The term Emotional Intelligence was coined in 1995 by Daniel Goleman who wrote a book titled Emotional Intelligence, Why It Can Matter More Than IQ.

Even though he coined the term, the concept of emotional intelligence has been around for a few years.  Books such as; Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill or How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie talk about the four quadrants of emotional intelligence in each chapter.

There are different versions of what Emotional Intelligence is, but the basic quadrants are:

• Self Awareness
• Social Awareness
• Self Management
• Social Management

The topics covered in each of these areas change slightly.  I like to use the following when helping children grow into successful adults.

Self Awareness is the ability to be able to know your emotions and recognize their impact.

• Self-Confidence – Recognizing how important you are and how you affect the lives of others.
• Self-Assessment – Knowing our strengths and limits.

Social Awareness is the ability to sense, understand, and react to others’ emotions.

• Empathy – Sensing others’ feelings and perspectives.
• Social Responsibility – Anticipating, recognizing and meeting the needs of others in our community.

Self Management is the skills needed to control how we act.

• Self-Control – Keeping disruptive emotions in check
• Integrity – Having a high standard of honesty and ethics
• Problem Solving – Learning how to creatively think out of the box
• Perseverance  – How to keep going in the face of set backs
• Goals – Setting and achieving goals
• Discipline – Learning how to wait for things that really matter
• Responsibility – Taking charge of your life
• Attitude – Believing in yourself and expecting success

Social Management is the ability to inspire, influence, and develop others.

• Leadership – Learning skills that will help you in taking leadership
• Communication – Listening to and creating dialogue
• Conflicts – How to negotiate and resolve disagreements
• Inspiring Others – Using your leadership skills to guide and motivate others
• Building Relationships – Relationships that connect with others on a deeper level
• Teamwork – Working with others towards shared goals 

These are a guideline to help you know what to instill into your children so that they can be successful in life.

Enjoy your children.

There are some people that are just gifted in this area and there are some of us who have to work in this area. If you have to work at reading people, you can get better at it by practicing. If you help your child learn how to read other people’s emotions, your child will have a very important tool they need to be successful.

This video is part of a series on how to teach children about different emotions. We are reviewing a children’s book named Patty Cat by Barbara deRubertis. This book is widely available. It is well written it covers several emotions and there are two key elements of Emotional Intelligence you can discuss with your child; how to treat others and how to problem solve.

Take some time today to study someone’s emotions with your child. You can observe people in a park, a mall or a coffee shop.

• Do they look happy or sad?
• How can you tell by their face?
• How can you tell by their body language?

Make it fun. Make up stories about the person and what is happening in their life. This will increase their creativity. You can start the story and your child adds a part then you add something etc.

Let me know how it went. If you can help your child to learn how to read other people’s emotions it will be one of the greatest gifts you can give them.

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The I can Read Series is a wonderful way to do this. It has books geared to early readers with titles like Biscuit, to more advance readers with titles like, Frances Best Friends.

This summer as you are looking for something to do with your children, I want to challenge you to sit down with them and make a plan for their success.

What kind of goal would you like to accomplish this summer?

            Do you want to read a book 5 nights a week?

            Do you want to read one book every other day/night until your child can read that book all by him/herself?

            Do you want to read one or two books a week?

            Do you want to read before or after a meal?

 Make the goal something you both can live with but at the same time a little challenging. Then decide on the reward.

            Is it a date night with mom or dad?

            Is it a new toy?

            Is it a trip to grandma’s or grandpa’s?

            Is it given all at once or in increments?

 (If you make the reward along their interest you will be showing your support of them. Ex. A poster of their favorite baseball player, a baseball, a bat, a trip to a game.)

The length between the rewards depends on your child’s age. But one of the greatest gifts you can give your child is delayed satisfaction. Children who have mastered waiting for something are more successful in life than those who don’t. 

The next character trait you both get to work on is perseverance. It will be easy to give up or stop half way through the summer. Life happens something always come up that seems more important but is it really?

Now as with any goal, it is ok to look at it again and make adjustments. In two weeks, see if your goal to read is working if not make an adjustment and try again. That’s not failure you, are teaching your child, how to be flexible how and how to adjust to situations in life, yet still be able to accomplish their goals and ultimately their dreams. 

I will be posting blogs on several of the I Can Read books.  Best Friends for Frances, and Frog and Toad together are just two I have already picked out. These blogs will be a way for you to build up your child’s emotional intelligence as you read and discuss the books together. If there is a book you would like to see a blog on, leave me a comment telling me the title and author and I will see what we can do.

I was inspired to write this blog post because of a blogging program on Twitter Moms. But  I believe with all my heart that reading together with your child is one of the best things you can do for your relationship.

Have you ever heard, “It’s what’s on the inside that counts”? Here’s an experiment to do with your children that will prove just that.
Take three balloons that are the same size. Smash up some garlic and put it into one balloon, blow it up and tie it off. Put some perfume into another balloon, blow it up and tie it off. Blow up the third balloon and tie it off.

Next set the balloons near a light bulb. After a half hour, check to see if you can smell a difference between the three balloons. What is on the inside of the balloons, will begin to seep through the pores of the balloon and diffuse into the air.
Questions to ask your children:

What do you think the balloons represent? (Humans)
What do you think the garlic represents? (Bad attitudes, anger, bitterness, hatred)
What do you think the perfume represents? (Good attitudes, kindness, love, forgiveness)
What do you think the air represents? (Indifference, fence-sitting)
What do you think the light bulb/heat represents? (Tough times in life)

We might look the same, but inside of us is something that may smell bad, good or like nothing. During our lives, we will put off an odor. Sometimes it is faint, but when we go through tough times in our life, what is inside of us really comes to the surface.

