Emotional Intelligence (EQ) is one of the top life skills you can teach your child.
According to John D. Mayer and Peter Salovey, who first coined the term, emotional intelligence is:
The ability to monitor one’s own and others’ feelings and emotions, to discriminate among them, and to use this information to guide one’s thinking and action.
It’s no surprise the extent to which EQ is developed during childhood can have a long-term impact on success during adulthood. Specifically, studies have found that children with high EQ:
- are more attentive,
- more engaged in school,
- earn higher grades,
- have more positive relationships,
- are more empathic, and
- are more likely to be pro-social; engaging in activities that benefit others.
As an adult, higher emotional intelligence leads better relationships, improved mental health, positive feelings about work, and overall lower job-related stress and burnout.
Given the importance of EQ and the fact that it can be learned, what can parents do to prepare their children to have emotionally stable adulthood?
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Spend quality time together with your child
Contrary to what it might look like, the amount of time parents spend with their kids is on the rise.
The time you spend with your child may be the best gift you can give to them. But with more parents working and the resulting increase in professional and personal responsibilities, it’s the quality rather than the amount of time parents have with their children that counts.
Research has shown that a child’s emotional intelligence is linked to the quality of time with parents, especially mothers.
Children who enjoy more quality time with their parents go on to develop stronger emotional stability compared to those who don’t. This affects their relationships, social interactions, and self-worth as adults.
The goal of spending quality time with kids is to love, understand, and develop the child into a happy, well-adjusted adult.
Accordingly, some activities can help to improve the quality of time with children:
- Have a daily “connect” time with your child, where you can have a face-to-face connection.
- Create a special daily ritual for you and your child
- Engage in hobbies together such as drawing.
- Reinforce positive behaviors by giving praise or acknowledgment.
- Whenever possible, eat meals together with your child as this offers a chat-time to let them talk about challenges and goals.
- Turn off technology when you spend time with your child.
Be open to talk about and express emotions freely
As adults, it can be difficult to share our feelings with our kids. We want to bring our kids into our emotional baggage.
But hiding your feelings from your child comes at a cost even though the motive is to protect them from negative emotions. The reason is that children tend to be sensitive to their parent’s emotions.
If you’re upset about something or having a conflict, your child probably already sensed it.
Developing emotional intelligence in the child is about them knowing that it’s okay to freely express how they feel and to recognize those feelings in others when they’re expressed. .
Understanding their feelings and being able to express them makes them less likely to act out by using temper tantrums, aggression, and defiance to express themselves.
Also, when children are clear about their own emotions, they can recognize similar emotions in other people. This is how they develop empathy and the ability to see from the perspective of others. As Michele Borba observed, “Before you can empathize, you have to be able to read someone else’s emotions.”
According to Michele Borba, author of Unselfie: Why Empathetic Kids Succeed in Our All-About-Me World:
“When kids can grasp another’s perspective, they are more likely to be empathetic, handle conflicts peacefully, be less judgmental, value differences, speak up for those who are victimized and act in ways that are more helpful, comforting and supportive of others.”
Some of the things parents can do to help their kids better express their emotions include:
- Ask a specific feelings-oriented question: Tell me something that made you happy or proud today,” or “What made you worried today?”
- Encourage them to use the feeling and the cause in the full sentence. “I felt proud that I helped my teacher”, “I feel worried about the math test tomorrow.”
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Help them develop emotional coping skills
There are significant life events that can cause psychological stress — like divorce, bankruptcy, loss of a job, or the death of a loved one. Even otherwise positive events like getting married, writing exams, job interviews can also induce distress.
The ability to deal with stress-inducing experiences requires a combination of behavior, thought, and emotional management skills known as ‘coping.’
Helping your child develop healthy coping skills at an early age can give them a needed lifetime advantage. Why? Because social-emotional skills in kindergarten are linked to positive well-being in adulthood.
Children, even as adults, may not have the power to change their situation. But the right emotion-focused coping skills can help them deal with their feelings so they don’t become vulnerable to high stress.
Once kids understand their emotions, they need to learn how to deal with those emotions healthily.
Knowing how to calm themselves down, cheer themselves up, or face their fears can be complicated for little ones.
People who can adjust to stressful or traumatic situations (and the lasting impact these incidents may have) through productive coping mechanisms may be less likely to experience anxiety, depression, and other mental health concerns as a result of painful or challenging events.
In a TEDx Talk, Lael Stone notes that the secret to raising kids who understand others’ feelings and empathize with them is to give your children the space to understand and express their own emotions.
If you provide a willing ear to hear about your children’s frustration or fear, they will learn to cope with emotional pain by expressing it to a loved one, therapist, or even just a journal.
Also, you can help them manage anger by learning to take a few deep breaths when they’re angry as this can help calm the body down.
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Strengthen your child’s self-management habits
In every situation, we have choices. That doesn’t mean we can control all of the variables, but even in the most trying circumstances, we can find space to figure out our options and then make the best choices available to us.
Parents can help their kids learn how to understand their emotions, contemplate their choices, and make proactive decisions.
Self-regulation/management is about how to manage ourselves, including our ability to manage impulses. It deals with the feeling that a person is in charge of their own choices and actions.
Children who are taught self-management habits are better able to deal with stress and anger, risky behavior, focus, and relationships with family, peers, and teachers.
As children get older, self-management skills help them navigate their changing social problems. And when parents role-play certain situations at home, children can learn how to face similar situations outside the house.
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Groom them to solve their own problems
It can be tempting to fix your children’s problems all the time. But doing this can hinder them from developing a vital aspect of their emotional intelligence — the ability to solve problems on their own.
Problem-solving skill is ranked as the #1 skill employers need, making it imperative for parents to nurture it in kids. Why? Because having problem-solving skills allows the child to learn how to identify and define problems as well as to generate and implement potentially effective solutions.
Children with problem-solving skills have the emotional strength to stay calm when faced with a challenge and not let a problem affect them and others.
According to research, people with high emotional intelligence are likely to adopt “insightful strategy” when solving problems as opposed to “trial-and-error” which is common with low emotionally intelligent people.
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Recap for memory: 5 Ways You Build Your Child’s Emotional Intelligence
Raising emotionally intelligent children is no longer a luxury for parents. The stakes are higher today and much more than IQ and technical skills, children who develop strong EQ will be better placed to succeed in the future in an increasingly connected world.
As a parent, you can help your child’s emotional growth by:
- Spending quality time with them
- Being open to talk about your feelings and listen to them express theirs
- Help them develop the right coping skills
- Becoming more effective in managing themselves
- Teaching them to find the solutions to their problems on their own.
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This post was previously published on medium.com.
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Photo credit: Edward Cisneros on Unsplash
