Social Skills:
Developing effective social skills lead to better communication, showing empathy, understanding other’s body language and emotions which are not taught in school, we as parents need to teach children all these skills through daily conversation or activities.
Emotional Intelligence plays crucial role in developing children social skills.
“It is an ability to recognize, control and express our emotions”
The most important facets of emotional intelligence are empathy and connecting to other people.
We all agree that Brain is like a muscle the more we use the sharper it becomes. Children brains are young and brain development is 90% finished by the age of four, in this stage children can absorb and learn many things. So this is the best time to be inculcating the strategies of life skills. Children can develop their emotional intelligence during the early years of life with little efforts from our side as parents.
Below tips help you to foster your kid’s emotional intelligence
1) Tell them stories that have emotional situations, like happy, sad, lost etc.
Ask how they think the characters in the story are feeling and share opinions
When children think about themselves in the position of the characters then they get what could they possibly feel in such situations. Sharing their own feelings helps children to identify their feelings and also communicate the same.
2) Read books that help kids to foster their emotional intelligence.
Click on the below link to get the best books to teach your kids empathy.
http://www.whatdowedoallday.com/2015/08/picture-books-to-teach-empathy.html
Early reading experiences will support children in succeeding not only in academics but also at work later in their life.
“It is easier to build strong children than to repair broken men.”
– FREDERICK DOUGLASS
Resilience:
Ability to recover quickly from problems. People who have resilience can build better relationships with others and also have self-confidence.
Few kids get this ability to bounce back without many efforts on the other hand few are not. The good news is that research shows that we can teach resilience and develop in our kids. All we need is a little patience and proper guidance.
Key areas of RESILENCE:
3. Kids learn by observing their parents mostly, so your positive attitude towards every day challenges helps your children learn positive attitude.
4. Don’t miss out any opportunity to make your children to think “I can do it”. Tell them difficulties are learning opportunities not setbacks. Stories are a great way to connect with your child and empower them to get role models for this kind of attitude in a magical and most powerful way.
5. Choose stories that are more related to our daily challenges, and also have problem solving messages and also age appropriate. Instead of simply reading a story, try to guide them to view that story as their real life challenge and ask them questions like what happens next, what you would do in such a situation etc.
6. Encourage them to be part of any decision making in your family. Value their opinions make them as good decision makers in future.
But the most important thing is you don’t need to be strict or unconcern when they need your support, be gentle and also teach them how to cope up. Your relationship with your children is very crucial to teach any skill.
To know more about how important it is to develop children emotional intelligent, have a look on below blog post from famous psychologist Daniel Goleman, Ph.D.,
http://www.danielgoleman.info/daniel-goleman-help-young-talent-develop-a-professional-mindset/
Happy Parenting!