How to Raise an Emotionally Intelligent Child

How to Raise an Emotionally Intelligent Child

What is emotional intelligence? Being smart about emotions. Specifically,

5 Steps To Nurture Emotional Intelligence in Your Child

So you want to raise an emotionally intelligent child and and you're wondering where to begin? Start with these five steps.

Empathy: Foundation of Emotional Health

When a parent is able to give the gift of empathy to a child, it changes everything.

Teaching Emotional Intelligence When Emotions Run High

When storm clouds brew, even the most well-intentioned parent can get triggered and escalate the upset rather than calm it. But when your child wrestles with the more "difficult" human emotions, he needs your help to learn how to manage them. This is the most important time to teach emotional intelligence -- meaning to help your child develop the abilities to soothe himself, regulate his emotions, and get along with others. Here are six ways to help your child develop a more emotionally intelligent brain, every day.

Love the One You're With: Nurturing your child's unique temperament

How much can parents really impact their kids? Isn't a lot of who they are genetic? The debate between nature and nurture is still raging. Studies of twins reared separately suggest that many behaviors we might have attributed to environment may be innate. But does that mean we’re off the hook as parents?

10 Tips To Help Your Child With Anger

"The truth about rage is that it only dissolves when it is really heard and understood, without reservation." - Carl Rogers.

12 Tips To Raise a Competent Child

Competence is the ability to effectively accomplish our goals. A competent person is able to stay on track, notice what's needed in a given situation, and respond accordingly. Competent people act with feeling, even with inspiration, but don't let emotions derail them. In other words, they overcome internal and external obstacles to stay on task and accomplish the goals they set for themselves. That means they're able to read other people and respond appropriately to new situations.

Engagement: Helping Your Child Find Their Passion

Enthusiasm. Engagement. It's almost the definition of childhood. A jaded, withdrawn child is a red flag that something is very wrong. But what happens as they grow up, and modern life gets in the way?

Teaching Your Child the Art of Happiness

For many parents, raising happy children is the holy grail of parenting success. But too often, we think happiness is about those fleeting moments of getting what you want. Lasting happiness is actually much more complicated, but much more rewarding. And yes, you can dramatically increase your child's chances of being happy, just by the way you raise him or her.

12 Tips To Raise a Persistent Child

"Character consists of what you do on the third and fourth tries."
--James A. Michener

The Secret of Raising a Resilient Child

Life is full of hard knocks. What makes some people get up the next morning determined to try again, while others give up? Resilience.

Raise Your Child to Be an Optimist

"We don't have to engage in grand, heroic actions to participate in the process of change. Small acts, when multiplied by millions of people, can transform the world..... To be hopeful in bad times is not just foolishly romantic. It is based on the fact that human history is a history not only of cruelty, but also of compassion, sacrifice, courage, kindness.... If we see only the worst, it destroys our capacity to do something. If we remember those times and places -- and there are so many -- where people have behaved magnificently, this gives us the energy to act, and at least the possibility of sending this spinning top of a world in a different direction." - Historian Howard Zinn

Books to Help Kids Develop Emotional Intelligence

Children love reading with their parents. Many kids have definite ideas about what they want to read -- some love books about how things work, like dump trucks or trains. Others love storybooks about people or animals.

Using EFT to Calm Kids & Help Them Process Emotions

Parents often ask me how they can de-stress and stay calm with their kids. They also ask about techniques to teach children, that the child can use to calm herself when she's upset.

Books to Help You Explain Death To Children

Death is one of the great mysteries of life. Each of us will lose loved ones throughout our lives, and each of us will die. Yet few of us talk about death. And most of us find ourselves at a loss when we're faced with explaining death to our children, especially at a time when we're grieving ourselves.