To find out what emotional intelligence is, read our recent blog post about it. Emotional intelligence is important in helping kids succeed. A higher emotional intelligence has been linked to high IQ scores, increased positive relationships, improved mental health, and overall success in adulthood.
Here are 5 steps to helping your child increase their emotional intelligence:
1: Name the Emotion
Children don’t always have the verbal development to label their emotions. They need your help in naming the emotions that they experience in life. When a child becomes upset because they want something they can’t have, it’s helpful to speak calmly with them and help them understand what they are feeling. They build their emotional vocabulary by using words like “worried”, “frustrated”, “angry”, “sad”, “painful”, “upset”, “shy”, “happy”, “hopeful”, “thrilled” or “excited”. Enabling a child to identify what they are feeling in their body will help them identify their emotion when in future situations.
2: Model Healthy Ways of Responding to Emotion
Children are like sponges, soaking up information as they watch and listen. If they see you experiencing emotion and coping with it in a healthy way, they’re more likely to replicate it. For example, when someone cuts you off while driving you could yell and curse and call the other person names with their child in the backseat. Or you could get frustrated and explain to your child that you are upset because that person could have caused an accident.
3: Empathy
Sometimes it can be difficult to show empathy towards your children, especially if they are being a bit dramatic. It’s important to remember that they are feeling what they feel for a reason, and they need you to validate their experience. Watch out for shaming them or dismissing them. Often parents are so busy in their own life that when their children are struggling with something seemingly trivial, their experience is missed or dismissed by their adults. How they learn to handle these “trivial” struggles will prepare them for handling “bigger” issues. Take a moment to pause and reflect with your child. Ask them what they think might be happening for them and what they might need to help them feel better.
4: Healthy Coping Skills
Many children learn coping skills from watching their parents. If a parent responds in anger, a child will learn to do the same. It’s important for us to know what our coping skills are and be able to teach them to our children. When you see your child becoming frustrated or angry, remind them to take 10 deep breaths, in the nose out the mouth – often referred to as bubble breaths. Have a child imagine blowing a bubble, if done too forcefully, the bubble won't form. There has to be just the right amount of breath. Other healthy coping skills include: changing activities, color, building blocks, going for a walk, listening to soothing music, or telling a joke.
5: Help them make good choices
Children need to know that they have options. Helping them identify and understand their options is a vital part of helping them increase their emotional intelligence. Helping them identify what they are feeling often gives them the solution to their problem. For example, my 3-year-old son loves whatever toy his little brother has. He gets very frustrated and can often get mean to his little brother if he thinks he will never get to play with that toy. My 3-year-old has learned that if he gets another toy that his little brother would play with, he can often get the toy that he wants. When he knows that he has options, he is far less likely to throw a tantrum and he can think through what he would like to have happen. Help children see that it’s ok to be frustrated or even upset, but that we have to make choices that don’t hurt ourselves or others.