Modern parenting is hard. And around 70% of parents believe that parenting now is much harder than it was even just 20 years ago, according to Psychology Today.
And there’s no denying it’s vastly different from when grandparents or great-grandparents were raising their families.
However, at the core, parenting still has the same goal to raise children who are happy, healthy, and ready to take on adult life when they get there. And one area that’s becoming an increasingly hot topic is raising emotionally intelligent children.
Having children who understand, manage, and express their emotions in a healthy way as well as appreciate the emotions of others is a solid foundation for any person, and helping children get to this point as they grow up means they’re in a better position to handle adulthood and everything it will throw at them.
So how exactly do you do that?
Use Words to Label Feelings
Kids have to know how to label what they’re feeling. They need to know what each emotion is before they can begin to understand it and address it.
And this needs to start at a very young age.
Tell them you are noticing different changes in their behaviour: “I noticed you were upset your friend didn’t want to play that game earlier,” or “I noticed you have tears in your eyes. Are you disappointed over something or upset?”
Giving emotions labels with the right words helps your child build the vocabulary they need to express themselves.
Show Empthay
If you want your child to understand others’ behaviours, you need to show them, and this means showing empathy to them and to those around you.
Don’t try to minimize how they feel or dismiss it with comments that will have the opposite impact. Talk to them when they show different emotions, let them know it’s ok to feel this way, and that you have felt this way before. Again, model this on others, not just your children, so they see healthy examples of understanding others’ behaviours when they come across them.
Teach Healthy Coping Skills
Allowing your child to fully feel their emotions is a great foundation, as is labeling them. But they also need to know how to manage them too. They need to know how to calm themselves down, face their fears, cheer themselves up, or work through frustrations calmly.
And don’t be vague, teach specific skills they can actually use. Let’s say you’re showing them how to take deep breaths when they get angry or calm themselves down. Don’t just say “deep breath,” teach them to “blow bubbles,” where they breathe in through the nose, then exhale through their mouth as if blowing bubbles.
Other choices could be giving them activities to distract themselves, journaling, talking about their feelings, or even moving into teen group therapy topics that can be helpful in more serious situations when they get older to prepare them for things like adulthood, peer pressure, mental health, or loss or trauma.
It’s not just something you start as a young child; emotional intelligence changes as children experience more of the world and need to adapt to continue to be beneficial and give them the coping skills they need moving forward.
