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.

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?

1. 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.
2. 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.

3. 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.