Raising An Emotionally Intelligent Child

🔗Connect

🔼Topic:: Education (MOC)

✒️ Note-Making

💡Clarify

🔈 Summary of main ideas

1. Emotions are signals - we shouldn't dismiss, discourage or ignore emotions, specifically negative ones. They are too both a sign, an open door to the child's emotional state, and a key opportunity for growth.
2. Emotional resilience is built through crisis - it is precisely the moments when emotions run hot that we can teach how to deal with emotions, and connect with our child, a two in one.
3. Empathy and validation is key - our child doesn't need a problem solver, and especially not a critic. They need someone who will listen to them, understand them, empathize with them, and validate their feelings
4. Children don't have self awareness yet - children lack the words to describe their emotional state, and usually don't know what has caused their behavior, which might be unrelated to the thing that has rattled them. It is our responsibility to help them become aware of their emotions, to label them.
5. Let them choose and make mistakes - don't come with a solution, or criticize them if they offer a bad one. Only ask questions to make them come up with their own solutions, and test them out themselves, learning what works through trail and error
6. Children learn from us - how we behave in our relationship, with others, with them, is how they will treat others

🗒️Relate

⛓ Life lessons, action items

🔍Critique

✅ by following this method, what will happen?

❌ the logical jumps, holes or simply cases where it is wrong...

🧱 Implementations and limitations of it are...

🗨️Review

💭 my opinions on the book, the writers style... This book is rather progressive to when it was written, but sometimes the age shows, like the chapter about fatherhood. But in other cases, it is surprisingly nice to see something so gender neutral.

🖼️Outline

📒 Notes

Preface

Now more than ever we need to help our children develop emotional intelligence. This is done through creating a connection with them. Parenting is about support and empathy, rather than creating submissive and obeying children Micro-Management. The key is how we interact with them when emotions are high. Usually parents tend to be either too cold or too loving which causes them to avoid dealing with those moments in the right way. They either avoid it, criticize it, or help the child avoid these emotions, which is counter productive.

Parents need to learn emotional coaching

PREFACE

• the ultimate goal of raising children should not be simply to have an obedient and compliant child. (Location 68)
• When parents offer their children empathy and help them to cope with negative feelings like anger, sadness, and fear, parents build bridges of loyalty and affection. (Location 91)
• Compliance, obedience, and responsibility come from a sense of love and connectedness the children feel within their families. (Location 93)

Emotional Coaching - the Key to Raising Emotionally Intelligent Children

The key to emotional coaching is not trying to dismiss or distract the children from expressing their emotions. Gaslighting such as "there's no reason to be angry" only causes them to lose their self esteem and trust in the parent, they feel distant because they are not seen.

Through emotional coaching, we can help them become more empathic, emotionally resilient, better friends, more self control and overall happier.

Emotional coaching is:

1. Awareness - Being aware of the child's emotions
2. Opportunity - Recognize it as an opportunity for connection, react to it, don't ignore or dismiss it
3. Listening - Listening "empathically", validating their feelings, seeing things from their perspective (active listening)
4. Labeling - Help them "label" their emotions, use "mirroring "
5. Resolving - Don't give up on your limits, but try explore other solutions to the problem at hand

This approach won't make all the conflicts go away, but it will make them less extreme and more rare.

EMOTION COACHING: The Key to Raising Emotionally Intelligent Kids

• even more than IQ, your emotional awareness and ability to handle feelings will determine your success and happiness in all walks of life, including family relationships. (Location 130)
• They don’t object to their children’s displays of anger, sadness, or fear. Nor do they ignore them. Instead, they accept negative emotions as a fact of life and they use emotional moments as opportunities for teaching their kids important life lessons and building closer relationships with them. (Location 151)
• The parents: 1. become aware of the child’s emotion; 2. recognize the emotion as an opportunity for intimacy and teaching; 3. listen empathetically, validating the child’s feelings; 4. help the child find words to label the emotion he is having; and 5. set limits while exploring strategies to solve the problem at hand. (Location 198)
• The kids who are Emotion-Coached still get sad, angry, or scared under difficult circumstances, but they are better able to soothe themselves, bounce back from distress, and carry on with productive activities. (Location 209)
• if you want to see your child handle feelings, cope with stress, and develop healthy relationships, you don’t shut down or ignore expressions of negative emotion; you engage with your child and offer guidance. (Location 247)
• With adults constantly invalidating her feelings, she loses confidence in herself. (Location 313)
• Taking children’s emotions seriously requires empathy, keen listening skills, and a willingness to see things from their perspective. (Location 315)
• when caregivers respond sensitively to babies’ cues—engaging in eye contact, taking turns at “baby talk,” and allowing babies to rest when they seem overstimulated—the babies learn early how to regulate their own emotions. (Location 342)
• We now know that kindness, warmth, optimism, and patience are far better tools than the hickory stick for raising well-behaved, emotionally healthy children. (Location 357)
• while not all behavior is acceptable, all feelings and wishes are acceptable. Therefore, parents should set limits on acts, but not emotions and desires. (Location 375)
• Empathy not only matters; it is the foundation of effective parenting. (Location 383)

