How to Help Your Child Succeed

​

Daniel Goldman, in his bestseller book, Realizing the Power of Emotional Intelligence, contends that emotional intelligence (EQ), more so than IQ, is predictive of your child's success in life. 
What is emotional intelligence?  Essentially, it the ability of an individual to perceive, understand, express, and regulate emotion. Individuals with emotional intelligence demonstrate resilience, self-discipline and effective relationship skills and exhibit the following competencies:
  • Ability to self-motivate
  • Persistence in the face of frustration
  • Impulse control and delaying of gratification
  • Regulation of mood and ability to keep emotional distress from interfering with ability to think
  • Ability to empathize and to hope
Children can develop emotional intelligence.  As a parent, you can support the development of your children's EQ by helping them become aware of their emotions and those of others, as well as by encouraging behaviors for managing their emotions.  John Gottman, in his book Raising an Emotionally Intelligent Child, explains:
"In my research I discovered that love by itself wasn't enough to become a good parent. Very concerned, warm, and involved parents often had attitudes toward their own and their children's emotions that got in the way of being able to talk to their children when they were sad or afraid or angry.  While love by itself was not enough, channeling that caring into some basic skills that parents could practice, as if they were coaching their children in the area of emotion, was enough.  The secret lay in how parents interacted with their children when emotions ran hot".
Gottman identifies "emotion coaching" as comprising the following five elements:
  1. Being aware of a child's emotions
  2. Recognizing emotional expression as an opportunity for intimacy and teaching
  3. Listening empathetically and validating a child's feelings
  4. Labelling emotions in words a child can understand
  5. Helping a child come up with an appropriate way to solve a problem or deal with an upsetting situation
What are the benefits of "emotion-coaching?"  Gottman identifies that children that are consistently "emotion-coached" are able to:
  • regulate their emotional states and self-sooth when upset
  • reduce their heartrate faster after something upsetting has happened
  • stay healthier, having fewer infectious illnesses
  • focus attention and perform better academically
  • relate better to other people, even in tough situations like getting teased at school
  • understand people and have better friendships with other children
​
​

Connect with Us.

​BC EFAP Client Access for immediate and confidential assistance 24/7.
BC lower mainland ​604.732.6933​
toll free ​1.800.667.0993
french toll free 1.800.561.1128
TTY 1.888.234.0414

In crisis?

If you are in crisis, direct telephone access to EFAP professional counsellors for crisis counselling and immediate assistance is available and accessible from anywhere in North America, 24/7/365 toll free by calling the number at the top of the screen.