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Thanks to all the incredible researchers and child psychologists out there, we have seen a shift in parenting culture over the recent decades. According to the American Psychological Association, the three main goals of parenting are as follows: ensuring the health and safety of our children, preparing them to be productive adults and instilling cultural values (APA, 2018).
Needless to say, raising a child with these goals looming overhead is intimidating enough. Now insert the numerous parenting books, blogs, magazines and family members with their contradicting and sometimes unsolicited parenting advice. With so much information out there, how do you know which advice is good advice?
In my experience as a Child and Family Therapist, the base to all healthy parent-child relationships is emotional intelligence. Historically, we do not talk about emotions nearly enough. Emotional intelligence is one’s ability to identify and regulate their own emotions as well as the emotions of others. According to Dr. John Gottman, emotionally intelligent parents working to raise emotionally intelligent children do so through a practice called emotion coaching. Emotion coaching can be summarized with five basic steps:
Be mindful of your child’s emotion
Recognize your child’s expression of emotion, regardless of what that emotion might be, as a moment for closeness and teaching
Provide empathetic listening and validate your child’s feelings
Assist you child learning to label their emotions with words
Set limits when you are helping your child problem solve or cope with upsetting situations appropriately – this encourages them to self-sooth and develop critical thinking skills.
Fostering emotional intelligence in your child can help them succeed in a multitude of ways. It will increase independence, help them develop healthy social relationships and allow them to walk through life with more confidence.
Even major media companies like Disney seems to be catching on. Their 2015 animated movie Inside Out models for children skills like emotion identification and empathetic listening. Children are the future after all, so let’s teach them how to be kind to themselves and one another.
