Emotional intelligence of a child: why is it needed and how to develop it

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What is emo­tion­al intel­li­gence? Why is it nec­es­sary to devel­op it from an ear­ly age?

The abil­i­ty to cor­rect­ly rec­og­nize and man­age your emo­tions is the key to pro­fes­sion­al suc­cess and a hap­py life. That’s why it’s impor­tant to devel­op emo­tion­al intel­li­gence, and you need to start doing this from an ear­ly age. Then the chances of the child to suc­ceed in adult­hood increase. Chil­dren grow up more har­mo­nious, real­ize their poten­tial bet­ter and become in demand as spe­cial­ists.

Con­sid­er how emo­tion­al intel­li­gence devel­ops in chil­dren at dif­fer­ent ages.

Ear­ly age

A child from birth to three years of age absorbs all incom­ing infor­ma­tion as active­ly as pos­si­ble. From the very first months of life, he reacts to the emo­tions of mom and dad. Smiles and laughs in response or cries if he hears neg­a­tive into­na­tions. As he grows up, he learns to read peo­ple’s emo­tions and apply this knowl­edge to achieve his goals.

preschool age

At the age of three, the child for the first time begins to sep­a­rate him­self from mom and dad and tries to become inde­pen­dent. This dif­fi­cult time for par­ents is called the “cri­sis of three years”, or “I am myself”, and car­ries a huge poten­tial for the devel­op­ment of indi­vid­u­al­i­ty in a child. Most often, it is at this age that a child can deny even those facts that are illog­i­cal to deny.

School age

Usu­al­ly, when they reach the age of sev­en, chil­dren go to school. At this stage of a child’s life, not only new knowl­edge is expect­ed, but also more strin­gent require­ments from adults, as well as new acquain­tances, which increas­ing­ly alien­ate the child from the adult. The stu­dent reach­es a new lev­el of emo­tion­al intel­li­gence and becomes able to more ful­ly express empa­thy.

How to develop emotional intelligence in a child.

Almost all chil­dren are born emo­tion­al­ly open and, as they grow old­er, their lev­el of emo­tion­al intel­li­gence devel­ops and improves along with gross and fine motor skills, hear­ing, speech, mem­o­ry and oth­er skills.

The main goal of an adult is to teach a child to live in har­mo­ny with him­self, to accept the whole range of feel­ings — love, joy, pride, envy, jeal­ousy, anger, fear. And there is no need to divide emo­tions into bad and good, because they all have a place to be in the human soul.

Reflec­tion of the child’s feel­ings

The first and basic skill of emo­tion­al intel­li­gence is under­stand­ing your emo­tions. To help your child learn to under­stand him­self, speak out loud the emo­tions he is expe­ri­enc­ing. After all, when the baby is hap­py, angry or afraid, he still does not know that each of his states has a spe­cif­ic name. Real­iz­ing them over and over again, the baby under­stands that feel­ings are dif­fer­ent and he has the right to each of them. And to make it eas­i­er for you, we have devel­oped a col­or­ful edu­ca­tion­al poster for you, which will help you iden­ti­fy and under­stand the state in which the baby is now.

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Show your feel­ings

A par­ent is a role mod­el for a child. When a child observes an adult, he begins to under­stand how to han­dle his feel­ings. He needs to see an adult not only joy­ful and hap­py, but also tired, upset, some­times angry, in oth­er words, nat­ur­al. There­fore, it is impor­tant for the par­ent, first of all, not to be afraid to be “real”, so that the child can accept him­self with all his weak­ness­es and pecu­liar­i­ties.

Encour­age your child to reflect on their con­di­tion

When the child devel­ops speech and has the oppor­tu­ni­ty to con­duct a dia­logue, you can begin to pro­nounce emo­tions through alter­na­tive ques­tions: “Are you hap­py or sad?” “Inter­est­ing or bor­ing?”

Teach your child to rec­og­nize feel­ings and emo­tions expe­ri­enced by offer­ing a com­par­i­son: — feel­ings that are far in mean­ing (joy — sad­ness, anger — jubi­la­tion, envy — delight, hatred — love and oth­ers) — feel­ings that are close in mean­ing (bore­dom — sad­ness, resent­ment — anger, love — ten­der­ness, joy — delight, anger — irri­ta­tion, etc.)

Encour­age your child to express their feel­ings and emo­tions on their own. Be inter­est­ed in how the child feels in var­i­ous life sit­u­a­tions.

Pay­ing atten­tion to the intel­lec­tu­al and phys­i­cal devel­op­ment of your baby, do not for­get that a hap­py per­son is a healthy per­son who under­stands him­self and his feel­ings. The par­ent is the most impor­tant source of a child’s devel­op­ment, but, for­tu­nate­ly, not the only one.