When we learn to be kind, loving and forgiving, our pores produce a sweet aroma that will attract people into our lives. What kind of aroma do you want to produce today? What can you do to make sure you produce it?

Do the activity with your children and then come back and leave a comment on how it went.

Confidence is believing in ourselves: that we can do anything, achieve anything and be anything. 

It is important, because it helps us to try new things, take risks, persist when obstacles appear and find creative ways to solve problems. 

Confident children are able to make decisions and choices without the help of others. They meet challenges head on. Isn’t this what we want for our children? Do we want them to make their own choices? Do we want them to be children who stand up for themselves and others? 

As parents, we play a major role in developing our children’s confidence. It is our reactions that tell them whether we approve or disapprove of them. When we encourage their efforts, not just their successes, we promote their confidence. We teach them that they do not need to fear failure, that they should keep trying, because eventually they will come up with the answers to their problems or the ability to do what they are setting out to do. 

Do our children understand that life is full of ups and downs? Do they know that sometimes they will succeed and sometimes they will fail? Most people don’t see the value of failing or having down times, because if they did, our society would have less need for anti-depressant drugs. We need to teach ourselves and our children that it is OK to make mistakes or even fail sometimes, because we are not perfect. But our mistakes or failures don’t determine who we become – only the outcome. Will we give up, or will we try again? Confident people try again. 

Henry Ford had a great saying: “Whether you think you can or you think you can’t, you’re right.” We become who we are through our thoughts about what we can or can’t do. As parents, we need to help our children think about what they can do. 

What do you expect your child to become? Study after study verifies that children rise to the expectation of teachers, parents and other adults in their lives. Write down the person you see your child becoming – not what career she will have or how much money she will make, but what characteristics she will have. Think about important characteristics such as honesty, kindness, helpfulness, creativity, leadership, and persistence. Then find opportunities to praise her when she exhibits one of the characteristics: “That was so helpful. I’ll bet you help lots of people when you grow up.”  ”You were the first one to be honest. Honesty will help you as you get older because other people will be able to trust you.” 

Your child wants you to be proud of her. Take the time today to tell her how proud you are. Encourage her that you are proud when she steps out of her comfort zone to try something new.  It doesn’t matter whether she accomplished it – just that she tried.

What are we afraid of?

 “You gain strength, courage and confidence by every experience in which you must look fear in the face. You must do the thing you think you cannot do.”   Eleanor Roosevelt

If we are to gain confidence by every experience in which we look fear in the face, we must also confront a question: What are we doing that makes us afraid?

Many times in my life, I have run away from the things I fear. Or I have put it off until it became more painful not to do it than to do it. I know I am not alone in these actions, because I often have heard people speak on this topic.

I have found as a mother of two awesome girls that I don’t want them to go through life the way I have. I want them to break free of the same chains that may have prevented me from being the person I knew I could be. I want them to be all they can be. But how can I make that happen?

Eleanor Roosevelt said, “Confidence is gained by the experiences in which we face fear.” Does that mean I must let my children do something they are afraid to do? Must I encourage them to do something that scares them? Will I need to lead by example and do something that I am afraid to do?

The answer to all of the above questions is the same: yes!

Confidence is like the ocean tide: sometimes we have a great amount, similar to high tide.   Sometimes we have very little — low tide. Our lives are no different than the ocean’s currents. We need to realize this and make our children aware of it. Once we have this awareness, life when we don’t have very much confidence becomes more bearable. We experience no guilt or self-condemnation that we are failures. It is just a process of life over which we have no control, like the receding of the water at low tide. But we can take steps needed to move forward into confidence.

What are some steps you can take to build your child’s confidence during the low tides of life?

First, find an activity your child has accomplished. Is it riding a bike, hitting a home run, catching a fly ball, winning a chess game, making an art piece, knowing how to spell,  being good at math, graduating from kindergarten? Everyone is good at something.

Take pictures of your child achieving in that activity and write words of encouragement or quotes around the picture to create a success notebook. This can be taken out and reviewed when confidence is low. Your child can relive the event through the words and pictures. His eyes will see the results of his achievement, his hands can touch the picture and the book. He can read words written about his great achievement. This will impact  several senses and learning abilities, helping his confidence to grow.  

Other ways to record successes include writing your child’s achievements on pieces of paper and connecting the pieces together to form a success chain than can circle a room.

Post your child’s success stories on a bulletin board with so they are visible every day.

These activities bring the child’s successes to the front of his mind. He will see where he has been, increasing his confidence to succeed when faced with fearful challenges in the future.

• Increased knowledge
• Larger vocabulary
• Insights into other lands, cultures, people
• Success in school
• More creativity
• Relaxation
• Mental escape

Are there mental and emotional benefits gained from reading? What about the long term benefits for your relationship with your children? These things are harder to measure but have a lasting impact.

Taking a child in your arms as you read reassures them of your love. Researchers have found orphans that are not held will die. Their emotional need was not met. That need never goes away. Holding or cuddling your child as you read to them meets that emotional need in both of you.

Psychologists that work with traumatized children give them dolls to play with to work out their emotions. If object can be a tool to release emotions, can objects be a tool to teach emotions?

A book is an object when used properly, can transform a child’s life. It is the same principle the psychologist have been using for years. You take an object that has no meaning and you use it to release good emotions.

Publishers who realize this, are starting to offer a study guide to go with their books. The Hidden Swan built a study guide into the book. The parent doesn’t have to do any extra research to see if there is a study guide. Plus The Hidden Swan offers insights any parent can use to teach their children values. And with the study guide as part of the book, you never lose or misplace it.

Next time you sit with your child and read your favorite book, let me know what lesson you would like your child to gain and I will help you come up with questions and insights. Reading is a powerful tool and can help us as parents building strong, healthy minds in our children.

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