Wednesday, January 26, 2011

Review of "Raising an Emotionally Intelligent Child"

Parents should know that not only IQ but EQ is becoming more and more important in raising their kids. This has been an essential key to a successful life of a kids. The book- Raising an Emotionally Intelligent Child by John Gottman is about how parents can help coaching their children so that they can manage their own emotion wisely. In this book, the author teaches us that it is important to recognized your child's emotion and accept it. This mean it is okay for kids to feel sad, angry and fear. However, it is not okay for the child to behave out of control like throughing and breaking things when they are angry. According to the authors, there are Five Key Steps for Emotional Coaching.
  1. Being aware of the child's emotions
  2. Recognizing the emotion as an opportunity for intimacy and teaching (We may use to think that  it is better if our child don't show any bad emotions but actually this is not true. As a Chinese saying, a crisis may seen as an opportunity)
  3. Listening empathetically and validating the child's feelings (This has to be done in sincere. Your kids may feel bad if you do it in a wrong way. ex."Yes honey, i know you are sad, ok, you can go to bed now")
  4. Helping the child verbally label the emotions
  5. Setting the limits while helping the child problem-solve (Setting limit is very important especially if it involved legal issue, eg fighting with his friends)
The author shared many different stratagies on how to deal with different emotional situations and at different stage of the childhood. One thing captured my attention the most is the "Crucial Role of Father"as mention in one of the chapter. The author reveals that how father play and interact with the child is totally different from mother. This has further influence in child's peer relationship and achievement at school which mother can't replace it.
Overall, i found that this is a good book whcih has provided me a guidance on how to deal with my kids's emotional in a better way for sure!

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