Written by Ms Wilma Vina Luz D. De Leon.

Ms. Wilma is a very enthusiastic and happy teacher who has a degree in Education and Psychology. She is teaching English and Life Skills in SIS Cilegon.

“Educating the mind without educating the heart is NO education at all” – Aristotle

In this time of COVID-19 pandemic, people are going through a lot of drastic changes while facing difficulties and fears in their daily existence.

Our graduation theme on resilience is aptly opportune because children should be able to cope up or recover quickly from difficult situations like what they are actually experiencing these days. In these changing times, we should put more value on the soft skills of our children as this will help them succeed in their lives.

When we say that someone is clever but made a mess of their personal lives; someone who has acquired a fortune but is restless and sad, or powerful but intolerant and unimaginative, these are deficits in what we call Emotional Intelligence.

Emotional Intelligence is defined to be of four proposed abilities: perceiving, using, understanding, and managing emotions. And has five key elements which are self-awareness (children know what they feel and why), self-regulation (staying in control of one’s emotion), motivation (working towards one’s goals), empathy (comfortable to walk in someone else’s shoes) and social skills (children can become great communicators).

The benefits of having high EQ is that it helps your child to communicate better, reduce anxiety and stress, defuse conflicts, improve relationships, empathize with others,  effectively overcome life’s challenges and, I suppose your ultimate goal is, for them to become successful adults.  Also, with high EQ, children would know their strengths and how to use them to their full advantage.  Now, wouldn’t you want your child to have high EQ over high IQ?

Here are tips on how to Raise an Emotionally Intelligent Child*

 1. Label your child’s emotion 

You should put name to your child’s emotion, for example, “It looks like you feel really angry right now.  Is that right?”

2. Show empathy

Let the child know you understand how your child feels, for example, “I also feel upset when I don’t get to do what I want too.”

3. Model Appropriate Ways to Express Feelings

Use feeling words your everyday  conversation and practice talking about them, for example, “I feel angry when I see kids being mean on the playground.”

 4. Teach Healthy Coping Skills

Help them know how to calm themselves down, cheer themselves up or face their fears. You can do this by teaching them specific skills like taking deep breaths, by telling your child to take “bubble breaths”, where the child breathes through the nose and blows out through the mouth as if blowing through a bubble wand.

5. Develop Problem – Solving Skills

Help your child at least identify 5 ways how he/she might solve the problem. Then encourage your child to pick the best option.

6. Make Emotional Intelligence an Ongoing Goal

There is always room for improvement.  Use your child’s mistakes as opportunities to grow better.

Lastly, as Aristotle put it… “educating the mind without educating the heart is no education at all” thereby the significance of emotional intelligence is as relevant then as it is now. And on these notes, it is really crucial that we hone the emotional intelligence of children, in the same manner, we try to harness their academic skills. We aim to be able to raise children who are successful, happy with wholesome and balanced personality, so they can cope even in these troubled times.

Foot note:

Amy Morin.  Verywell family October 21, 2019