Raising an Emotionally Intelligent Child (20 page)

Finally, I want to reiterate that Emotion Coaching should not be seen as some kind of magic formula that eliminates family conflict and the need for setting limits.

Emotion Coaching, however, can help you grow closer to your kids. It lays the groundwork for a collaborative relationship where you solve problems together. Your children will learn that they can trust you with their feelings. They’ll know you’re not going to criticize them or tear them down “for their own good.” Nor will your kids carry that feeling familiar to many adults—that “I loved my dad a lot, but I could never really talk to him.” When your children have a problem, they’ll come to you because they know you offer more than platitudes and lectures. You really listen.

But the true beauty of Emotion Coaching is that its effects will last into your child’s adolescent years. By then, your kids will have internalized your values and they’ll reap the benefits that come with emotional intelligence. They’ll know how to concentrate, how to get along with peers, and how to handle strong emotions. They’ll also avoid the risks that fall to kids who don’t have these skills.

T
EST
Y
OUR
E
MOTION
-C
OACHING
S
KILLS

Here’s an exercise to test your ability to recognize children’s feelings and parents’ agendas in a variety of intense emotional situations. It will also give you a chance to practice Emotion-Coaching responses to children’s negative feelings.
Following each item
, a “wrong” parental response is given. Then you are asked to guess what the parent’s agenda and the child’s feelings might be in this situation. And finally, you are asked to provide a new response that validates the child’s feelings.

Sample: A child disappears in a large department store and the parents are very worried about the child. After a while, a clearly upset child is found by a store employee, who helps the child find the parent.

Wrong response: “You stupid child! I am so mad at you, I am never taking you shopping again.”

Parent’s agenda: The parent was scared and wants to keep the child safe and prevent this from happening again.

Child’s feeling: Fear.

Right response: “You must have been so scared. I was scared, too. Come here and let me hold you for a while. Then let’s talk over what happened.”

1. A child comes home from school and says, “I’m never going back to that school again! The teacher yelled at me in front of my friends!”

Wrong response: “What did you do to make the teacher yell at you?”

Parent’s agenda:

Child’s feeling:

Right response:

2. In the bathtub, your child says, “I hate my brother. I wish he would be dead.”

Wrong response: “That’s a terrible thing to say. We don’t talk that way in this house. You don’t hate your brother. You love your brother. I never want to hear you say that again!”

Parent’s agenda:

Child’s feeling:

Right response:

3. At dinner your child says, “Yuk! I hate this food. I won’t eat it.”

Wrong response: “You will eat what we have and like it!”

Parent’s agenda:

Child’s feeling:

Right response:

4. Your child comes in from outside and says, “I hate those kids. They won’t play with me. They are so mean to me!”

Wrong response: “If you weren’t such a wimp they would want to play with you. Don’t make such a big deal out of every little thing. You have to roll with the punches.”

Parent’s agenda:

Child’s feeling:

Right response:

5. Your child says, “I wish you weren’t taking care of me tonight. I wish that (fill in the blank) were taking care of me.”

Wrong response: “What an awful thing to say! You’re a thoughtless child.”

Parent’s agenda:

Child’s feeling:

Right response:

6. Your child’s friend is visiting. Your child says to the friend, “I don’t want to share this toy with you. You can’t play with it!”

Wrong response: “You’re a selfish child. You have to learn to share!”

Parent’s agenda:

Child’s feeling:

Right response:

ANSWERS

Although there are no single correct answers to this exercise, the following responses are typical of the Emotion-Coaching style of parenting. Notice how both “wrong” and “right” parental responses address the parent’s agenda. But the “right” response provides the child with empathy and guidance.

1. Parent’s agenda: The parent wants the child to succeed at school and be liked by the teacher. The parent is worried that the child is doing something wrong at school that will result in the teacher’s disapproval.

Child’s feeling: Embarrassment.

Right response: “That must have been so embarrassing for you.”

2. Parent’s agenda: The parent wants the two siblings to get along.

Child’s feeling: Anger.

Right response: “I know your brother can really make you mad and upset sometimes. What happened?”

3. Parent’s agenda: The parent wants the child to like the food that was prepared and the parent wants to avoid more cooking.

Child’s feeling: Disgust.

Right response: “Today this food doesn’t seem appetizing to you. What do you feel like eating?”

4. Parent’s agenda: The parent wants the child to be able to get along with other children easily and not have his or her feelings hurt so easily.

Child’s feeling: Sadness.

Right response: “That must have hurt your feelings. Tell me what happened.”

5. Parent’s agenda: The parent wants the child to be appreciative that he or she is spending time and effort to be with the child tonight.

Child’s feeling: Sadness.

Right response: “You really miss (fill in the blank). I can understand that. I miss (fill in the blank) too.”

6. Parent’s agenda: The parent wants the child to share and to be more generous with guests.

Child’s feeling: Anger.

Right response: “Sometimes it’s hard to share a favorite toy. Let’s put that toy away and take out some toys that you feel more comfortable sharing.”

