What is emotion coaching? If you are like me, you had never heard of it until this week. Emotion coaching is helping and teaching your child how to navigate their emotions (Lisitsa, 2012). By helping our children navigate their emotions, we are helping them build emotional intelligence.
Dr. Julie Gottman said, "If children can be encouraged to not dismiss their emotions or shut them out, but rather listen to their feelings and they learn how to put their feelings into words and empathize with others, that's emotional intelligence" (Gottman, 2012).
Are you wanting to know what to say and do to begin emotion coaching?
Here are five essential steps of Emotion Coaching:
- Be aware of your child’s emotion
- Recognize your child’s expression of emotion as a perfect moment for intimacy and teaching
- Listen with empathy and validate your child’s feelings
- Help your child learn to label their emotions with words
- Set limits when you are helping your child to solve problems or deal with upsetting situations appropriately (Lisitsa, 2012).
Essentially, you acknowledge your child's feelings. You don't dismiss them or become angry. You state exactly what they are feeling. Show empathy towards them and what they are feeling. Then help them through it.
Don’t talk to me like that! I see that you are upset, but it’s hard for
I already told you no! Stop whining! It's hard to hear a no answer isn't? Why don't you explain to me why this means so much to you.
I put this into practice this week. I was cooking dinner one evening. I asked my 7 year old son to clean his room before dinner. He immediately started whining, "I'm starving. I'm hungry!" I remembered what I had learned emotion coaching. So I knelt down so I was eye level with him. I said, "You're really hungry right now. When you are hungry it's hard to think about anything else huh?" He stopped whining and nodded his head yes. "Right now I am making dinner. I promise as soon as it's finished I will scoop you a bowl full okay?" He nodded his head yes. Then he calmly went into his bedroom and finished cleaning it. I was shocked. Just acknowledging how he was feeling was all he needed to calm down. So I tried it again. My 4 year old daughter was throwing a temper tantrum about not being able to use her older sister's make-up. I knelt down so we were eye level. I said, "I can see you're really upset and have something to tell me, but I can't understand you while you're screaming. Can you take some deep breaths to calm down?" She took some deep breaths and calmed down. Then I said, "You really wanted to use [your sister's] make-up, but she told you no." She nodded her head yes. "And that made you sad." She said, "yes! I really want to have make-up on!" "I'm sorry you are disappointed to not get to use make-up. Maybe we could color a prince picture together and use the crayons to put make-up on the princess." While it wasn't exactly what she wanted, she decided that would be an acceptable alternative.
Gottman, J., & Gottman, J. (2012, April 18). Parenting with Emotion Coaching. [Video]. You Tube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z3uPPEtyX_I&feature=emb_logo
Lisitsa, E. (2012, June 8). An Introduction to Emotion Coaching. The Gottman Institute. https://www.gottman.com/blog/an-introduction-to-emotion-coaching/
