Raising an Emotionally Intelligent Child Read Online Free Page B

kids are getting weaker.
    Still, as this book shows, we as parents are far from helpless. My research tells me that the answer to keeping our children safe from many risks lies in building stronger emotional bonds with them, thus helping them to develop a higher level of emotional intelligence. Evidence is mounting that kids who can feel their parents’ love and support are better protected from the threats of youth violence, antisocial behavior, drug addiction, premature sexual activity, adolescent suicide, and other social ills. Studies reveal that children who feel respected and valued in their families do better in school, have more friendships, and live healthier, more successful lives.
    Now, with more in-depth research into the dynamics of families’ emotional relationships, we are beginning to understand how this buffering effect happens.
    E MOTION C OACHING AS AN E VOLUTIONARY S TEP
    A S PART OF OUR research into the emotional lives of families, we ask parents to tell us about their responses to their preschoolers’ negative feelings. Like many fathers, Mike tells us that he finds his four-year-old daughter, Becky, comical when she’s angry. “She says, ‘Gosh darn it!’ And then she walks away like some little midget human,” he says. “It’s just so funny!”
    And indeed, on at least one level, the contrast of this tiny girl expressing such a big emotion would make many people smile. But just imagine for a moment what would happen if Mike reacted this way to his wife’s anger. Or, what if Mike’s boss responded to him this way when he was mad? It probably wouldn’t amuse Mike at all. Yet, many adults think nothing of laughing in the face of a raging preschooler. Many well-meaning parents dismiss children’s fears and upsets as though they didn’t matter. “There’s nothing to be afraid of,” we tell a five-year-old who wakes up crying from a nightmare. “Then you obviously didn’t see what I saw,” might be an appropriate reply. Instead, the child in such situations begins to accept the adult’s estimation of the event and learns to doubt her own judgment. With adults constantly invalidating her feelings, she loses confidence in herself.
    Thus, we have inherited a tradition of discounting children’s feelings simply because children are smaller, less rational, less experienced, and less powerful than the adults around them. Taking children’s emotions seriously requires empathy, keen listening skills, and a willingness to see things from their perspective. It also takes a certain selflessness. Behavioral psychologists have observed that preschoolers typically demand that their caretakers deal with some kind of need or desire at an average rate of three times a minute . Under ideal circumstances, a mom or dad might respond cheerfully. But when a parent is stressed or otherwise distracted, a child’s incessant, and sometimes irrational demands can drive that parent wild.
    And so it has been for centuries. While I believe parents have always loved their children, historical evidence shows that, unfortunately, past generations did not necessarily recognize the need for patience, restraint, and kindness in dealing with kids. Psychiatrist Lloyd deMause , in his 1974 essay “The Evolution of Childhood,” paints a horrifying picture of neglect and cruelty that children of the Western world have endured through the ages. His work shows, however, that throughout the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the plight of children gradually improved. With each generation, parents generally became better than the last at meeting the physical, psychological, and emotional needs of children. As deMause describes it, raising a child “became less a process of conqueringa child’s will than training it, guiding it into proper paths, teaching it to conform, and socializing it.”
    Although Sigmund Freud would promote theories in the early 1900s that children were highly sexualized, aggressive creatures,