The Key for Successful Parenting - Emotion Coaching
From a new book by John Gottman
Every parent knows the importance of equipping children with the intellectual skills they need to succeed in school and life. But children also need to master their emotions.
Raising an Emotionally Intelligent Child is a guide to teaching children to understand and regulate their emotional world. And as acclaimed psychologist and researcher John Gottman shows, once they master this important life skill, emotionally intelligent children will enjoy increased self-confidence, greater physical health, better performance in school, and healthier social relationships.
Research on emotion coaching, on the impact of marital discord, and on the transition to parenthood are all elements of Dr. Gottman's parenting research agenda. At the heart of these projects are the emotional lives of children and the emotional communication between parents and their children.
As Dr. Gottman and his colleagues studied parents and children over time, they made a number of observations and discoveries about the powerful impact that emotional processes can have on children and their parents.
"Much of today's popular advice to parents ignores emotion," says Dr. Gottman. "Instead it relies on child-rearing theories that address children's misbehavior, but disregards the feelings that underlie that misbehavior. The ultimate goal of raising children should not be simply to have an obedient and compliant child. Most parents hope for much more for their children."
Dr. Gottman's research also discovered that love by itself wasn't enough. "We found that concerned, warm, and involved parents often had attitudes toward their and their children's emotions that got in the way ... when the child was sad or afraid or angry," he writes. "The secret to being an emotionally intelligent parent lay in how parents interacted with their children when emotions ran hot."
The researchers ultimately determined that successful parents tended to do five very simple things with their children when they were emotional. Gottman calls these five elements "Emotion Coaching." He discovered that children who had "Emotion Coaches" for parents were on an entirely different, more positive developmental trajectory than the children of other parents.
Dr. Gottman and other researchers also observed that children benefit the most when parents themselves have a strong relationship. "In families where the parents aren't living with each other or are not going to stay married, the parents can best help their children by minimizing their children's exposure to destructive conflict. High levels of parental conflict create emotional distress in children and decrease effective parenting skills."
Dr. Gottman's emphasis on the emotional bond between parent and child emerged from longitudinal research that included emotional content in all family relationships. To our knowledge, his is the first research to confirm the work of the brilliant children's clinician, psychologist Dr. Haim Ginott.
For more information on Dr. Gottman's research on parents and children, see his book Raising an Emotionally Intelligent Child .
THE FIVE ELEMENTS OF EMOTION COACHING
What are the five simple elements of emotion coaching discovered by Gottman's research?
1. Be aware of a child's emotions
2. Recognize emotional expression as an opportunity for intimacy and teaching
3. Listen empathetically and validate a child's feelings
4. Label emotions in words a child can understand
5. Help a child come up with an appropriate way to solve a problem or deal with an upsetting issue or situation
Dr. Gottman's research found that children of emotion-coaching parents had more abilities in the area of their own emotions than children who were not coached by their parents. In other words, these "coached" children grew up to become what Dan Goleman has referred to as "emotionally intelligent" people.
Here are characteristics of these children that are different from normal children?
· They are able to regulate their emotional states.
· They are better at soothing themselves when they are upset.
· They can calm down their hearts faster after an upsetting incident.
· They have fewer infectious illnesses.
· They are better at focusing attention.
· They relate better to other people, even in tough situations like getting teased in middle school.
· They are better at understanding people.
· They have better friendships with other children.
· They are better in school situations that require academic performance.
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God bless your family and your marriage.
Jim Stephens
