Practicing EQ is Second Nature for Mari and her dad, Damien
The author, Annie Dillard wrote, “Children ten years old wake up and find themselves here, discover themselves to have been here all along.”
It’s not everyday one meets a child like Mari, age 9. A student at Six Second’s Synapse School in Menlo Park, for four-years she has been studying emotional intelligence as part of the everyday Self Science curriculum. In this podcast, recorded with her dad, Damien, Mari talks about ways she uses Six Seconds “Self-Science” lessons in her everyday life to help her calm down and think about what she wants to do or say before acting or talking.
In this 9th episode of our podcast series “Raising Humans”, Mari talks with May Duong, Director of Parent Education for Six Seconds, about ways she uses EQ in relationships with friends. In one story, 
she talks about a time when she and her friends were fighting.
She describes the “mixture” of many feelings that came together during the argument, and how she took time to pull them apart into several categories, so she could understand her part in the conflict.
One of the key competencies Mari talks about using a lot is the Six Seconds Pause. This tool for navigating emotions helps raise self-awareness about emotions and how to understand them. Mari also talks about how her parents use their own Six Seconds pause when emotions are running high. She even quotes Thomas Jefferson.
Listening to this interview, I was struck by the maturity, wisdom and skill with which Mari discusses relationships, especially those with friends and family. I was also struck by the loving relationship that Mari and Damien have and the trust tha
t is in their family that things can be worked through between Mari, Damien, and Mari’s mom. It is remarkable that in just four years a person so young could master concepts many adults take decades to address.
For Damien and Mari, talking things through, coming to agreements, and sometimes agreeing to disagree are all part of the way they resolve conflicts and stay close.
As we get ready to launch our three week celebration of Universal Children’s Day, enjoy this podcast focusing on the first theme of the celebration: Self-Awareness! At the end of the program you will find May Duong’s EQ Parenting Toolkit, which has tips on how to practice this useful skill with your kids or anyone in your life.
Rachel Goodman
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As Mari describes her processes, she gives us great insight into her stage of development. It’s evident that she can’t control how much or how often strong emotions and strong desires appear — typical for her stage. But she has the tools to work with herself and others to bring all those episodes to relatively satisfactory resolution. Her training, combined with her self-awareness and augmented vocabulary, gives us a glimpse of how she steers through the turbulence of her own strong character and perceptions. For example….
There is a difference between mixed emotions and mixed-up emotions. Mari gave a fine example of that — allowing herself to experience many emotions during a situation and identifying each one. By doing that, she can own all those emotions simultaneously without guilt or confusion. If she didn’t or couldn’t do that, she would have mixed-up emotions that would likely lead to attitude or behavior disorders, such as when teens confuse anxiety with hunger. So Mari is on track for healthy development on into the next stages of her life.
Is Mari unusual or precocious? As I see it, yes and no. She reveals herself to be a child with child perceptions and child wants. She isn’t having insights or goals that are particularly “beyond her years.” But she has made EQ training and processing truly hers. And that has made her articulate and honest in ways that we rarely find in her age group.
I worked with this age group for several years, during the formative stages of what we now call emotional intelligence training. And I can tell you it is deeply satisfying to see children in Middle Childhood cast off tendencies to blame or deny and instead take responsibility for their emotions and their actions. They take pride in their new-found abilities, and they model a kind of citizenship we can all admire.
And by the way, kudos to Mari’s parents!