By Dr. Laura Markham
When storm clouds brew, even the most well-intentioned parent can get triggered and escalate the upset rather than calm it. But when your child wrestles with the more “difficult” human emotions, he needs your help to learn how to manage them. This is the most important time to teach emotional intelligence – meaning to help your child develop the abilities to soothe himself, regulate his emotions and get along with others. Here are six ways to help your child develop a more emotionally intelligent brain, every day.
1. Respond to the needs and feelings behind problem behaviour
Children WANT to have happy, warm interactions with their parents. They want to be “good” people. Misbehaviour comes from overwhelming feelings or unmet needs. If you don’t address the feelings and needs, they’ll just burst out later, causing other problem behaviour. Examples of responding to needs:
Respond to clinginess by offering connection: “It’s hard to let go of me this morning. Starting school again has been fun, but you miss time with Mummy now. I will be right here to pick you up after school, and we’ll snuggle and play together and have special time, OK?”.
Respond to crankiness caused by lack of sleep by nurturing and teaching self-nurture: “You’re having a hard time this morning. I think everything is a bit too much for you because we all got to bed late last night and didn’t get quite enough sleep. Maybe we need to spend some cosy time this morning on the couch reading books together”.
Respond to a child who regularly exhibits defiance by offering healthy sense of agency: “It looks like you want to do this yourself! I’m right here if you need some help”.
Why this encourages emotional intelligence:
- Children usually can’t articulate their needs. But when you help them tune into their inner experience and give them language to express their needs, they get better at understanding themselves and learn how to advocate for themselves in an appropriate way.
2. Accept all emotions, even as you limit behaviour
Of course you need to limit your child’s actions. He can’t run in the street, throw his dinner on the floor, hit his sister or play on the computer all night. In every case where your child’s behaviour is clearly unacceptable, set a limit. (If it isn’t “clear” whether the behaviour is acceptable to you, just ask yourself if you’re okay with being flexible, and be sure not to push yourself past your own comfort level).
But even while you limit behaviour, your child is allowed to have, and to express, all her emotions, and that includes feelings of disappointment or anger in response to your limits. Children need to “show” us how they feel and have us “hear” them, so meltdowns are nature’s release valve for children’s emotions. Instead of banishing your child to her room to get herself under control (which gives her the message that she’s all alone with those big, scary feelings), hold her or stay near and connected with your soothing voice: “You seem so mad and sad right now. I am right here, you are safe”.
Once the storm passes, your child will be cooperative and affectionate, and feel so much more connected to you because you tethered her through her inner tornado. Ignore any rage or rudeness during a meltdown; your child is showing you the depth of her upset. AFTER the storm is the time to teach, not during. And you’ll find that not much teaching is really necessary once you help your child with her feelings. That’s because she already KNOWS the expected behaviour; she just couldn’t control those big emotions. Your soothing support is the first step of her learning that skill.
Why this encourages emotional intelligence:
- When we allow ourselves to feel an emotion, it begins to dissipate. But when we try to push the emotion out of our awareness, it doesn’t go away. We just lose the ability to control it. So the first step in learning to regulate emotions is to allow them, to become aware of them.
- When we give children the message that all emotions are okay, they befriend their emotions instead of stuffing them. That allows them to begin to self-regulate.
- Once kids can regulate their emotions, they can regulate their behaviour.
Once the storm passes, your child will be cooperative and affectionate, and feel so much more connected to you because you tethered her through her inner tornado.
3. Regulate Your Own Emotions
Children won’t always do what you say, but they will always, eventually, do what you do. Kids learn emotional regulation from us. When we stay calm, it teaches our child that there’s no emergency, even if she feels like there is at the moment.
Of course, you can’t stay calm when you’re running on empty. That’s why maintaining our own sense of well-being is one of our most important parenting responsibilities.
Most of us keep it together fairly well until our child gets upset. Remind yourself that you don’t have to “fix” your child’s upset or stop your child’s emotions. Instead, just accept what they’re feeling and maintain your own equilibrium.
The other time many parents get angry is when we get upset at our child and start disciplining. But it’s especially important to stay calm and see your child’s perspective as you’re setting limits. There’s no reason at all for blame or punishment, which shame kids and make them misbehave more. Aim for firm limits, set with empathy:
“I’m sorry, Luis, I know it’s hard to stop when you’re having so much fun with your game. It’s bedtime now, and you can play more tomorrow. Now it’s time to say Goodbye, Game. OK, I’m turning it off. I see that makes you very unhappy. You wish you could play all night, every night, don’t you? I know it’s hard. And I know you can handle it. Come on, let’s make sure we have time for a story. What should we read tonight?”.
Why this encourages emotional intelligence:
- The child’s brain is actually learning to calm and soothe itself in response to the parent role-modeling self-regulation.
- When we set limits with an understanding of the child’s perspective, the child is less likely to resist the limits. When kids give up what they want to follow our limits, they’re building the neural pathways for self-regulation.
