Emotional Intelligence: Parent & Child
Photo by Humphrey Muleba
One of the most important things I do in my work and in my personal daily life is teach emotional intelligence.
Whether I am teaching mindful awareness, coaching a client, helping someone with their grief or issues around dying, or chatting with a friend — I am teaching emotional intelligence. It is the core force behind my passion for living. It is in every breath I take, for I know without it, lasting, loving change cannot happen.
Emotional intelligence is a skill that is repeatedly overlooked in our family structures, schools and businesses, yet EQ, as it is called, is a far greater indicator of success than IQ.
Then why are we so in neglect?
I think in part it is because it is easier and faster and somehow feels safer for people, in our current state of conscious awareness, to teach a child to quickly memorize something that might one day be useful instead of teaching them emotional intelligence that will always be useful. Emotional intelligence takes clarity, empathy and practice. To teach it well, you must embody it. You can’t memorize it, you have to live it.
Emotional intelligence in its simplest definition is the ability to identify your own emotions and manage them in a healthy way and to then use this ability to identify emotions in your relationships with others, and manage those relationships in a healthy way.
In strong emotionally intelligent families, there is an appreciation and respect for understanding where each family member is in regards to their emotions and behaviors. In these families, parents are aware of and manage their own triggers and emotional hot spots and can breathe space into disruptive feelings before reacting. Expectations of behaviors are realistic and loving. Conscious communication in the family honors and incorporates the developmental stages a child is in and moving towards. It is not about making excuses for bad behavior but understanding why the child may have thought that behavior was acceptable and offering a positive approach to growth and change in a way appropriate for their developmental level.
Knowing what your child is capable of comprehending and integrating, and being able to speak with them at that level, reduces the drama and damage of emotions that are just unconscious reactions for both the parent and the child.
But guess what?
I don’t know a single parent who studied any of this, unless they went on to become a child psychologist.
I often see frustrated parents angry that their 15 or 19-year-old did something, “where they should have known better!”
They assume that because the child or teenager is capable of driving a car, or traveling alone in an airplane to visit the other parent half way across the country, that the child would then know how a certain set of their actions was hurtful, in this case, to the parent. Often these actions judged as “hurtful and stupid” are simply actions not able to be fully comprehended in the child’s brain in the same way as they are in the parents.
I am talking about a set of cognitive processes in the brain called executive functioning. Executive functioning can process consequences of actions taken and not taken, different points of view are understood, long term goals are set more easily and there is clarity in planning for them.
It also plays a key role in a person’s ability to be flexible in one’s thinking and to have self control/impulse control. Depending on whose data you study, this part of the brain is not fully developed until a person is approximately 25 years old. So while the parents anger and frustration may seem justified, placing it on the shoulders of the child is not the answer and actually becomes more of the problem.
It is important to note that I am not talking about a child at 15 not knowing that the consequence of touching a hot stove will be a burnt hand. These are more complex and subtle forms of consequence, which require a more sophisticated understanding of emotional intelligence and which take age appropriate practice.
Let me use an example which is an amalgamation of a few stories I have heard. As you read this, role play the part of the parent if you feel comfortable…
You are a parent that is feeling hurt or rejected because after a wonderful graduation party you threw for your child, which took months of preparation and at great expense, the child joyfully headed off on their graduation trip with friends, without giving you more than a quick thanks and hug goodbye. You shrug that off as their blind enthusiasm but as the week goes by, they don’t text you even once on their trip. Given that teenagers can almost text in their sleep you know they could have reached out to you if they cared.
As the parent, a whole cascade of emotions start to flood in. Maybe you feel under appreciated, rejected and truthfully you are a little lonely and scared. It seems your child is only too happy to move on with their life and not be remotely beholden to all you have done for them. This sadness you are carrying doesn’t feel good. It is disempowering. It may unconsciously trigger body memories of the lack of power you had as a child.
You think, “I would never have able to get away with treating my parents this way when I was his age.”
