How to Raise Emotionally Intelligent Children

Naming emotions is a basis of a high EQ. Labeling emotions can help your child understand what they feel. They’ll realize it’s a part of everyday life and that everyone else sometimes feels the same. Suddenly, all this negative, unfamiliar energy can be channeled in a much healthier way.

“You broke your toy and now feel sad, don’t you? Tell me more about it. Did you really like that toy and now feel a little bit angry?” is just one of the examples. At first, try to ask leading questions, as children are more likely to engage that way.

Let's say your child's upset. Sometimes, explaining their feelings is complicated, especially with strong emotions. Wait it out, be patient as they cry, and when the moment comes when they are ready to use their words to share what they feel, you can use an emotion wheel for children to talk about their feelings.

Do not dismiss or disapprove of your child’s feelings. Also, being a laissez-faire parent isn’t helpful either. What your child needs is to be understood. You don’t have to agree with their view but should try to understand their perspective. Be an active listener and engage with the things they say.

That way, your child won’t feel like their emotions are irrelevant or something that should be hidden or ashamed of. Explain to them that you also feel like that sometimes. Just like adults, children need to feel they are taken seriously. Doing otherwise will teach them that disregarding other people’s feelings is the way to go.

Apart from identifying our emotions, we must also consider and respect other people's feelings. “You’ve said a very bad thing to your friend Nick. How do you think it makes him feel?” is a better way to go about it than sending your kid on a time-out without explanation. Children also need to understand how others feel because it will help them build their social skills and help them grow into well-rounded individuals.

You can even exercise your child’s empathy. Ask your child to guess how people in their surroundings feel from time to time. This will help your kid grow into an emotionally intelligent child that is well aware of others and their emotions.

All of the above means nothing if you set an opposite example. Young children absorb everything they see their parents do. Healthily express your own emotions. Explain to your child that you’re angry because your organization was not the best and you didn't have the time to accomplish every task you wanted. Maybe there was a traffic jam, and you were late to pick up clothes from the dry cleaners.

They must understand why you feel a certain way and behave like that. Also, when communicating with your partner, set an example you want your kid to follow when it comes to speaking with others. If you yell or refuse to talk to each other, your kid will most likely follow the same path.

Empathy doesn't include the lack of boundaries. Just because they’re angry their sister got a “nicer" Christmas present doesn’t mean they should be allowed to throw tantrums or Legos around the house.

Teach your child to express their feelings with words and address them to those who need to hear them.

Well, you definitely won’t hear them say, “Dear father, I feel that your rejection of my brilliant proposal to spend additional 30 minutes on the playground is rather preposterous”, but with little time and practice, things will get more “civilized.”

Your job as a parent is to discipline your children but also to teach your child healthy mechanisms to deal with overwhelming emotions.

You want to avoid the scenario in which your child uses feelings and emotional responses to reach a goal. This behavior includes crying over little things or throwing seemingly unnecessary tantrums.

Sometimes, this is unavoidable, and it can be a phase, but it should not be encouraged. Your best method to deal with this is to address the emotion and the problem, but not the tears.

Problem-solving is a great asset that kids can use to soothe their emotions. However, you need to teach children how to problem solve. Once they’ve identified their emotions and know that yelling at the top of their lungs isn’t a solution, they must find a way to deal with them. The focus is on them finding a way, not you interfering and giving a straight-out answer.

Your job is to give some ideas, but not problem solve for them. Even better, ask them to brainstorm together.

“Now that it’s raining, and we can’t go the park, what can we do around the house that’s fun?” If your child is the one who solves that problem, they’ll learn they can rely on themselves in future similar situations. That’s a great way to raise a confident child.

When they can’t fix what troubles them, they can use a coping mechanism to deal with those “big emotions” overwhelming them. They can take deep breaths or count to 10, for example. Maybe play their favorite song, draw something, or use a coloring book. They need something to focus all that energy on.

The important thing here is that your child learns they have a tool to calm themselves whenever it is needed to do so. Being able to soothe themselves is a skill your children will always benefit from.

Finally, there is one other thing you should do:

Working on these skills yourself will definitely help you better understand your child and show them how to deal with their own emotions. Some things you could do are:

You can only fix low emotional intelligence with patience, introspection, mindfulness, and work. Given that emotionally intelligent children are raised by emotionally intelligent parents, it makes sense for you to try and put in the work to deal with your own emotional awareness.

While there is a wealth of mental health advice out there that you can use to nurture emotional intelligence, you should not shy away from talking to an expert about your emotional skills.

It takes practice to achieve high EQ, especially in adulthood, but it is far from impossible.

If you adopt that sort of a growth mindset about understanding your challenges and acting on them - you are also modeling that sort of behavior for your kids—most parents wish for lifelong success for their child, and all that starts within their own family.