Raising an Emotionally Intelligent Child (19 page)

I
T’S HARD TO
say with certainty how frequently a parent can use Emotion Coaching to build intimacy and teach coping skills. As children move through their days, learning to get along with others and to weather common crises, it seems their lives are rife with opportunity.

Still, Emotion Coaching should not be perceived as a panacea for every negative feeling that arises. For one, it requires some degree of patience and creativity, so parents need to be in a reasonably undistracted (if not calm) frame of mind to do it well. It also helps if children are in a relatively teachable state. Thinking strategically, you want to seize opportunities when your child is most likely to be receptive.

Clearly, there are situations when Emotion Coaching should be postponed. These include:

WHEN YOU’RE PRESSED FOR TIME

Today’s families spend much of their time together watching the clock, trying to get themselves off to daycare, school, and work on schedule. Although kids’ emotions often surface during such stressful transitions, these are usually not ideal times for Emotion Coaching, which is a process. Kids are not robots and we can’t expect them to move through emotional experiences according to an arbitrary timetable.

A businesswoman in one of our groups perfectly described the folly of trying to rush a child through Emotion Coaching. She was dropping her daughter off at daycare one morning on her way to an important client meeting. Arriving at the door to the daycare center, the four-year-old suddenly bolted. “My teacher Katie’s not here,” the girl told her mother. “I don’t want to stay.”

The woman looked at her watch and knew that she could spend only five minutes on the matter without being late. Mentally reviewing the steps to Emotion Coaching, she sat her daughter down and started working the problem. “You seem upset … Tell me what’s going on … You feel uncomfortable because your favorite teacher is not here … I know how you’re feeling … You feel sad about starting the day without her … I have to go soon … What can we do to help you feel more comfortable?”

Meanwhile, her daughter sat there, sputtering answers and fighting back tears. The minutes ticked by without a resolution. The girl seemed to sense her mother’s urgency and the pressure only made matters worse. The more the mother probed, the more upset the daughter became. After twenty minutes of frustration, the woman finally gave up and pushed her sobbing daughter into the arms of the substitute teacher. Driving like a madwoman, she dashed to her appointment. “When I got there, my client was gone,” the woman lamented.

Reflecting back, the mother saw her mistake. “I gave her a mixed message. I told her I was concerned and willing to help, but I was watching the clock and she knew it. That made her feel more abandoned than ever.” In retrospect, the mother believes she should have simply told her daughter that her attendance at daycare that morning was nonnegotiable; that they would talk later about her “uncomfortable feelings.” Then, leaving her daughter to her own
emerging social skills and the able hands of the substitute teacher, she should have left for her appointment.

In an ideal world, we’d always have time to sit and talk with our kids as feelings come up. But for most parents, that’s not always an option. It’s important, therefore, to designate a time—preferably at the same period each day—when you can talk to your child without time pressures or interruptions. Families of small children often do this before bedtime or during a bath. With school-age kids and teenagers, heart-to-heart chats often happen as you share chores, such as washing dishes or folding laundry. Regularly scheduled drives to music lessons or other outings provide more opportunities. By designating such times for talking, you can be assured that issues won’t be tabled indefinitely because of time constraints.

WHEN YOU HAVE AN AUDIENCE

It’s difficult to build intimacy and trust unless you have time alone with your child. That’s why I recommend doing Emotion Coaching one on one, rather than in front of other family members, friends, or strangers. This way, you’ll avoid embarrassing your child. Also, you’ll both be freer to respond honestly without worrying about how the scene plays for others.

This advice is particularly important for families who are dealing with problems of sibling rivalry. One mom from our parenting groups described trying to intervene in one of her children’s arguments using Emotion-Coaching techniques. “Whenever I started empathizing with one kid, the other one went ballistic,” she said.

