Raising an Emotionally Intelligent Child (2 page)

At the same time that I was learning about my own emotions, I was making related discoveries in my professional life. As a Jew whose parents escaped Austria to survive the Holocaust, I had respected the efforts of other theorists who rejected authoritarianism as a way to raise morally healthy children. They proposed that the family operate as a democracy and that children and parents act as rational, equal partners. But my years of investigation into family dynamics were beginning to yield new evidence that
emotional interactions
between parent and child could have an even greater impact on a child’s long-term well-being.

Surprisingly, much of today’s popular advice to parents ignores
the world of emotion. Instead, it relies on child-rearing theories that address children’s misbehavior, but disregard the feelings that underlie that misbehavior. However, the ultimate goal of raising children should not be simply to have an obedient and compliant child. Most parents hope for much more for their children. They want their children to be moral and responsible people who contribute to society, who have the strength to make their own choices in life, who enjoy the accomplishments of their own talents, who enjoy life and the pleasures it can offer, who have good relationships with friends and successful marriages, and who themselves become good parents.

In my research I discovered that love by itself wasn’t enough. Very concerned, warm, and involved parents often had attitudes toward their own and their children’s emotions that got in the way of them being able to talk to their children when they were sad or afraid or angry. But while love by itself was not enough, channeling that caring into some basic skills that parents practiced as if they were coaching their children in the area of emotion
was
enough. The secret lay in how parents interacted with their children when emotions ran hot.

We have studied parents and children in very detailed laboratory studies and followed the children as they developed. After a decade of research in my laboratory my research team encountered a group of parents who did five very simple things with their children when the children were emotional. We call these five things “Emotion Coaching.” We discovered that the children who had Emotion-Coaching parents were on an entirely different developmental trajectory than the children of other parents.

The Emotion-Coaching parents had children who later became what Daniel Goleman calls “emotionally intelligent” people. These coached children simply had more general abilities in the area of their own emotions than children who were not coached by their parents. These abilities included being able to regulate their own emotional states. The children were better at soothing themselves when they were upset. They could calm down their hearts faster. Because of the superior performance in that part of their physiology that is involved in calming themselves, they had fewer infectious
illnesses. They were better at focusing attention. They related better to other people, even in the tough social situations they encountered in middle childhood like getting teased, where being overly emotional is a liability, not an asset. They were better at understanding people. They had better friendships with other children. They were also better at situations in school that required academic performance. In short, they had developed a kind of “IQ” that is about people and the world of feelings, or emotional intelligence. This book will teach you the five steps of Emotion Coaching so that you can raise an emotionally intelligent child.

My emphasis on the emotional bond between parent and child has emerged from my longitudinal research. To my knowledge, this is the first research to confirm the work of one of our most brilliant child clinicians, the psychologist Dr. Haim Ginott, who wrote and taught in the 1960s. Ginott understood the importance of talking to children when they were emotional, and he understood the basic principles of how parents should do this.

Emotion Coaching gives us a framework based on emotional communication. When parents offer their children empathy and help them to cope with negative feelings like anger, sadness, and fear, parents build bridges of loyalty and affection. Within this context, although Emotion-Coaching parents do effectively set limits, misbehavior is no longer the major concern. Compliance, obedience, and responsibility come from a sense of love and connectedness the children feel within their families. In this way, emotional interactions among family members become the foundation for instilling values and raising moral people. Children behave according to family standards because they understand with their hearts that good behavior is expected; that living right is all part of belonging to the clan.

Unlike other parenting theories that offer a scattered hodgepodge of strategies for trying to control children’s behavior, the five steps of Emotion Coaching provide a framework for maintaining a close personal relationship with our children as they develop.

The news of this book is that through scientific investigation, my colleagues and I have evidence that emotional interactions between parent and child are of utmost importance. We now know
with certainty that when mothers and fathers practice Emotion Coaching it makes a significant difference in their children’s success and happiness.

Our work will put our approach to children’s emotions into a context that makes sense for today’s parents, things that Ginott never addressed in the 1960s. With increasing divorce rates and concerns over problems like youth violence, raising emotionally intelligent kids becomes more crucial than ever. Our studies shed surprising light on how parents can protect their kids from the proven risks associated with marital conflict and divorce. They also show in new ways how an emotionally connected father, whether married or divorced, influences the well-being of his children.

The key to successful parenting is not found in complex theories, elaborate family rules, or convoluted formulas for behavior. It is based on your deepest feelings of love and affection for your child, and is demonstrated simply through empathy and understanding. Good parenting begins in your heart, and then continues on a moment-to-moment basis by engaging your children when feelings run high, when they are sad, angry, or scared. The heart of parenting is being there in a particular way when it really counts. This book will show you that way.

John Gottman, Ph.D.

N
OTE

We find the terminology “he or she” or “he/she” to be awkward. Traditionally, authors have avoided this awkwardness by using masculine pronouns exclusively. We believe this practice perpetuates gender bias. We have chosen instead to alternate masculine and feminine pronouns throughout the book. We hope our book will be equally useful to parents of daughters and parents of sons.

Chapter 1

E
MOTION
C
OACHING
:
The Key to Raising Emotionally Intelligent Kids

D
IANE IS ALREADY LATE FOR WORK AS SHE TRIES TO COAX
three-year-old Joshua into his jacket so she can take him to daycare. After a too-quick breakfast and a battle over which shoes to wear, Joshua is tense too. He doesn’t really care that his mom has a meeting in less than an hour. He wants to stay home and play, he tells her. When Diane tells him that’s not possible, Joshua falls to the floor. Feeling sad and angry, he starts to cry.

