If You Were Taught These 4 Skills As A Child, Your Parents Loved You Unconditionally
These aren't just life skills — they're proof you were raised in a loving home.
SDI Productions | Canva Emotional intelligence is the ability to recognize, label, and manage one's own emotions and recognize and label the emotions of others. Emotional intelligence or EQ predicts over 54 percent of the variation in success (relationships, effectiveness, health, quality of life). Children with high EQ earn higher grades, stay in school, and make healthier choices.
A few lucky kids have unconditionally loving parents who are intuitive and emotionally intelligent and have passed on these life skills to them. The rest tend to stumble through life.
If you were taught these 4 skills as a child, your parents loved you unconditionally:
1. How to identify your feelings
The game is to name the emotions of the characters as they come up over a five-minute (or less) period. Points are awarded for the most emotions named, regardless of whether the answers were correct.
The idea is to develop emotion-spotting skills so that they become effortless and fast. Accuracy is not as important as quantity in this exercise.
2. How to understand emotional charades
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You can call these emotional Charades. Have the kids shout out what they see. Repeat this two or three times in a setting, or more if the kids are engaged.
Have them display emotions and see if they can stump the audience. No words or sounds are allowed.
Research indicates that parents who are more aware of their own emotions and coach their children through emotional experiences tend to have children with better emotion regulation and social skills. This includes helping children identify, label, and understand the causes of emotions in themselves and others.
3. How to label your emotions
"Oh, you are sad" or "You are frustrated." Keep the labels simple and use "You" statements, not "I" statements.
Do not ask how your child is feeling; just state the emotions you see. Your child will nod his or her head when you get it right and will correct you when you are wrong. If you were wrong the first time, just repeat the correction back using the "You" statement.
If parents consistently label their own emotions and model healthy coping strategies, children are more likely to adopt similar behaviors. Factors like temperament, developmental stage, and the quality of parental support can influence a child's ability to understand and label emotions, according to research.
4. How to emotionally regulate yourself
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For example, when they see you are frustrated, teach them to label your emotion with the "You" statement. Practice these steps for 30 days and observe the results. If you can do one or two of these steps every day with every child, you will see a remarkable improvement in emotional intelligence.
Research suggests that the mirror neuron system, which is involved in imitating actions, may also play a role in observing and learning emotional responses. The emotional climate of the family, influenced by parental responsiveness and nurturing, can affect the development of secure or insecure attachment styles in children, which, in turn, influences emotional reactivity.
Teaching emotional intelligence is much easier than teaching a child to read, write, or add and subtract. The secret is to know what to teach and then teach it often. Follow the four steps, and you will have it down pat.
Douglas E. Noll, JD, MA is an author, speaker, and professional mediator helping people solve difficult problems. He is the author of De-Escalate: How to Calm an Angry Person in 90 Seconds or Less.
