I loved this article: Can Emotional Intelligence Be Taught?
I’m always fascinated by methods of teaching children empathy, kindness, and emotional intelligence. I have loved experimenting with how to teach my own children how to look around at the world to see how they can help others–those smaller, more vulnerable, or just people in general. It is important to me that they feel free to openly communicate their feelings to me. and I tell them how I feel so they learn how. For example, we were in NYC a couple of weeks ago and ended up eating at a dumpy restaurant in Little Italy. Because I rarely take the kids to the city, and we only had 2 nights there, and NYC has amazing restaurants, I was perturbed to end up somewhere I didn’t want to be. (And paying $50 to do it!). I complained as we walked home, but after a few blocks, I realized the problem was me, not the restaurant. I told the kids, “I think it’s actually me! I’m hungry! I’m cranky! I’m turning this around right now!” I then started to comment on all the lovely things we were seeing on the way home–the lighted store windows, the open-air restaurants we were passing (which all looked better than where we had just eaten!), all the people walking outside at night. The kids were so happy I had changed my outlook, they joined in the turnaround. I do this “turnaround” whenever we end up in a stressful circumstance (finishing math homework, cleaning rooms, brushing teeth…). So the other night, Henry noticed I was acting irritated. He said, “Let’s turn this around and make it happy.” He’s very sensitive to the emotions of people in any room and gets upset if people are sad or angry. I said, “You are right!” I rewound myself like a robot, and re-phrased everything I was saying to make it light, fun, and happy.
I want the kids to know it’s ok to get irritable, angry, or sad, and to give them the tools to change the dynamic. To say, “I’m sorry for the way I acted. I was feeling…” Then to drop it and move on. By the time we got back to the apartment in NYC, we were running and laughing and had a big dance party and built a massive fort before bed. It turned into a great night.