Seven-year-old Emily turns to her parents in tears just five minutes before the baby-sitter’s arrival. “It’s not fair to leave me with somebody I don’t even know,” she sobs. “But Emily,” her dad explains, “this sitter is a good friend of your mother’s. And besides, we’ve had tickets to this concert for weeks.” “I still don’t want you to go,” she cries.

Fourteen-year-old Matt tells his mom he just got kicked out of the school band because the teacher smelled somebody smoking pot on the bus. “I swear to God it wasn’t me,” Matt says. But the boy’s grades have been falling and he’s running with a new crowd. “I don’t believe you, Matt,” she says. “And until you bring your grades up, you’re not going out.” Hurt and furious, Matt flies out the door without a word.

Three families. Three conflicts. Three kids at different stages of development. Still, these parents face the same problem—how to deal with children when emotions run high. Like most parents, they want to treat their kids fairly, with patience and respect. They know the world presents children with many challenges, and they want to be there for their kids, lending insight and support. They want to teach their kids to handle problems effectively and to form strong,
healthy relationships. But there’s a big difference between
wanting
to do right by your kids and actually having the wherewithal to carry it off.

That’s because good parenting requires more than intellect. It touches a dimension of the personality that’s been ignored in much of the advice dispensed to parents over the past thirty years. Good parenting involves
emotion
.

In the last decade or so, science has discovered a tremendous amount about the role emotions play in our lives. Researchers have found that even more than IQ, your emotional awareness and ability to handle feelings will determine your success and happiness in all walks of life, including family relationships. For parents, this quality of “emotional intelligence”—as many now call it—means being aware of your children’s feelings, and being able to empathize, soothe, and guide them. For children, who learn most lessons about emotion from their parents, it includes the ability to control impulses, delay gratification, motivate themselves, read other people’s social cues, and cope with life’s ups and downs.

“
Family life is our first school
for emotional learning,” writes Daniel Goleman, psychologist and author of
Emotional Intelligence
, a book that describes in rich detail the scientific research that has led to our growing understanding of this field. “In this intimate cauldron we learn how to feel about ourselves and how others will react to our feelings; how to think about these feelings and what choices we have in reacting; how to read and express hopes and fears. This emotional schooling operates not just through the things parents say and do directly to children, but also in the models they offer for handling their own feelings and those that pass between husband and wife. Some parents are gifted emotional teachers, others atrocious.”

What parental behaviors make the difference? As a research psychologist studying parent-child interactions, I have spent much of the past twenty years looking for the answer to this question.
Working with research teams
at the University of Illinois and the University of Washington, I have conducted in-depth research in two studies of 119 families, observing how parents and children react to one another in emotionally charged situations. We have been following these children from age four to adolescence. In addition, we
are in the process of tracking 130 newlywed couples as they become parents of young infants. Our studies involve lengthy interviews with parents, talking about their marriages, their reactions to their children’s emotional experiences, and their own awareness of the role emotion plays in their lives. We have tracked children’s physiological responses during stressful parent-child interactions. We have carefully observed and analyzed parents’ emotional reactions to their kids’ anger and sadness. Then we have checked in with these families over time to see how their children developed in terms of health, academic achievement, emotional development, and social relationships.

Our results tell a simple, yet compelling story. We have found that most parents fall into one of two broad categories: those who give their children guidance about the world of emotion and those who don’t.

I call the parents who get involved with their children’s feelings “Emotion Coaches.” Much like athletic coaches, they teach their children strategies to deal with life’s ups and downs. They don’t object to their children’s displays of anger, sadness, or fear. Nor do they ignore them. Instead, they accept negative emotions as a fact of life and they use emotional moments as opportunities for teaching their kids important life lessons and building closer relationships with them.

“When Jennifer is sad, it’s a real important time for bonding between us,” says Maria, the mother of a five-year-old in one of our studies. “I tell her that I want to talk to her, to know how she’s feeling.”

Like many Emotion-Coaching parents in our studies, Jennifer’s dad, Dan, sees his daughter’s sad or angry moments as the time she needs him most. More than any other interaction he has with his daughter, soothing her “makes me feel like a dad,” Dan says. “I have to be there for her … I have to tell her it’s all right. That she’ll survive this problem and probably have lots more.”

Emotion-Coaching parents like Maria and Dan might be described as “warm” and “positive” toward their daughter, and indeed they are. But taken alone, warm, positive parenting does not teach emotional intelligence. In fact, it’s common for parents to be loving and attentive, yet incapable of dealing effectively with their children’s
negative emotions. Among these parents who fail to teach their kids emotional intelligence, I have identified three types:

1
. Dismissing parents, who disregard, ignore, or trivialize children’s negative emotions;

2
. Disapproving parents, who are critical of their children’s displays of negative feelings and may reprimand or punish them for emotional expression; and

3
. Laissez-Faire parents, who accept their children’s emotions and empathize with them, but fail to offer guidance or set limits on their children’s behavior.

To give you an idea of how differently Emotion-Coaching parents and their three noncoaching counterparts respond to their children, imagine Diane, whose little boy protested going to daycare, in each of these roles.