emotional intelligence

Books

Sep 3

Written By Sarah

Emotional intelligence, or EQ, is the ability to self-regulate and manage one's emotions.

Kids (ok, humans!) have lots of feelings. Our ability to identify, understand, and manage our emotions and others' feelings is crucial for our social, emotional, physical, and even academic development.

“While the world has been focused on academic achievement in childhood, emotional self-regulation has been largely ignored. This is a poor strategy, given that research suggests emotional intelligence is twice as strong a predictor as IQ of later success.”

— Gottman Institute

Teaching our kiddos (and ourselves!) emotional intelligence comes in many forms — from explicitly teaching our kids how to identify emotions (both their own and others') to practicing mindfulness and modeling empathy.

The Gottman Institute's method of Emotion Coaching teaches parents/caregivers 5 steps to help children regulate their emotions.

Research shows that practicing mindfulness helps reduce stress, depression, and anxiety in children and helps children with emotional regulation.

A great deal of emotional intelligence and emotion coaching comes down to being able to identify emotions. For some people, this comes naturally. But for others, it's not that easy. I explicitly teach emotional intelligence as part of our morning basket loop, and our family is working on modeling and teaching empathy throughout the day. Today I'm sharing various resources for teaching our kids (and ourselves) about emotions and emotional regulation.

Emotional Intelligence Resources:

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