Assessing Your Parenting Style

Unfortunately most of us are not born as emotional coaches, even if we are loving and caring, one must do introspection to see the nature of their parenting.

Four types of parenting:

1. Dismissive - ignores the child's emotional state, usually thinking that negative emotions are a problem that needs fixing by distractions or gaslighting. They believe that focusing on those emotions will only increase the problem, and are the result of the child's lack of perspective
2. Disapproving - thinks that negative emotions are a sign of weakness, a lack of character, and one must be punished for expressing them
3. lassie-faire - allows their child to express their emotions, but leave them be as is, without addressing it. They hope that negative emotions is just something to vent, and that the child has to learn on their own how to handle it.
4. Emotional coach - sees negative emotions as an important expression, an opportunity for connection and growth. Even negative emotions can be a source of communication, of information, and us parents should use these moments to help them learn how to deal with it. Emotional coaching accepts all types of emotions, but not all behavior. It's okay to be mad at your sister, but not hitting her. It's about truly listen ,sharing their feelings, being honest and open. They're not looking for an explanation, but a validation

ASSESSING YOUR PARENTING STYLE

• these parents assume too much personal responsibility for fixing their children’s every hurt, righting every injustice. It’s a superhuman job that soon becomes overwhelming; parents lose perspective about what their children really need. (Location 713)
• Told time and time again that their feelings are inappropriate or not valid, they grow up believing there is something inherently wrong inside themselves because of the way they feel. (Location 813)
• children who are reprimanded, isolated, spanked, or otherwise punished for expressing their feelings get a strong message that emotional intimacy is a high-risk proposition; it can lead to humiliation, abandonment, pain, and abuse. (Location 816)
• With their all-accepting attitude, Laissez-Faire parents intend to give their children every opportunity for happiness. But because they fail to offer their kids guidance on how to handle difficult emotions, their kids end up in much the same position as the children of Disapproving and Dismissing parents—lacking in emotional intelligence, unequipped for the future. (Location 861)
• Emotion Coaching works well alongside positive forms of discipline that rely on providing children with clearly understood consequences for misbehavior. (Location 930)

Five Key Steps for Emotional Coaching

The key of emotional coaching is empathy, it is to truly listen to your child, to empathize with their emotions, validating them. This empathy creates trust, and with trust comes the opportunity for you to think of a solution together, instead of telling them what to do Cooperation. Once a solution arises from them on their own account, it's much sticker. Empathy not only reduces the extreme cases in advance, it also gives them the tools to solve those later when they arise.

The five steps in detail:

Being Aware of the Child's Emotions

To be aware of others' emotion, we first have to be aware of own our emotions Self-awareness Some of us, especially men, are often taught to hide their emotions, until they become invisible to themselves, and turning emotions into something evil, which just causes them to be expressed through outbursts, rather than small drops. To be aware of one's emotions, it is helpful to useJournaling, to reflect on life's events and how it made you feel.

In those moments that we feel like we are going to burst on our kids, it's best to walk away and come back later, calmer. To take a break is much better than saying hurtful or cynical things that can damage their self esteem Rest. And if or when we fail, it's important to apologize, to repair. Tell the child that you're sorry, explain how you felt during and after.

To recognize the child's emotional state, it's worth remembering that most children would express their feelings through unrelated activities or words, they don't yet have the capacity to be aware of their own emotions and explain it clearly to us. Emotional Projection. Meaning that the cause is different from the behavior we see. Some might be more open for healthy self expression through Cognitive Distancing, like role playing or make belief, where they speak as a character.

