Having kids changes us, doesn’t it? It softens our hearts and refocuses what is truly important in life.
Being human, I am not perfect. But I know and recognize that in the last several years I have had to handle my own emotions better, especially once I became a mother. It’s also been a journey learning to respond to others with empathy and compassion rather than frustration for a situation.
So I am on a mission to raise my children to care.
To really care.
I want them to be kind, compassionate, empathetic, and emotionally intelligent individuals that both help others through emotions and know how to adequately handle their own.
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How to raise a child with social and emotional intelligence from a young age
As a history teacher, I watched the news every single morning for years. I thought that it would ultimately supplement my teaching by being able to apply and talk about current events. However, in the end I only became anxious or cold hearted to the situations around me. So in the last 4 years I have been working to try to reverse this. I want to raise kids that care about the situations, not just ingest information and have no feelings about them at all.
Communicate through feelings and label their feelings
Young kids experience big emotions. They experience them even if they don’t understand them.
When we help give those feelings a name, we are giving identity to the problem. Which means it becomes something your child can overcome.
So whether it’s working through parenting anxious kids, talking our children down from anger and frustration, or addressing sadness, they’re all important in developing an emotional awareness and intelligence.
Talk about behaviors and their impact.
It teaches them cause and effect.
When we give our children a toolbox of behaviors and let them know each tool can produce a different outcome, we enable our children.
They then problem solvers working to find the outcome they want. So they learn that hitting someone might cause that person to get sad or mad which has negative repercussions on their own emotions. Or that if they see someone upset, a kind words could have a huge positive impact.
Acknowledge your child’s perspective and hear them out.
When they’re in trouble, let them talk through it.
When someone hurts them, let them tell you the whole story.
When they feel the need to approach them, pull them closer.
Through gaining insight into a child’s perspective, we ourselves are showing empathy and compassion. Empathy does not mean that you have to agree with the actions of your child. It simply allows open communication and better understanding from both sides which builds trust and respect, but also models the empathy you want your child to show towards others.
LISTEN TO THE ENTIRE EPISODE (15 MINUTES)
Get 2 more ideas + more information on what’s listed above.
Show Notes:
- Social-Emotional training helps develop the prefrontal cortex
- Whoever You Are children’s book
- Social-Emotional training helps develop the prefrontal cortex
- Raising selfless kids in a selfish world (previous episode)
Have rough days? We all have them when raising kids.
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Kara is an author and advocate for positive, grace-filled parenting. She is homeschooler to her 4 children living in Boston, MA and believes in creative educational approaches to help kids dive deeper into a rich learning experience. She has her degree in Secondary Education & Adolescent Childhood Development and is passionate about connecting with and helping other parents on their journey to raise awesome kids!

Jessica Dean
Hi Kara,
I just discovered your podcast and blog and love the material. I’m wondering if your website still has access to your 1 to 5 podcast articles, with show notes?
Thank you so much for your time!
Sincerely,
Jessica Dean
Kara Carrero
Hi Jessica, Yes! They’re all online forevermore 😉 The easy way to find them is just going to extremelygoodparenting.com and under the photo icons shown you should see a button that says “see complete episode list”. If you have any trouble, let me know!
Jessica
Thank you so much, Kara! I can’t believe I didn’t see the link before 😛 I really appreciate your prompt reply!! Blessings.