Under the best circumstances, an objective parent might be able to serve as a facilitator while two or more siblings work out their conflicts together. But Emotion Coaching involves a deeper level of empathy and listening. It’s hard to empathize openly with two people in conflict without appearing to take sides. Therefore, Emotion Coaching usually works better if neither the parent nor the child has to worry about a sibling’s perceptions, interruptions, or objections to what’s being said. Given time alone with a sympathetic parent, a child might be more willing to let down his defenses and to share genuine feelings.

The key, of course, is to give each kid equal time. Again, designating
a special time alone with each child on a regular basis can ensure that this will happen.

Parents should also be aware of how the presence of their own peers and adult relatives (especially grandparents) may affect their ability to empathize and listen to their children. It may be hard to accept your kids’ feelings when you’re listening to your own mother’s (spoken or unspoken) judgment that “all that child needs is a good paddling.”

If you’re in a situation that calls for Emotion Coaching, but the presence of others makes it impossible, make a mental note to do it later. You may want to tell your child (without embarrassing her) that you plan to discuss this at another time. Then be sure to follow up.

WHEN YOU ARE TOO UPSET OR TOO TIRED FOR COACHING TO BE PRODUCTIVE

Emotion Coaching takes a certain level of creative thought and energy. Intense anger or exhaustion can interfere with your ability to think clearly and communicate effectively. You may find you simply can’t muster enough patience and willingness to empathize and listen well. In addition, there may be times when you’re just too tired to deal effectively with your child’s emotions. If this happens, postpone Emotion Coaching until you can get the rest or comfort you need to revitalize yourself. This may simply mean taking a walk, a nap, a hot bath, or getting out to a movie. If you find that exhaustion, stress, or anger is continually interfering with your ability to engage with your child, you may want to consider lifestyle changes. A mental health counselor or other health-care provider may help you sort through possible solutions.

WHEN YOU NEED TO ADDRESS SERIOUS MISBEHAVIOR

Sometimes you have to engage in a kind of discipline that goes beyond the realm of simple limit setting addressed in Step No. 5 (
page 100
). When your child behaves in a way that upsets you and clearly
goes against your moral code, you need to voice your disapproval. While you may understand the emotions underlying your child’s misbehavior, this is not the time for empathy. Emotion Coaching to address the child’s feelings that may have led to the misbehavior can be postponed. Right now it’s a time to state unequivocally that you think your child’s actions were wrong and why you feel that way. Expressing your feelings of anger and disappointment (in a nonderogatory manner) is appropriate. It is also appropriate to talk about your values.

This can be a difficult lesson for parents who are sensitive to (and feel responsible for) the reasons their kids may be acting out. If a couple embroiled in divorce proceedings, for example, finds out that their thirteen-year-old daughter has been skipping school, they may feel uncertain about how to react. Understanding the girl’s confusion and sadness, they may be tempted to skip the reprimand and go straight to dealing with their daughter’s feelings about the divorce. Making excuses for the child’s misbehavior, however, only hurts her in the long run. The best approach is to deal with her truancy as one issue and her feelings about the divorce as another.

Let me give you another example, which happened under less extreme circumstances. When my daughter, Moriah, was three, we had a houseguest who stayed for several days. One evening after dinner, I found Moriah standing alone in the living room with a red marking pen in hand. Before her, on the side panel of our new, peach-colored sofa was a shocking red hieroglyphic.

“What happened here?” I asked, clearly incensed.

Moriah looked up at me, wide-eyed, still gripping the pen. “I have no idea,” she sputtered.

Great, I thought. Now we had two problems: vandalism and lying. At the same time, I was aware that Moriah had not been a happy girl for the past twenty-four hours. I figured she was tired of her daily routines being disrupted by our guest’s visit. My intuition told me she felt jealous because my wife and I had spent so much time talking with him instead of playing with her. That might explain why she had acted out with the red pen—behavior she knew was wrong. And the lie was easy to understand; she was trying to avoid my anger.

I knew I could respond empathetically, saying something like,
“Moriah, did you write on the sofa because you feel angry?” Then, I could add, “I understand that you feel angry, but writing on the couch is not okay.”