Recognizing the Emotion as an Opportunity for Intimacy and Teaching

Negative emotions are solved only when they are recognized and Labeled, not when ignored. Also it's easier to solve negative emotions before they develop into a full (Jump:: Tantrum, face it when it's still small.

Listening Empathically and Validating the Child's Feelings

Reason and logic is not a useful tool in emotional situations. First we must listen, dedicate our complete attention, notice facial expressions, body posture, tone, everything we can use to understand our child non verbal communication Then, we simply reflect back what we think they're saying, with no judgment Mirroring. We validate their emotions, whatever they are. We don't try to assume, we give our best guess and wait for their response.

We don't try to give advice, we just listen. We help them find their own solution. Dont Jump to the Rescue. Note that this is not an interrogation. We are not trying to squeeze the answer out of them. A "maybe" and "I don't know" is good enough to continue the conversation. They don't have yet the self awareness to know exactly what causes their behavior.

They don't need a problem solver, they need a safe place to share their feelings.

Helping the Child Verbally Label Emotions

An important step of the process is to help them understand what they're feeling. We don't tell them how to feel, just give them words to express themselves, like "does this makes you sad/angry/jealous/excited" etc. once they are able to label their emotions, it gives them clarity, it turns the unknown into something manageable, normal. It removes the ambiguity.

Setting Limits while Helping the Child Problem Solve

Remember that in any case, the problem is the behavior, not the emotions. It has to be clear to the child that we have strict Limits with certain behavior, like hitting someone, but it's okay to feel angry or jealous. parental rules

Regardless, only once the situation quiets down, we can switch to a "problem solving" step. The best case is when we let them figure out the solution for themselves supporting independence, this helps them develop their own creative thinking and they are much more motivated to follow through due to Cognitive Alignment. We can continue asking questions to help them generate several solutions. Resist the urge to give your advice. Let them know that a solution is just a theory until it is tested, and you might need to test different solution until you find something that works (experimentation). Only as a last resort we can offer our guidance, if they accept it first ("Do you want my help?") Consent

THE FIVE KEY STEPS FOR EMOTION COACHING

• As empathetic parents, when we see our children in tears, we can imagine ourselves in their position and feel their pain. Watching our children stamp their feet in anger, we can feel their frustration and rage. (Location 1025)
• How is it that empathy can be so powerful? I believe it’s because empathy allows children to see their parents as allies. (Location 1031)
• for parents to feel what their children are feeling, they must be aware of emotions, first in themselves and then in their kids. (Location 1071)
• Emotional awareness simply means that you recognize when you are feeling an emotion, you can identify your feelings, and you are sensitive to the presence of emotions in other people. (Location 1078)
• For most men, becoming emotionally aware is not a matter of picking up new skills; it is a matter of granting themselves permission to experience what’s already there. (Location 1109)
• it’s best to avoid sarcasm, contempt, and derogatory comments toward your child, all of which are linked to low self-esteem in children. It’s also better to focus on your child’s actions rather than his character. Make your comments specific and tell your child how his actions affect you. (Location 1146)
• All parents make mistakes from time to time, losing their tempers with their children, saying or doing things they later regret. From about age four, children can understand the concept of “I’m sorry.” So don’t miss the chance to go back and repair an interaction when you feel remorse. (Location 1157)
• children—like all people—have reasons for their emotions, whether they can articulate those reasons or not. Whenever we find our children getting angry or upset over an issue that seems inconsequential, it may help to step back and look at the big picture of what’s going on in their lives. (Location 1335)
• While you can’t eliminate the differences in your experience, you can try to remember that your child is facing life from a much fresher, less experienced, more vulnerable perspective. (Location 1354)
• negative feelings dissipate when children can talk about their emotions, label them, and feel understood. (Location 1370)
• listening. In this context, listening means far more than collecting data with your ears. Empathetic listeners use their eyes to watch for physical evidence of their children’s emotions. They use their imaginations to see the situation from the child’s perspective. (Location 1381)
• interrogation can just make a child clam up. It’s better to simply reflect what you notice. (Location 1451)
• the act of labeling emotions can have a soothing effect on the nervous system, helping children to recover more quickly from upsetting incidents. (Location 1468)
• This doesn’t mean telling kids how they ought to feel. It simply means helping them develop a vocabulary with which to express their emotions. (Location 1473)
• it’s important for children to understand that their feelings are not the problem, their misbehavior is. (Location 1496)
• Children respond best if consequences are consistent, fair, and related to their misbehavior. (Location 1520)
• If you really want your child to own the outcome, you should encourage her to generate her own ideas. (Location 1561)

