Emotional intelligence is the ability to perceive, express and regulate emotions. Some experts even believe emotional intelligence is more important than IQ for success in life. Emotional intelligence is not innate, it is a set of skills and behaviors that are learned and developed. Children need to be taught to regulate their emotions. Adults play a huge role in helping kids learn how to handle their emotions, especially very BIG emotions. A child can become overwhelmed with feelings of fear, sadness, anger, and frustration and it can be very confusing when this happens. Since children are a long way from having the full development of their prefrontal cortex to help them understand and regulate their own feelings, they need understanding and patient adults to help guide them. If a child cannot manage their emotions, or adjust their behavior to match a given situation, negative behavior will often result. When children are taught to pay attention to their emotions and label or name them, they begin to pay attention to how they are feeling. Oftentimes just by being able to name their emotion, it will help to defuse BIG emotions. Once they start to pay attention to how they feel, they can start to notice their emotions sooner before they become so overwhelming to them. When kids are able to recognize a negative emotion, it can make it less powerful and overwhelming to them. When you notice your child is beginning to become frustrated or upset, ask them to describe how they are feeling (label their feeling). When they tell you how they are feeling, validate their emotion, “That does sound upsetting. I can see how you would be disappointed by that.”
Parents can also help teach children to do this by modeling it in their own behavior. For example, if you are upset because you left something at the office, share your feeling with your child, “I am so upset because I left a very important report on my desk because I was in a hurry when I left today!” “I am going to take a few deep breaths and figure out what I should do. Ok, I have an idea, I am not going to get too upset because I’ll get to work a little early tomorrow. I’ll have some time to go over it before the meeting, and it will be ok.” Another idea is to teach kids to rank how strong their emotions are on a scale of 1 to 10, with one being calm and 10 being extremely angry. It helps them learn to pause and take notice of how they are feeling. You can model this for them by talking about how strong your emotions are when things happen to you. You need to lead by example to help them manage their emotions effectively.
