March 12, 2009

Educating your child- Building up EQ(Part 1)

Dominique Parenting Views Emotional intelligence

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.