Emotion Coaching Strategies

Some helpful tips to make sure a situation doesn't escalate:

1. Don't use criticism - especially not humiliation when dealing with the kid. Focus on positive praise rather than marking every error. Also don't label your kids such as "dumb", "hyper", "smart", it limits their growth Fixed Mindset
2. Don't "side with the enemy" - avoid automatically taking the side of the authority figure in the conflict, try to hear their side of the story
3. Don't be a problem solver - don't try to enforce your agenda or solve their problems, hear them out, and let them make mistakes
4. Allow choices - they develop a sense of self and Autonomy once they have the ability to make choices. Don't decide for them, allow them freedom whenever possible developing capabilities
5. Share interests - be familiar with your kids dreams and hope, connect with them
6. Be honest
7. Think about the long term - you will fail, you will make mistakes, but don't be too hard on yourself, and don't give into temptations or try to force a quick solution to a crisis, remember that emotional coaching is the long term best solution

Emotional coaching isn't always an option, it depends on constraints of time, of audience, of your emotional state, and any boundaries that needs to be implemented. However, if it isn't an option right there and then, commit to a different time, preferably a quiet time, just the two of you.

EMOTION-COACHING STRATEGIES

• Minute by minute, well-intentioned parents chip away at their kids’ self-confidence by constantly correcting their manners, deriding their mistakes, and unnecessarily intruding as kids try to perform the simplest tasks. (Location 1646)
• Give them space as they try to learn new skills, even if it means letting them make a few mistakes. (Location 1654)
• Children need practice weighing their options, finding solutions. They need to see what happens when they make choices based on their family’s value system; what happens when they choose to ignore family standards. (Location 1801)
• the next time your child makes a small request—no matter how silly or trivial it may seem to you at the time—try not to perceive it as a battle of wills. Instead, ask yourself whether it’s really such a big deal that you can’t honor it. The results may benefit your child, who uses such interactions to develop a sense of self. (Location 1817)
• Kids are not robots and we can’t expect them to move through emotional experiences according to an arbitrary timetable. (Location 1919)

Marriage, Divorce and Your Child's Emotional Health

Children see their parents as Role Models for relationships. This means that couples who have a bad relationship between them, with unhealthy conflicts and harmful behavior transfer these behaviors to their kids. Not only that they will act worse in their relationship, for example be more aggressive, confrontational, and disconnected from others, they will also be less physically and emotionally stable, like a planet growing on polluted water.

Not only that it's impossible to hide your conflicts from your child, it's not recommend. They should learn how to solve conflicts in a healthy way from you, which makes emotional coaching a good tool for your marriage as well.

Also, try to avoid the four horsemen of bad relationship:

1. Criticism - avoid addressing negative messages towards your partner's personality, and focus on the action and how that made you feel, so instead of "you're irresponsible for never taking care of the house", do "when you don't do things like taking out the trash it makes me feel disappointed and unseen as the house's maid". Remember Hanlon's Razor, what we perceive as hostility can just be a matter of miscommunication.
2. Contempt - avoid any expression that is meant to cause emotional damage to your partner, like taking to them in a disrespectful way
3. Defensiveness - trying to defend your ego or redirect the blame instead of addressing the content of the conversation
4. Stonewalling - ignoring the conversation entirely, closing yourself up

But the worse thing that can be done in a relationship is to use the kids as tools in the argument. Don't "brainwash" them against your partner. They must know that whatever happens, they are not to blame, that you care and love them, and it's only natural to feel afraid or sad

MARRIAGE, DIVORCE, AND YOUR CHILD’S EMOTIONAL HEALTH

• the emotional health of children is determined by the quality of intimate relationships that surround them. (Location 2093)
• Couples who can openly express their inevitable differences and work through them have happier relationships in the long run. (Location 2219)
• If children never see the adults in their lives get angry with one another, disagree, and then settle their differences, they are missing crucial lessons that can contribute to emotional intelligence. (Location 2223)
• You can acknowledge that it’s upsetting to hear Mom and Dad arguing, but that sometimes it’s necessary for parents to disagree in order to work through problems. Again, assure your child, if you can, that Mom and Dad are trying to find a way to make things better. By the same token, let your child know that he or she is not the source of problems between you and your spouse. (Location 2409)

The Father's Role

There's a change in fatherhood, due to economical changes and the entre of women into workforce, the relations within the family changed as well. The father is no longer the bread winner while the wife is the care taker. They both have equal responsibility on the household as a whole. In addition, father's have a unique contribution because they play and act differently with the child, balancing the mother's views, creating an harmonic and rich education for their children. Father's tend to do more "rough" play, more make belief.