But all of this would skirt the much larger moral issue at hand: Moriah’s lie. So instead, I decided to postpone talking about Moriah’s anger and jealousy. Tonight we would talk about the importance of telling the truth. I told her I was angry and upset about the marks on the couch, and I told her I was even more upset that she had lied about making the marks.

Eventually, after we got the stains off the couch, Moriah, her mom, and I did talk about the emotions that led to the incident. My wife and I listened and tried to understand Moriah’s anger, loneliness, and frustration. We talked with our daughter about other ways she could have expressed her emotions, such as talking to us about them and asking for attention.

Even though I did not engage Moriah in Emotion Coaching immediately after the incident happened, I knew the emotional connection I had with my daughter as a result of previous coaching was at work in this situation. When a child has that strong emotional connection with a parent, the parent’s upset, disappointment, or anger creates enough pain in the child to become a disciplinary event in itself. Your child’s goal then becomes repairing the relationship, returning to a state where she feels emotionally close to you. She then learns that she must follow a certain code in order to experience that level of emotional comfort.

WHEN YOUR CHILD Is “FAKING” AN EMOTION TO MANIPULATE YOU

I’m not talking about ordinary whining and tantrums here; I’m talking about the kind of simulated, inauthentic whining and tantrums that all children try to use at some time to get their way.

Let me give you an example: The five-year-old son of one of the couples in our parenting groups got angry when he found out they were leaving him with a baby-sitter the next night to celebrate their anniversary. After talking at length to Shawn about his feelings, they could reach no resolution. The boy kept insisting that the only way he would feel comfortable with the situation was to be included
in the night out. Finally the couple gave up talking, leaving the boy wailing alone in his room. The crying continued for thirty minutes, with the parents periodically peeking in to check on him. At one point, the father said, he looked in to see Shawn peacefully building a tower of blocks while continuing his very genuine-sounding cry. “He looked at me and turned up the volume,” the father described. “Then I saw him crack a smile. He knew the ruse was up.”

Shawn had hoped that his crying would make his parents change their minds. That’s not to say he wasn’t still angry about being left with a baby-sitter. But for the parents to try to engage in empathetic listening and Emotion Coaching while the child was attempting to manipulate them with his emotions would have been fruitless. They had to make it clear to the boy that he wasn’t going to control them with his crying. That’s what the father did. He gently and firmly told the boy, “I know you are angry about this, but your crying is not going to make Mom and me change our minds. We are going to go out to dinner and you are going to stay with the baby-sitter.” At that point, the boy finally understood that the situation was not negotiable and he stopped wailing. After a while, the father asked Shawn if he would like to try to think of ways to make the evening with the baby-sitter more enjoyable, such as planning games, preparing snacks, and so forth, and the boy agreed.

W
HEN YOU DECIDE
to postpone Emotion Coaching, make a commitment to yourself and to your child that you will get back to the issue soon. This is much different from the tactics used by the Dismissing or Disapproving parents described in
Chapter 2
. For them, ignoring emotion is their overriding style of parenting. They feel uncomfortable with strong emotions, and so they sidestep them entirely. I am simply proposing that you postpone your discussion until it’s more likely to be productive.

If you do postpone talking about an issue, telling your child that you’ll get back to it later, make sure you follow through. Failing to keep a promise made to a child is probably not as catastrophic as it’s been made out to be in the media. Kids are very fair, very understanding, and they have lots of second chances to give. Still, keeping promises is a form of respect—one your child will reciprocate if you show a good example.

I also want to encourage parents to postpone Emotion Coaching only when they feel it’s necessary. In general, you should give as much time to Emotion Coaching as you can. For some, this will mean relinquishing the belief that talking about feelings somehow “indulges” or “spoils” a child. As our studies show, Emotion-Coached kids become better behaved as they learn to regulate their emotions. Nor will focusing on negative emotions “make matters worse.” If a child has a difficult problem, his parents should support him in learning to cope with it. If the problem at hand is insignificant, then talking about it certainly won’t hurt.