EQ Parenting

Insight and advice for parents and caregivers on creating an emotionally intelligent family. Also includes a few articles for kids.

Getting Off the Trouble Train

“Have you ever found yourself in the middle a situation and you know it will to turn into a big mess? You can feel it slipping out of control… and yet you keep going. It’s as if you’re being pushed along this track; you know it’s going to lead to trouble, but it seems like there’s no choice.”

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Decoding Emotions

Smarter About Feelings: Part Two . Part One introduced the idea of becoming smarter about feelings — and how that can help you (kids) get more of what you want… and less of what you don’t want!  In that article I promised that I’d also write more about emotions and the meaning behind our feelings.  […]

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Smarter About Feelings

When I was a kid, no one taught me about emotions. They’re so powerful! And such a big part of our lives… here are the most important ideas every kid (and adult) needs to know about feelings.

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Mixed Emotions- Parenting Young Adults (#14)

2020 is a time of upheaval as we grapple with CV19, racism, climate instability,  polarization, increasing issues with mental health… and as parents of young adults, many of us feel like we’ve failed to leave them a better world. So what do we do?

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Illuminate: Perfectionism, Pt 1

Perfectionism is the excessive fear of making mistakes. This week, I invite you to pay attention to how perfectionism, or the fear of making mistakes, shows up in your life.

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Talking with Kids About Tragic News

After horrific events in the news, do you share your feelings w kids/students… or try to reassure by hiding your feelings? How can we talk with children about these difficult feelings?

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Research Study: School Burnout in Adolescents

They’re unmotivated, cranky, and stressed… What’s going on with youth these days? New research says teens are even more stressed than adults — and burnout is on the rise. Here’s the story, straight from those in the middle of it.

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Surprise! You’re a Role Model

The stories of Krissie Jo and Gandhi remind me that others (children, parents, colleagues, friends, and family) are always watching.  Let me be the best me I can be. Each winter I start thinking about Christmas in my hometown: Inkom, Idaho. It’s just like in the movies, I swear. Delights of dipping chocolates, baking filled cookies, and the […]

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Scared Excited: Talking to Children About Trauma

How to Talk to Kids About Fear and Trauma, Part II It’s difficult enough that, as parents, we struggle to find answers to the everyday issues with our kids, such as how to get them to eat more veggies, do their chores, and be kind to their siblings. When it comes to trauma and fear, […]

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Where Do You Want The Ball To Go?

I’ve noticed something intriguing – if you have no idea what result you want, you’re unlikely to get it. My skills at pool/billiards are terrible, but I still can plan ahead and think about how I’m going to whack the cue ball to get a particular result. Isn’t this true of all of our interactions? If we decide “where we want the ball to go” in our meetings, conversations, interactions… then it’s much more probably we can make that happen.

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The Way You Are

Is there a way to be unconditionally loving, and also to hold high expectations? As parents, can we love our kids “as they are” AND help them be better?

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Feel the Power: Flexing EQ

The use of power is central to our interactions as leaders, coaches, parents, and change agents. To be more effective, emotional intelligence will help us understand and tune up our own use of power and the ways people react to that. There are dozens, maybe hundreds, of different forms of power. All of these “work” in some sense. If they generate certain desired there are “benefits.” At the same time, each produces unwanted side effects, called “costs.” What are some of the forms of power that you have, and that you exercise? What happens when you exercise these different forms of power? What price do you pay for each such use?

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Turning New Corners

Life is full of these moments of transition, of uncertainty and discovery.  People coming and going, growing up, moving away, coming back… waves on the sand, life seems to be continuously in flux, and you just can’t hold it still. Yesterday I delivered Emma to her first sleep-away summer camp; she’ll be there for three […]

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Right Speech by Eknath Easwaran

Karen McCown, Six Seconds’ Founder, handed this article to me several years ago. It’s stuck with me as a powerful set of guidelines for being impeccable with words. The children, Patty and I have discussed the “three gatekeepers” often over the last years; we started when the kids were 4 and 6 years old and […]

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The Six Seconds Model of Emotional Intelligence

The Six Seconds model turns EQ theory into practice for your personal and professional life. Emotional intelligence is the capacity to blend thinking and feeling to make optimal decisions — which is key to having a successful relationship with yourself and others. To provide a practical and simple way to learn and practice emotional intelligence, Six Seconds developed a three-part model in 1997 as a process – an action plan for using emotional intelligence in daily life.

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Alone in the Parade

The drive to connect, to be accepted, is both glorious and brutal. It drives us to care and connect — and to engage in self-destructive behavior in a desperate bid to fit. The “thinness” of digital connection can’t actually be fixed by quantity — just as one can not get a healthy meal by eating a LOT of junk — but the thinness may drive people to want more.

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Changing from War to Peace (at home)

How do we change out of a destructive pattern? Emma (my daughter, now 9) frequently makes a big fuss when it’s time to do work that’s not appealing, especially “dumb writing homework” (despite usually liking writing and being an outstanding student).  This has gone on for years, but a couple of weeks ago I noticed […]

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Making Others Good – Star Wars Style

This week we watched the Star Wars trilogy as a family – first time for Emma and Max. Return of the Jedi was today. A couple of comments that followed up from the discussion of Satyagraha. Tucking into bed, Max, 7: “Remember when Luke made C3P0 fly, and then C3p0 said, ‘I didn’t know I […]

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Fourth Grade Satyagraha

Emma, my daughter, is having “the year of her life” in school — huge leaps of passion and learning and adventure.  And facing powerful challenges.  The most pressing being a relentless conflict with another girl, let’s call her Josie.  They are both strong willed, independent, and believe themselves to be smart.  Patty & I have […]

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Absent Fathers, 4th of July

It is Independence Day here; when I was younger, it was a day for blowing stuff up, for a little thrill, and also for the ephemeral beauty of fireworks. A little less young, now it is a day for barbecues, family, and thinking about what it means to belong to a nation. We spent the […]

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