As you continue to focus on your discomfort, it grows stronger. You let anger move in to replace the sadness because anger feels better. The ego loves anger. Anger comes with self righteousness, with energy, and that feels a lot better than being a deflated balloon of depression.
As the week goes on, you fall back on familiar patterns of processing your depression, disappointment and anger. You call a few friends and off load your emotions on to them. But instead of feeling a sense of relief, you are actually intensifying your indignation. The next thing you know, the week is over and your jubilant teenager arrives home beaming from ear to ear.
Within minutes of their return, you manage to convey to them that you are not happy and the message is clear that your lack of happiness pertains directly to something they did. Maybe you convey it with a cold stare, or a half-hearted welcome home or complete disinterest in their trip. Or maybe you announce they are grounded the minute they walk in the door, send them to their room and tell them to think about what they have done. For a moment you feel pretty good because you showed them what it is like to be hurt and you hurt them back. You projected your hurt right off of yourself and on to them.
Then this fictional parent let’s the child stew in their room for a while dazed, diminished and confused, before heading in with the, “I raised you better speech” ready to go. But there is a high price to be paid when a parent gets defensive and chooses to literally and/or verbally hit their child up the side of the head and say, “you should have known better!” That price is passing on one of the deepest wounds in our society. A wound so deep it shuts down curiosity, creativity and joy. And it is a wound you pass on because you unconsciously carry it. That wound is shame.
Thank you for playing along with this story. The facts of this story could easily apply to romantic partners or work relationships but the story of a parent and child is one we all can relate to in some way. Either we are parents, would like to be a parent one day or we have been parented.
Focusing on emotional intelligence in parenting is a powerful starting point. Not only can the parent heal wounds, unconsciously passed on to them from their parents and their parents’ parents, the child and family dynamic benefits immediately.
Parenting is one of the best ways a person can experience and identify what unconditional love is, and as I said in the introduction, unconditional love is the foundation of conscious living and dying. So strengthening the conditions that allow for more unconditional love in our lives is a must.
For more information on “conscious parenting”, I recommend Dr. Shefali Tsabary’s work.
Emotional intelligence work must come from a place of empathy and compassion, for ourselves first. We need to acknowledge that we have been doing the best we can with what we know and what has been role modeled for us. And we need to have compassion for the limitations of those that raised us. The goal of teaching emotional intelligence is not to get you to a point where you never make mistakes. There is no growth in that. It is to give you a set of tools that let’s you prepare and live your life fully and helps you prepare and live your death more fully.
Don’t let fear or shame stop you from asking for better ways to grow yourself as a parent or a person. There is no shame in apologizing and trying to do life differently. I see it as one of the bravest and most admirable things a person can do.
This won’t be the first time I write on emotional intelligence. I believe it is pivotal to raising our consciousness, opening our hearts and understanding that we are all one.
Emotional intelligence must start in the home and with our families. How else can you be prepared to have emotionally intelligent adult relationships and business relationships?
And when you are in your dying process, do you want someone by your bedside who cannot manage the emotions they are feeling while they are watching you die? Because if they can’t manage themselves (and I am not speaking of control and stiff upper lip stuff), then who is there to help you navigate the ever changing emotions coming in and out of your room as you want to peacefully and lovingly live your last days?
Emotional intelligence is a critical skill to conscious living and dying. Don’t be afraid to embrace it and learn from it. The greatest way we learn is not through books, movies or lectures. It is through what we see role modeled for us.
Let learning and growing your emotional intelligence be the conversation that brings you together first as a whole person, within yourself, and then with others. By role modeling emotional intelligence, you pass it on and you are an active part of the loving change that is needed now.
For recommendations on books to read on Emotional Intelligence and Shame please see below:
There is an enormous amount of information available today: books, lectures, and talks from great thinkers all around the world.
I hope you will get curious about what it means to live a conscious life and to have a conscious death and add your awareness to the field of knowledge for the oneness of all. Here are a few suggestions to get you started.