There are lots of activities you can do with children to promote the development of emotional intelligence and if you click on the ‘activities’ tag at the top of this post, you’ll find several. But this post considers the more everyday ways you can increase your child’s emotional intelligence through your interactions with them. Some of them might take a bit of practice but they can soon become second nature. What’s more, they can be helpful in your interactions with adults too!
I wonder if…
This is a very simple tool and I used it all the time as a teacher. When a child is clearly experiencing an emotion (as indicated by what they are saying, how they look or how they are escalating – children are often and open book when it comes to emotions!), have a go at wondering what’s going on for them emotionally. Simply speculate about what they might be feeling. For example:
- ‘I wonder if you’re feeling a little anxious about going to school tomorrow because….’
- ‘I wonder if you’re becoming frustrated by your brother’s behaviour….…’
- ‘I wonder if you’re feeling excited about tomorrow because….’
The benefits of this are not only that the child will probably stop to speculate too in that moment, bringing their focus to their emotions (and they will soon correct you if you’re wrong), it also gives them a greater emotion vocabulary and helps them link possible triggers to their emotions. It also validates the significance of emotions.
Using emotions as part of active listening
Active listening is a very powerful tool and almost one of the kindest ‘gifts’ you can give another in my opinion. There are many tools that can be used as part of active listening but one of the most powerful is what I call, fishing out the emotion behind what’s being said. For example:
As with the last tool, it can give children a greater emotion vocabulary but it also has the effect of making someone feel really listened to, validated and understood. It can subsequently encourage the person you are listening to, to explore their situation further. With perpetual use, you become great at helping people to solve their own problems!
You can usually sense when this tool is needed with friends: when they really just want you to listen, and they become irritated if you keep simply offering solutions (unless it really is just a practical issue that they want you to sort!).
I Messages
I messages can be used to: help children modify their behaviour, to assert something, to increase empathy and to help children understand that their behaviour affects others. I messages also move people away from blaming others for how they feel (‘YOU made me angry’) to owning their emotions and understanding that emotions erupt from within and are not ‘made’ by others.
I messages do this by making feeling statements. They can be composed in couple of ways and used in a variety of situations.
You create an I message in the following ways:
When you… state undesirable behaviour
I feel… state emotion
Because… state how you are affected.
For example:
When you don’t hold my hand, I feel scared, because it means I could lose you in the crowd.
A slight variation on this is that instead of giving the reason for why your emotion has been triggered, you can be a little more directive and say what you would prefer to happen or what could happen to prevent you feeling that way.
For example:
When you don’t hold my hand, I feel scared. I need you to hold my hand.
I messages can take a bit of time to settle in as a default way of expressing how you feel but once they are are in place both your and and your child’s emotional intelligence will increase. They are also one of the best ways of being assertive as, in the main, others can’t really argue with you about how you feel!
Role-modelling
Another obvious (but easily forgotten) tool is role-modelling the clear and resourceful expression of emotions. How can we expect children to become ‘in touch’ with their emotions if all we do is show them our reactions and never explain the ‘back story’ of what is going on for us. Making honest declarations about how you feel is probably the most influential tool in helping your children to do like-wise!