Teaching Emotional Intelligence: 6 Strategies for Parents

TL;DR

Emotional intelligence is the ability to deal with emotions, not only within oneself but with others as well.

Parents need to make their children emotionally mature as according to research, 80% of success at work or in life depends on emotional intelligence.

To make your child emotionally intelligent, teach them problem-solving skills by encouraging them to solve puzzles or cook. Acknowledge their feelings by listening to them attentively and being empathetic towards them.

Teach them gratitude and motivate them to be independent by allowing them to be a part of decision-making processes and allocating age-appropriate tasks to them.

Moreover, limit their screen time and ensure that the content that they are watching is educational and promotes positive values.

Lastly, always celebrate their success and failures. This is crucial as it promotes resilience and a growth mindset in your child.

Teaching Emotional Intelligence: 6 Strategies for Parents

To raise children who are destined to succeed, parents need to ensure that their child is brilliant in all sectors of life.

One factor that is easily overlooked and no heed is paid to its development is emotional intelligence, even though according to research, 80% of success at work or in life depends on emotional intelligence.

Don’t worry. It is never too late to start, parents can start working on their child’s emotional intelligence and predispose them to prosperity with the clear-cut strategies that we have laid out in this article.

Keep reading to learn more!

What Is Emotional Intelligence?

Emotional intelligence (EI) is a broad concept that involves the ability to adequately deal with emotions, not only within oneself but to others as well.

Developed by Peter Salovey and John D. Mayer and popularized by Daniel Goleman, it represents a critical human behavioral dimension beyond traditional intelligence measures.

What Are the Components Of Emotional Intelligence?

Emotional intelligence has several components, and each component is very important to build relationships, reduce stress, and live a happy life. Here are the five main aspects:

1. Self-Awareness: It refers to the capacity of individuals to recognize their feelings and understand the effects of such feelings on thoughts and behavior.

2. Empathy: It helps us understand what another person is feeling or experiencing. Sharing these feelings improves communication and develops important connections between people.

4. Motivation: This is needed to set goals and work towards them with passion and perseverance. It involves an inner drive that leads to proactive behavior and an optimistic attitude towards challenges.

5. Social Skills: It involves a group of competencies like communication, conflict resolution, and collaboration. These skills are valuable in interpersonal relationships, teamwork, and leadership effectiveness.

6. Self-Regulation: It involves managing emotional reactions, coping with stress, and adjusting to different situations while still maintaining emotional balance.

People who have high emotional intelligence enjoy several perks such as better mental health, increased ability to bounce back from difficult experiences, and improved capacity to lead others.

Emotional intelligence is not something that one is born with. Instead, it can be developed by engaging in self-assessment and learning constantly as well as practicing it in real-life situations.

This way people will be able to monitor their emotions intelligently, hence leading them to foster positive associations with others that eventually lead to personal and professional growth.

How Parents Can Make Their Children Emotionally Intelligent?

1. Develop Problem-Solving Skills

Teaching your child problem-solving skills will help them a lot in the future. You can instill this skill in your kid by playing games with them like chess, LEGO, and jigsaw puzzles.

Parents need to be patient with their kids. They should allow them to make mistakes and model multiple possibilities for them.

Focus on the process rather than the result and keep asking open-ended questions from them. You can engage in role-playing with your children to foster creativity.

Lastly, involve your children in cooking with you. Measuring ingredients and following steps will help them think critically.

2. Acknowledge Feelings

Parents need to recognize and acknowledge any emotion their child is feeling. One should never negate a kid’s emotions as this would leave them confused.

Always make sure to be empathetic to your kids and provide them with a safe space to vent their feelings.

Listen to them with your whole attention while making eye contact with them and encourage them to use specific words to describe their feelings by teaching them emotional vocabulary.

You can familiarize your child with an emotional wheel so they can exactly pinpoint and label their feelings.

3. Teach Them Gratitude

Encourage your child to look at the positive aspects of their lives. Continuously instill this awareness in them that they are living a very good life, and they should be thankful and humble about this. The best way to do this is to model this behavior to them.

You can encourage your children to write thank you cards for their friends and teachers and motivate them to maintain a gratitude journal in which they write 3 things they are thankful for every day. This allows them to reflect on the importance of seemingly trivial things in their lives.

Lastly, persuade them to volunteer at an old age, hospital, or orphanage. When they witness less privileged people than them, they will appreciate what they have more.

4. Promote Independence

Teach your children to be independent by allowing them to make choices and be part of decision-making processes.

Allow them to choose what book they want to read and what clothes they want to wear. Give them age-appropriate household chores so that they feel included and develop a sense of accountability.

If your kid makes any mistake don’t immediately step in to fix it, instead step back and allow your child to fix the issue on their own.

Provide your youngsters the opportunity to be independent by asking them to create shopping lists with you and take them grocery shopping so they can navigate the aisles, interact with the cashier, and learn budgeting.

Lastly, make sure that your expectations from your child are realistic, don’t give them tasks that are not suitable for their age, and realize that every child has their timeline so be patient and don’t be overwhelmed.

5. Limit Screen Time

It is very important to limit the screen time of your child because excessive mobile usage has been linked with impaired emotional competence and aggressive behavior, according to research.

Set clear and consistent boundaries and model healthy screen habits to your child by reducing your mobile usage first.

Encourage your child to engage in non-screen activities like reading, playing sports, or painting.

Furthermore, motivate your child to make friends and interact with family members. This improves their social skills and makes them confident.

You also need to be mindful of what your child is watching on the internet. Ensure that the content that your kid is seeing on the internet is age-appropriate, educational, and promotes positive values.

6. Celebrate Success

Celebrating success and embracing failures is crucial as it ensures resilience and a growth mindset in your child. Whenever your child achieves something, recognize their efforts, hug them, and praise them for it.

Share the news with your relatives to build a sense of pride in your kid. Motivate them to keep working hard to ensure growth and success.

On the other hand, if your child fails at something, provide them with emotional support.

Tell them that failure is a part of life and share stories of well-known figures who faced failures before achieving success.

Sit with them to reflect on the ongoing situation and analyze what went wrong so that they can grow and learn from their mistakes.