior rules that will help them deal with different situations effectively.
2. Reviewing the Rules: In a challenging situation, revisit the list of rules and decide on the most appropriate one to follow.
3. Reflecting: After each challenging situation, sit with your children and talk about what happened. Discuss how they responded to the situation and how using the rules would have helped them cope better.

Examples of Rules:

4. “When I’m angry, I take 5 deep breaths before I speak.”
5. “When someone is talking, I wait patiently until they finish before I respond.”
6. “When I feel like hitting or hurting someone, I get up and leave the room to calm down.”

Practical techniques and tools are an integral part of the process of developing emotional intelligence in children.

These tools provide you and your children with practical solutions for practicing the different components of emotional intelligence and an efficient and systematic way to train them in embedding these behaviors and identities in your children. This way, you can help your children deepen their emotional understanding of themselves and others and build their ability to manage their relationships with themselves and others in a healthy and balanced way.

Bottom Line

Emotional intelligence is a gained skill that develops in a long-term process, but the ongoing effort required deters many parents who find it difficult to make time to nurture their children’s emotional intelligence.

As you have learned from this article, there are now many practical tools that can help you help your children develop awareness and learn to manage and improve their emotional regulation skills. Among the tools, you’ll find breathing exercises, simulations of challenging situations, and creative exercises that combine mental insights with art therapy. These tools can provide children with an enjoyable, quick, and very effective way to respond to their emotions.

The Scary Lion That Growled in the Dark

The fear of a scary lion coming to the room at night, causing the story’s hero to refuse to go to sleep, is the emotional challenge at the heart of the book “The Scary Lion That Growled in the Dark”. The plot, centered on one of the most common fears at a young age, leads to a fascinating and surprising sensory exploration using an innovative NLP technique that has already worked wonders for many children.

It is the second book in my “Little Heroes” series, offering readers a glimpse into 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 fears, courage, and imagination, equipping your children with an effective technique to deal with nightmares and anxieties and allowing them to befriend the fears hidden in their hearts with a joyful smile.

Your Next Step to Success

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