While it seems obvious today, it was so in the past, that it's essential for the child's development to have a father who expresses their love, interest and care, that connects with their child, share their interest, familiar with their thoughts and events in life, that spends time and attention to this relationship.

THE FATHER’S CRUCIAL ROLE

• Today, children’s safety comes from their fathers’ hearts. It is based on men being present with their children emotionally as well as physically. (Location 2658)
• Family life is “not only about providing for their families’ material needs. It’s about being there on a daily basis providing for the never-ending, ever-changing, day-to-day physical and emotional needs as well.” (Location 2746)
• Successful fathering is not about getting things done despite our children. It’s about accepting our role in this twenty-year work-in-progress called the growth of a human being. It’s about slowing down, taking time to be with our children one on one, relating to them on a level their age requires. (Location 2755)
• Sometimes the best conversations happen while families share chores like making dinner, washing the car, or weeding the garden. (Location 2769)

Emotion Coaching as Your Child Grows

The type of emotional coaching depends on the child's age.

3-6 months - the baby becomes active, responsive. He learns to communicate through facial expressions with the parents. This is when parents should be active in imitating their facial expressions and engage with them with a soft voice and simple words, and remember that nonverbal communication is also essential.

Note that babies are over stimulated in this point, which means that if the baby suddenly becomes distant or inactive, it's probably a sign that they're too tired and want to calm down. This is also an important skill to have, and we should allow them quiet time for that, instead of trying to stimulate them.

6-8 months The child has become much more reactive, capable of play and understanding some words, perhaps even crawl and familiarize themselves with the world. This is when we should be more focused on labeling their emotions, and note our own emotional state because they become much more keen in understanding our emotional state and connect it to the situation in hand.

9-12 months The child now has object permanence, which means that they are much more aware of what's around and not around them, specifically parents who go away and come back. Without a grasp of time, this can cause separation anxiety. It's important to focus on verbal reassurance that everything is fine and you will come back, and encourage the child to have independent play. At this stage, it's easier to play games of imagination

1-3 years

This is when they develop their sense of self, become assertive, and begin to form language. In this stage it is crucial to support their will of independence, and see things from their point of view

4-7 years

This is when they start to form relationships, especially with other children. It's crucial to observe their interactions and see that conflicts are resolved peacefully. It's easier for them to interact in pairs.

This is also when they start to play pretend more. Note that this play can be a door to their emotions, often they will choose to express themselves through a medium, like a doll, instead of talking about it directly. We should answer in turn through the same medium and help them resolve their conflicts.

8-12 years

In this stage, the social environment begins to expand, as the child becomes aware of social cues, of issues such as popularity, hierarchy and norms.

Also, the child starts to develop a sense of morality, and to understand that morality is more than black and white.

Be supportive of your child in both those changes, be aware that they might act in more gray areas than you would've like, but it's only a natural part of experimentation where they explore different behaviors and the implications.

Adolescence

Now the child begins to question not just society's morality, but also his own identity. He sees shades of grey within himself, not knowing what is the core. Also, a distance between the parent and child grows because the parents represents the past, the authority, and their previous identity which they wish to shed. Know that they have the power to choose how much distance to put between you, so be patient, supportive, and don't jump to conclusions thinking you easily understand their experience. Let them make choices, even bad ones

EMOTION COACHING AS YOUR CHILD GROWS

• pay attention to your baby’s moods and to respond to them. If your baby seems suddenly uninterested in play following a period of interaction, give her some quiet time. If your baby gets cranky in situations where she’s being held and talked to a great deal (a family gathering, for instance), take her away to a quiet room from time to time, where she can calm down from all the excitement. (Location 2924)
• you don’t need to approve of your child’s choices, you only need to accept them. (Location 3297)
• stay aware of what’s going on in your child’s life. Accept and validate your child’s emotional experiences. When there is a problem, lend an ear and listen empathetically, without judgment. And be an ally when he comes to you for help with a problem. (Location 3335)