Nurturing emotional intelligence & empathy (Ep. 017)

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.

Affiliate links included to financially support the podcast and pay for hosting. Thank you for buying through our links.

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.

But this two-page printable cheat sheet might help you along the way. This first page is all suggestions and the other has the second column empty to allow you to write in what works for you family. Simply input your email below and it will be in your inbox. Plus, since you’ll now be a part of the Extremely Good Parenting community, we’ll send you some other awesome freebies & advice from time to time.

Check out the sneak peek and sign up below:

More Intentional Parenting Resources