An excellent post by Elizabeth O’Shea with 14 clear, powerful ideas about being an emotionally intelligent parent. Here are the first 3 – how would it be to put these into action?
1. Accept our children’s emotions and emotional responses
‘That must have been really frustrating’ ‘Wow, you are showing me how angry you feel’ ‘That’s great, I can tell how excited you are’ ‘it can be tough when friends let you down like that.’ ‘You look pretty upset. Something must have happened,’
2. Help them label their emotions.
‘You sound upset’, ‘you look really down’, ‘I’m guessing you’re feeling really sad about that’ ‘You’re looking a bit worried’. I imagine you must be feeling….’ ‘That must have hurt’
3. Encourage children to talk about their feelings
‘Hey, you sound really fed up about that. Do you want to talk about it? ‘How did that make you feel?’
I like how she’s recommending a matter-of-fact approach to emotions. They’re real, they matter… and you have a choice about how you use them. As you can imagine just from the first 3, actually FOLLOWING these 14 tips takes a lot of emotional intelligence for ourselves as parents… but I’m equally sure that doing so would help kids raise theirs. The central challenge for me is stepping back and remember that my job as a parent is to create a context for learning together — when I remember that (not often enough!) I’m able to step back from the fireworks and enjoy the show 😎 — and treat emotions as something to talk about and learn from. Anyway, I recommend checking this out, and then please come back here and share your comments — which tip is most powerful? http://www.parent4success.com/821/14-tips-for-helping-children-with-emotional-intelligence/
Joshua Freedman
Wow, Thank you Joshua for sharing my blog 🙂
With pleasure. And thanks to you for sharing the good advice – which I will keep endeavoring to practice!
Label the feelings is the key tip.
For this one needs to pay attention to the feeling. Mere staring at it brings the intensity of the feeling down. Hippocampus as well as Amygdala do not bring in emotional memories not connected to the label and thats my understanding of importance of labeling.
Thanks Josh and Elizabeth O’Shea for a wonderful insights.
Thanks Joshua for letting us know about Elizabeth’s work. So many adults I coach are eager for help with raising their children to be emotionally healthy. It will be a pleasure to introduce them to Elizabeth’s article and website.
Thank you Joshua Freedman for sharing this article. Elizabeth O’Shea says so much,so well! Her way of going about each point with examples makes it self-explanatory which in turn will help to adapt to our ways.
After reading the post “children
Who understand emotions become more attentive” I have been looking for a suitable one for adults. You post this of Elizabeth O’Shea,such a match!
The question you have posed is seeming a tough one for me,Joshua. To me,each of the 14 points of Elizabeths’are so closely interrelated. So to pick and choose one is seeming difficult. I would choose point 2, naming feeling as important. By naming my feeling, I am able to convey what is happening within and with me. Naming the feeling helps to regulate emotions.
The most difficult thing for us is to get our 8 yr old child to talk. Her immediate reaction is to clam up and say she doesn’t want to talk about it or say I’ll talk about it later. We consistently try 1, 2 and 3 above – we’re not giving up on it but we are still not seeing the break through we hoped for.
Hi JU, does she ever say why she doesn’t like to talk about it?
Have you tried using emotion cards or pictures? Sometimes “putting it on the table” can help
My daughter didn’t like to talk about “issues” either, I think because she was anxious and she didn’t know The Right Answer… in this case it can help to avoid questions to which there is a right answer (eg instead of, “what happened,” try, “what was one part of what happened?” or… instead of, “what was the best part?” try, “what was one part?”)
Also, some people need processing time. EG, “let’s sit on the sofa for a minute and think about what happened, then I can tell you something I’m thinking about and you can tell me something you are thinking about.”
BTW emotion cards: http://6seconds.org/newstore/products/emotion-feeling-cards/