"Either we spend time meeting our children's emotional needs or we spend time dealing with their behaviors caused from their unmet needs. Either way, we spend the time. " The Institute of Child Psychology
What is emotional Intelligence?
Emotional Intelligence(EQ) is the ability to #manage emotions in positive ways. This management should aid stress reduction, empathy, effective communication, and reduced conflict.
Emotional Intelligence enhances overall quality of life. It helps attain career and personal goals. It plays a significant role in building strong relationships. It also enhances intrapersonal and interpersonal skills.
Essentially, EQ means being efficient with emotions. Gradually, over the years it has gained a higher status than IQ, evolving as an essential futuristic skill. That’s because it plays a significant role in fostering leadership skills, healthy relationships and negotiation skills.
The intangible benefits of enabling and empowering children to be efficient with their emotions is immense.
What happened to EQ the world over during the pandemic?
For years now, the world has focused on academic achievement in children. Consequently, emotional intelligence got ignored. During the #pandemic, EQ declined further. Around the world, people experienced a decline in wellbeing due to the pandemic. Studies indicate overall EQ declined sharply in 2020. The CIGNA loneliness studies show that now, people in general are feeling lonelier than ever. Loneliness is a significant factor in diminished wellbeing. A study known as ‘the State of the Heart’ data revealed that GenZ were the ones who faced brutal disturbance to their sense of community.
Recent studies depicted The Philippines as the most emotionally aware country and Singapore being the least emotionally aware country.
“There is no separation of mind and emotions; emotions, thinking, and learning are all linked.”
Children who have difficulty in controlling their emotion or exhibit behavior that indicates low EQ, need help in the following areas.
Self-management
A large component of EQ is emotional self-regulation. It is the ability to manage one’s expression of emotions. Children can improve their ability for emotion regulation with practice. Some strategies to manage emotions are involuntary, especially displayed in younger children. For example, young children automatically cover their eyes to display fear. When children are older, more complex strategies are needed for emotional self-regulation.
Parents can help children break down these strategies into two simple categories: a) those that help control the emotion (b) those that help to solve the problem.
Enabling children to restrain themselves and control impulses will foster #prosocialbehaviour. Self-control is a significant predictor for #achievement in children. This also guides children towards goal-oriented behavior.
3. “We are dangerous when we are not conscious of our responsibility for how we behave, think, and feel.” - Marshall B. Rosenberg.
Self-awareness: It is the capacity to recognize emotions. It also helps to understand how emotions impact thinking and #behavior. An important step in this direction would be accepting emotions and dealing with them accordingly.
Parents can help children to identify their #emotions and teach them to reflect on it. A better understanding of oneself can lead to improved self-awareness.
Parents can also ensure that the child is exposed to an environment that is conducive to play or study, ensuring that emotional triggers are removed. Recently the American Academy of Paediatrics released an advisory requesting parents to not use technology to manage negative emotions for children. This could grow to be a factor impeding the ability for children to manage their own emotions.
“The only way to change someone’s mind is to connect with them from the heart. '' Rasheed Ogunlaru.
Social awareness: It is the capacity for #empathy. It is the ability to understand the emotions and needs of other people. Heightened social awareness also enables recognizing power dynamics in an organization and picking up emotional cues from people around. #Parents can guide children to observe people around them especially, nudging them to try and guess the moods around them.
“It is a choice. No matter how frustrating or boring or constraining or painful or oppressive our experience, we can always choose how we respond.”- Edith Eger.
Relationship management:
Good EQ facilitates good relationship management. It helps the #student to #communicate effectively. It also helps if children can work well in a team and handle conflict more effectively
“When dealing with people, remember you are not dealing with creatures of logic, but with creatures of emotion.” - Dale Carnegie.
Other ways to handle Emotional Intelligence
It largely helps to get #children involved in other activities like sports, extracurricular activities, community service or any other hobby that a child may be interested in pursuing. Empowering a child with a new skill also sharpens #cognitivegrowth along with emotional intelligence.
Learner Circle has a host of activities designed to keep children productively engaged. Thus, helping to channelize their creative energies effectively. These activities hone children to be future leaders equipping them with futuristic skills like #conflictresolution, #decisionmaking, #leadershipskills and #negotiationskills. Studies show that emotional intelligence is more crucial than IQ and plays a significant role in academic achievement. The more opportunities children are exposed to, the more capable they become in managing their emotions.
Please do visit our website and let us know if our courses interest you. All our online courses are designed to foster #cognitiveskills and overall growth. Our courses like art, music, singing, dance , abacus, coding and sketching focus on cognitive skills and overall development of the child. We are committed to helping children pursue their passion and help them develop into future leaders. Our courses are focused on #earlyagedevelopment and we recently expanded our #onlinecourses to adults as well. So parents may choose to chase a dream alongside their children. Another interesting feather to our cap is the addition of #experientiallearning to our curriculum. This opportunity is open to all age groups. Now, families can learn together at #LearnerCircle. Click on the link below to know more about this new exciting venture. We are employing Innovative measures towards building #emotionalintelligence and enthusiastic learners.
https://www.learnercircle.in/experiential-learning-kids-and-adults
“As more and more artificial intelligence is entering into the world, more and more emotional intelligence must enter into leadership.” - Amit Ray.
REferenceshttps://www.forbes.com/sites/travisbradberry/2013/08/17/the-most-and-least-emotionally-aware-countries/?sh=780bf2b13596
https://www.6seconds.org/2021/10/26/emotional-intelligence-generations/
https://www.helpguide.org/articles/mental-health/emotional-intelligence-eq.htm#:~:text=Emotional%20intelligence%20(otherwise%20known%20as,overcome%20challenges%20and%20defuse%20conflict.