We discuss emotional intelligence (emotional quotient or EQ) as a soft skill in everyday life. In our busy and overloaded times, we know that emotional intelligence is the key to achieving more productivity. Understanding our and others’ emotions and managing them can relieve stress and break any barriers in communication.

But how to learn about these perks? It comes from experience for us adults. Thus, we increasingly realize how vital it is to ease this way for our children. Because this is not just alleviating the way, but the whole life and the future of a child.

Emotional intelligence has long been overlooked, with academic achievements in the foreground. Just remember those scary stories of kids whose parents were angry with them because of bad marks or comments. But nobody even tried to dig deeper and find the reason for this “terrible misbehavior”. Quite often, that was not a child’s unwillingness to study or break the peace but, for example, simply a fear of a teacher.

Children are especially vulnerable to emotions; they are unaware of how the world functions and what hides behind this or that event or action of other people. This is our parents’ task to show them how to self-regulate to develop the ability to express and manage their emotions to cope with everyday tasks successfully without any unnecessary introspection.

Developing emotional intelligence will equip your child to see reality more reasonably and clearly. Emotional intelligence shows the skeletons in the cupboards; a child learns from early years not only to understand what happens to them but to explain to him- or herself what is the driver, motive, or trigger of other people’s actions. And knowing the reasons, it is easier to find solutions and let the issue go and switch to something that makes you full and joyous.

If we teach that to our children, imagine how much more satisfaction, joy, and accomplishments they will obtain and bring to this world and their lives! Emotional intelligence will free their minds from creativity and inquisitiveness. You may ask how? Let’s examine how to develop emotional intelligence and how it improves your and your child’s quality of life.

First, start with yourselves as parents. You will need to work on your emotions and behavior to set rules that will assist in coaching EQ in your child.

• Be patient
• Create positive environment
• Believe in your child
• Allocate enough time
• Encourage creativity

Be patient

We are not aiming to be perfect parents. When we try to be perfect, we focus on the anxiety of everything being perfect. On the contrary, our task and sense is to feel joy and patient within our family here and now. This will help us to focus on more important things, namely, bringing up our child in a more peaceful environment where we will be able to direct and support our kid robustly.

Another point here is not to be invasive. Observe and analyze a child for further unobtrusive correction and assistance, but refrain from interfering with the child’s activity (unless it is vital) to let him or her explore and experience various situations and emotions.

Create positive environment

Create a positive environment for learning new and encountering various situations to deal with them. If we create and suggest a diverse and rich environment for learning and examining the world on his or her own, we do not need to worry about whether a child develops properly and correctly.

The thing is that a child, as an intelligent creature by nature, knows subconsciously that he or she needs to learn and study the news to survive. So the desire to learn and delve into new situations is innate.

Believe in your child.

As curiosity and desire to explore are bred in the bone, our task as parents is not to prevent a child from that (to a sensible extent, of course).

So believe in your child’s ability to be curious and eager to learn and discover the world. The most terrible mistake is that our constant care does not let children face troubles and know to solve problems, which in turn makes them weak at conflict and self-management.

Allocate time

To be able to develop and follow their desire to discover, research, and nurture their emotional intelligence, children need time. This is time that we must allocate for their being researchers, for them to move and be active, for communicating and speculating, for various emotions like admiration, curiosity, inspiration as well as boredom, and sadness, they should be familiar with them.

Sometimes it looks like we are irresponsible parents when we can not occupy our child, but this is wrong, children being occupied with themselves or contemplation provides them with food for thought and space for observing how reality works. Do not make a fuss, this deters children from being brave explorers.

Encourage creativity

With a positive environment with learning possibilities, patience, and enough contemplation time, do not restrict creativity (to a sensible extent), and encourage thinking out of the box.

We ourselves learn a lot from our children and their simplicity, openness, and frankness. Just try not to suppress these feelings and capacities to do things differently.

After you train yourself and are aware of the borders within which your child will be able to learn to tackle emotional intelligence, get started.

Admit your child’s emotions

It is of paramount importance to teach a child emotions. That means explaining what feelings can be and naming them when a child experiences them for him or her to recognize them. This recognition will help a child to build necessary associations with various emotions and deal with them in the future. Moreover, depending on how you react to a child’s feelings and emotions will create his perception, so follow the rules we discussed above.

Allow emotions but not all kinds of behavior.

We talk about accepting emotions and feelings a lot. But that does not mean we allow every behavior. We still follow the first 5 rules for parents and try to be consistent when a child’s behavior is inappropriate or unacceptable. We are responsible for the child, other people, and ourselves.

Provide your child with a feedback

When facing emotions, our task is not only to recognize and accept them but to explain how to deal with them. Namely, to empathize and to explain how to express them properly. This will help a child understand what and why happens to him or her. Everyday conversations and discussions of feelings and ways to tell them appropriately will gradually teach your child self-management and self-control.

Show how to cope with emotions.

Now that you know how to help your child understand yourself explain how to control and cope with emotions: to calm themselves down, cheer themselves up, or face their fears. Teach practical strategies, e.g., take a deep breath, and count to ten when they are angry. Those “calm down” items may also include soothing music, switching activities, and calm-down kits (e.g.a special box they decorate).

Practice problem-solving

And finally, when you have taught your child to identify, express, and cope with emotions, it is time to go to the next level, which is actually to solve the daunting problem that causes the feelings. For example, your child gets angry whenever his or her friend takes his or her special toy for a long time. The simplest way is to brainstorm several solutions and direct a child to the right answers.

Summing up

We did a brief observation of what you can basically start with for immersing yourself in the topic of emotional intelligence. Even if you start practicing those simple tasks, you will notice how your and your child’s world attitude and perception will change for the better.