March 12, 2009

Educating Your Child- Building Up EQ (Part 2)

Dominique Parenting Views Emotional Health and Wellbeing, psychology

In the last post I gave an introduction to EQ. Today, I will be showing you how easy it is to build up your child’s EQ.

: Image by tokyofortwo via Flickr

Emotions can be both good and bad. We need to understand ours and other peoples emotions to be able to communicate and relate to them.

Human beings by nature are emotional creatures and to undermine your emotions would mean that you are just letting yourself to feel unhappy and other negative feelings.

I wouldn’t want my boys to turn out to be impulsive, hostile men who are insensitive to others. It is definitely not my wish for them to become selfish, backbiting, negatively judgemental and inept to cope with the relationships which they may be involve in the future.

To be known as a “Mr Nice Guy” or ” The Devil Personified” doesn’t happen overnight. This example maybe a bit extreme but it simplifies how people with High E.Q. /Low E.Q. are viewed.

How then can one build up your child’s EQ?

Showing respect and acknowledging your child’s feelings.It is important to validate your child’s feelings regardless of how difficult they are to deal with. They need to know that it is “normal” for them to have such feelings and learn from you how to identify and cope with the different feelings that they are experiencing.It would help to label your child’s feelings and share with them how you deal with your feelings when you encounter a similar situation.
Deal with negative emotions tactfully.
Do not shout and rant or become abusive with your child when you are angry with them. They are more then likely to act the same when they too are angry as they have picked up all these negative behaviour from you.Do let your child know that it is okay to have these different feelings but it is NOT okay to be on bad behaviour because of the way they are feeling. Destroying items and showing violence is unacceptable.

Let him know how to act out his feelings in a safe way without injuring himself and the people around him. Ie: You can write about how you feel and what you wish to do at the moment in your journal instead of bashing your toy on the wall.
Let your child work out his own feelings. Do not rush to help him out at first instance you feel that he is not coping well.
He needs to build up emotional resilience to be able to cope with any emotional challenges he may face in the future.It is important for him to learn how to balance his feelings with reason, logic, and reality and not be dominated by negative emotions.

Do you have any other ways to build up a child’s EQ? Looking foward to your comments on this topic.

Educating your child- Building up EQ(Part 1)

: Image by GinaMig via Flickr

EQ- (Emotional Quotient) A measurement on how you manage your own & others feelings.

Understanding your child’s feelings and teaching him how to express himself correctly is key for EQ development.

Emotions are and important part of ones survial. Most of us, especially our kids are directed by their GUT feeling. They are not afraid to tell/show their likes and displeasures. However as one grows older society teaches us that displaying our emotions may not be favourable in every situation.

I, personally, am still learning how to keep my emotions in check and understanding what are the red flags and triggers to my emotional stability(balance).

As they say as one grows older it gets harder to understand his/her true feelings. This is absolutely true as through your life’s journey you learn how to act “appropriately” based on the good/bad experiences that you had in life.

For a toddler there are basically 2 different types of emotions that are readily displayed.

All smiles and a feeling of bliss when he gets what he desires
Frowns and howls when he is denied what he wants.

As your child grows older screaming and shouting- throwing tantrums are not as socially acceptable. This is especially in Asian societies whereby children are expected to be respectful and well behaved.

To build up your child’s E.Q. the basics would be to teach him how to express himself clearly. He would first of all need to identify and differentiate between the different type of emotions that he is feeling.

Once identified , the child needs to be taught how to express feeling in an open and non hostile way.

In the next post I will identify some methods which you can use to raise a child with high EQ.