How To Develop Emotional Intelligence In Boys And Girls
For years, intelligence as a concept has had different meanings. Until not long ago, intelligence was only evident as something related to logic, learning capacity, verbal and mathematical reasoning.
But it has long been considered that Intelligence involves much more, including the skills to understand what we feel and other aspects related to emotions and sociability.
Emotional Intelligence (EI) is the ability that people have when it comes to understanding our emotions, as well as those of others The ability to manage them, self-control, empathy, as well as the ability to recognize those emotions, learn what triggers them and when others are feeling them.
In fact, Emotional Intelligence covers much more and also includes aspects such as knowing how to react to other people’s emotions.
Many times we focus on our daughters being able to learn and develop their full intellectual potential at the level of theoretical concepts, but we forget something important, and that is the emotional and social aspect. In fact, the emotional skills of children are essential, since if they are enhanced and developed correctly it will allow them to better cope with situations of frustration, difficulty, uncertainty, etc.
Emotional skills allow them to be able to manage their own emotions and direct them towards their goals.
How to help develop Emotional Intelligence in children?
Below you will find some techniques and recommendations to be able to apply them at home and help enhance the emotional development of your sons or daughters
1. Recognize emotions
Where do we start? It seems logical that if what we want is to improve our ability in emotional terms, the first thing we should do is “recognize emotions.” So to start It is important that we label emotions Nowadays there are numerous visual resources that make this task easier for children. For example, we can use books, virtual games, etc.
To recognize an emotion, it is important to understand what that emotion is, define it, as well as explain what we feel on a physical level when we have it. For example, to explain anger we could say: we feel it when we see that there is some threat or something that may bother us, when we don’t like something or when we believe that someone is not acting well.
We can accompany this with a brief explanation in the form of sensations and behaviors: When we get angry we feel our whole body tense, we frown, our nose wrinkles, we tend to speak louder…
2. Manage emotions
Once we have learned what emotions are and know how to identify them It is important that we explain to the person how they can act after feeling them For example, when we get angry we can act in many ways: break things, attack someone, calm down, breathe, try to leave the place, etc.
It is important to explain to the child how he or she can manage each emotion, and to learn the consequences of each option, as well as teach alternative ways of acting when we see that he has not managed the situation well.
An exercise we can do is expose them to different social situations and ask them what they would do in that situation or explain it through characters and have them try to explain what that character can do to manage their emotion.
For example: Alberto has met his friend Inés to return a book that he had lent her. When Inés arrives she tells him that her book got wet and some of its pages can no longer be read. How do you think Alberto will feel? What do you think he could do in this situation? What will he say to Inés?
Is about propose social situations in which they must reason about emotions and different behavioral alternatives
On the other hand, there are different techniques to self-regulate our emotions and we can teach them so that they can apply them at home. For example, some of these techniques are mainly used to regulate anger, such as the turtle technique and the traffic light technique. Both use metaphors and stories to explain how to stop anger, calm ourselves down, and then express what we feel or state what we want.
3. Empathy
Empathy is the ability we have to understand the emotions in others and put ourselves in their situation It is something very important for subsequent social relationships since it allows you to connect more easily with others.
It is normal that when boys and girls are younger they go through a stage of “selfishness” and have a hard time putting themselves in the shoes of others, but if we use strategies to promote empathy it will develop more easily.
One of the strategies is to explain stories of different characters where the person appears but also friends and/or family and You should try to detect how others will feel and why
For example: Your father asks you to clean up the room because your cousins are coming to visit. You are focused on a video game and in the end you don’t pay attention to it. When you return to your room, your father sees that it is not tidied up. How will your father feel? How will you feel?
Once we have learned to recognize emotions, regulate them and even understand those of others, it is important that we also take a step further: learn to communicate and express them.
It is of little use to understand my emotions if I cannot then explain to someone how I feel and why To develop this skill, it is not only important that boys and girls have models, but this will also greatly facilitate their learning.
If as parents we get used to talking openly about our emotions, expressing them and doing so appropriately, it will be easier for our sons and daughters to copy those behaviors.
Besides, An exercise that we can do to achieve this goal is to explain what words to use to express what we feel For example: When you… I feel… After telling me that, I have felt… I would like that when I… you…
The role of fathers and mothers is key
Finally, we want to highlight the importance that parents play at all times in this learning process. The little ones copy the behaviors of the environment and therefore, if we want them to develop their emotions in the best way, we must try to be appropriate models of emotional expression and management.
Sometimes these strategies are enough, and with the parenting skills and the children’s own skills, emotional skills will improve. But on other occasions this does not happen and extra help or certain more specific guidelines are required. If that is your case, you can contact us and our psychologists will offer you the necessary resources and guidelines.
