Emotional Intelligence for Children

Published: 10 Dec 2021 Tagged: childrenEIemotional intelligenceemotionsempathyEQfeelingsMood Metermotivationproblem-solvingself-awarenessself-regulationsocial skills

Emotional Intelligence, also known as EI or even EQ, is the ability to intelligently handle with feelings – both from oneself and from others. Therefore, this is a crucial set of skills to allow a person from any social or cultural context to be successful and fulfilled. Due to this high relevance, help children develop such skills makes a huge difference for the rest of their lives. Among the main habits of children with high emotional intelligence, we could mention:

• They have a wider vocabulary to identify emotions in themselves and in others
• They can see events and situations from other people’s perspectives
• They are quicker in helping who need some emotional support
• They know some techniques to manage emotions
• They are more comfortable saying “No” and establishing boundaries with other children and adults
• They can be specific when demonstrating gratitude

These six characteristics usually demonstrated by children with high EQ are already perfect examples of how emotional intelligence can be relevant. According to Daniel Goleman, there are five main parts that comprise emotional intelligence, and can be individually stimulated:

• Self-awareness: the ability to identify your own feelings and how these feelings might affect others
• Self-regulation: being able to control how to respond to your own emotions, thinking about consequences before acting or reacting by impulse
• Motivation: driving yourself to accomplish goals in spite of negative or distracting feelings
• Empathy: the ability of acknowledging and noticing other people’s emotions and feelings
• Social skills: all skills that allow the management of relationships, being aware of best behaviours to assume when dealing with other people in each situation

Children who develop emotional intelligence can get some extremely helpful benefits, such as:

• Higher grades at school. It has been identified that high EQ has a correlation to high IQ.
• Healthier relationships. Children with high EQ can better select good companies and avoid toxic relationships.
• Long-term fulfillment. Successful and accomplished adults have been identified as having high EQ since childhood.
• Improved mental health. Depression, anxiety and other mental illnesses are less likely to occur in children with high EQ.

Parents, teachers and other supporting professionals can help children develop their emotional intelligence through some stimulating activities which many times are just daily events that can be used to motivate the child to think about their emotions and other people’s emotions, making them more aware and prepared for ways to respond. The following five steps are a good strategy to stimulate emotional intelligence in children of any age:

1. Being aware of the child’s emotions and feelings. Good parents, teachers and professionals who deal with emotional intelligence must be able to identify the child’s emotions before the child needs to demonstrate them with intensity such as yelling, making tantrums, swearing and any other unbalanced action.
2. See emotions as an opportunity to bond and improve. Even negative emotions must be dealt as the chance of understanding why it’s happening to the child, so you better understand the child’s preferences and boundaries.
3. Listen and validate feelings. The child needs to see that someone is really paying attention to their situation and wants to help. Sometimes being heard is all they want.
4. Help the child label emotions. There are moments when the child doesn’t even know the name of what they are feeling, they can just say if it’s good bad, or if it’s related to a concern or another person. Enriching their emotional vocabulary is key to make them able to create techniques to deal to each emotion differently and effectively. You could even use a tool such as the Mood Meter, that is extremely interesting, though it’s necessary to use it in different ways according to the child’s age.
5. Improve the child’s problem-solving skills towards emotions. Talk to the child about actions and consequences, and how to take some time for a deep breath, pondering about the best behaviour, and then acting.

As shown above, the development of emotional intelligence is an extremely positive strategy for your children to help them be happier people and coping with the most different emotional challenges throughout life.