Children with good characters will develop good ethics as well. This will decide how good or bad is their personality in the future. Most moms will agree on this statement. That said, developing children’s emotional intelligence is vital and must be done as early as possible.
Truth is, how smart someone is not measured by their intelligence and spirituality. There are other factors such as creativity and emotional. Often, most parents will focus on intellectual intelligence for their children, somehow neglecting their emotional intelligence. However, paying attention to their emotional intelligence is key to shaping one’s personality. With good personality comes the good ethics as well.
Because it must be done from an early age, nurturing children’s emotional intelligence starts from their home environment; their parents. There are four types of parenting, which are:
- Authoritative is a warm kind of parenting but also strict. Parents will push their children to be independent and have a degree of freedom in action, but also placing some boundaries and control.
- Authoritarian is a parenting model that demands absolute obedience. Parents of this type will use more punishments, set more restrictions and are inflexible.
- Neglectful is a non-committal kind of parenting where parents usually have little to no time for showing their attention to their children.
- Indulgent is where parents are generous with affection show on their kids. They place little attention to children’s discipline and allow them to act whatever they want.
From four types of parenting above, Authoritative is undoubtedly the best kind to develop children’s emotional intelligence. This kind of parenting will give a balanced amount of attention, understanding, love, and warmth while having enough discipline and strictness. When your children do something positive, praise and reward them. Otherwise, scold them necessarily when they do something wrong. Of course, Moms should explain that this kind of system is important to run in the family.
In nurturing children’s emotional intelligence, there are things that moms should know and pay attention to, they are:
- Seeing from their perspective. Children aren’t as same as adults. When moms are trying to explain to them what’s right or wrong, you must understand what they’re thinking. With this, children will be able to learn and understand your lessons better.
- Walk the talk. Leading by example is arguably the best way to teach your children. If you want them to develop a good emotional intelligence, you must have a good emotional intelligence as well. Show them positive and responsible behavior wherever you are.
- Let children express themselves and listen to them. Most parents will shrug off the children’s opinion. This is a big mistake. In order to nurture their emotional intelligence, parents must ‘lend’ their ear to what children want to say. Weigh what children want; if it’s a reasonable demand, give in to them, otherwise, explain it to them.
- Teach children the problem-solving skill. This will condition them to produce their own solutions to their problems. Teach them that rather than complaining, they should indulge themselves in the problem and think of a solution.
How is it, moms? It isn’t that difficult, right? It’s of utmost importance to nurture a good emotional intelligence in order to develop favorable personality and characters. Children who successfully developed an excellent emotional intelligence will contribute greatly to the community and are capable to lead from a strategic position easily in the professional world.
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