Most would agree if we want to make this world a better place we need to develop children’s emotional intelligence. Especially considering the vital role emotions play in managing relationships.
If we want to create well-rounded children, parents and family members need to instill emotional intelligence into their children’s upbringing.
I believe one of the greatest gifts we can give children is to provide them with skills that will assist them in developing strong social and emotional intelligence.
Emotional intelligence is a learned skill we can teach our children.
The exciting news is our brain is highly malleable and allows us to retrain ourselves, or train our children from the start. Brain plasticity is a common term used by neuroscientists, referring to the brain's ability to change at any age. Essentially, the earlier we educate our children to recognize and harness their emotions the quicker they can develop their social skills and build successful relationships.
Talking about our emotions with family helps!
How often do you talk about emotions with your family? Most would answer, “not too often!” Emotions send us vital messages and guide all we do so it’s paramount we understand and learn to accept them. Developing and strengthening your emotional intelligence is not is easy, however, it is possible. You can help your child develop their emotional intelligence by becoming their emotional coach.
Children need to develop both their IQ and EQ.
Fostering children’s intellectual development is very important; however, equally important is emotional intelligence. Children need to learn how to become aware of their emotions and regulate them to have successful relationships in life. Ultimately, how children get along with other children will determine how they succeed in life.
Emotional hijacking happens to all of us.
We all have experienced emotional hijacking. When that happens, it’s important to take the time to discuss it as a family, as this helps put things into perspective. Whether we lose control of our emotions or a child does, it’s imperative we acknowledge, recognize and understand our emotions. In doing this we build strong emotional intelligence skills.
The bottom line is, we always want to be in control of our emotions instead of our emotions controlling us.