Chapter 5

M
ARRIAGE
, D
IVORCE, AND
Y
OUR
C
HILD’S
E
MOTIONAL
H
EALTH

A
SK ADULTS WHOSE PARENTS WERE UNHAPPILY MARRIED TO
describe their childhood memories, and chances are you’ll hear tales of sadness, confusion, false hope, and bitterness. They may remember how disorienting and painful it was to see their parents divorce. Or their folks may have been among those stalwart couples who were miserable in marriage, but determined to stick it out “for the sake of the kids.” If so, you might learn about the pain of watching the two most important people in that young person’s life hurt each other day in and day out.

It hardly matters whether a couple is married, separated, or divorced; when a mother and father display hostility and contempt for each other, their children suffer. That’s because the tenor of a marriage—or divorce—creates a kind of “emotional ecology” for children. Just as a tree is affected by the quality of air, water, and soil in its environment, the emotional health of children is determined by the quality of intimate relationships that surround them. As a parent, your interactions with your child’s other parent influence your child’s attitudes and achievements, her ability to regulate her emotions, and her capacity for getting along with others. In general, when parents nurture and support each other, their children’s emotional intelligence flourishes. But children who are constantly exposed to their parents’ hostility toward each other may encounter serious risks.

While this can be disturbing news for parents who are experiencing marital conflict, there is hope—especially for parenting couples (married or divorced) who are motivated to improve their relationship. We now know that it’s not interparental conflict itself that’s
so harmful to children, but the way in which parents handle their disputes.

We have also found that
Emotion Coaching can have a buffering effect
. That is, when parents can be present for their children emotionally, helping them to cope with negative feelings, and guiding them through periods of family stress, their children are shielded from many of the damaging effects of family turmoil, including divorce. To date, Emotion Coaching is the only proven buffer against these deleterious effects.

And finally, we have found that the road map for being a good parent is the same road map for improving a marriage. The same interpersonal style that Emotion-Coaching parents practice with their children—emotionally aware, empathetic, and open to joint problem solving—is a good style for their marriage. In addition to becoming better parents, they improve the relationship with their spouses.

Before we explore how the protective effect of Emotion Coaching works, it helps to understand the ways in which marital conflict and divorce affect kids.

H
OW
M
ARITAL
C
ONFLICT AND
D
IVORCE
C
AN
H
ARM
C
HILDREN

T
HROUGH OUR OBSERVATION
and laboratory work with families of small children, my research colleagues and I discovered that certain kinds of marital discord had profound effects on the children’s physical and emotional health, as well as their ability to get along with peers. Our data show that children raised by parents whose marriages are characterized by criticism, defensiveness, and contempt are much more likely to show antisocial behavior and aggression toward their playmates. They have more difficulty regulating their emotions, focusing their attention, and soothing themselves when they become upset. In addition, the mothers of these children reported that the kids had an increased number of health problems such as coughs and colds. These children also seemed to be under more chronic stress, as shown by higher levels of catecholamines, which are stress-related hormones, in their urine.

To gauge how well the children related to their peers, we watched them during thirty-minute unsupervised play sessions in the children’s homes. Each family had invited their child’s best friend to participate as part of the experiment. To evaluate the sessions, we looked at how involved the children behaved with each other as they played. Did they, for example, spend a lot of time engaged in fantasy games that take a high degree of cooperation? Or were they more likely to spend their time in parallel play—that is, playing independently alongside each other with few attempts to collaborate?

We also watched for overtly negative behavior from the children we were studying—interactions such as arguing, threats, name calling, tattling, and physical aggression. When squabbles broke out, did the children try to find ways to resolve them, or did their conflicts cause their play to disintegrate? Previous research tells us such behavior can make an important difference in children’s lives over the long term; negative and antisocial behavior is a major reason children are rejected by their peers in early childhood. We also know that a child’s failure to form friendships is a leading indicator of a child’s risk for psychiatric problems.

When we compared the data from these play sessions to the information we had gathered from the families in interviews and lab experiments described in
Chapter 1
, we found a strong connection between the marital relationships and the children’s behavior with their friends. Children whose parents were distressed in their marriages played less collaboratively and had more negative interactions with their playmates than children whose parents were happily married.

Many other social scientists have made similar discoveries about behavior problems among children from troubled marriages. Taken together, the research shows that marital conflict and divorce can put children on a trajectory that leads to serious problems later on. Trouble may begin in early childhood with poor interpersonal skills and aggressive behavior, which leads to peer rejection. Parents, distracted by their own problems, have less time and attention for their children, so the kids drift, unsupervised, toward a more deviant peer group. By early adolescence, many children from disrupted families have stumbled into a whole hornet’s nest of teenage woes, including
failing grades, precocious sexual behavior, substance abuse, and delinquency. There’s also some evidence, although it’s not as strong, that children from families with a high degree of conflict and divorce experience more depression, anxiety, and withdrawal. One study, conducted by the University of Virginia’s E. Mavis Hetherington, found that
the rate of clinically significant mental health problems
was nearly three times higher in teens from divorced homes than among teens in the general population.