Summary of Raising an Emotionally Intelligent Child by John Gottman
I find an unhappy child can be excruciating to watch. Based on all the jokes about screaming children on airplanes, I'm not alone (maybe you're with me?). My inner firefighter’s instinct is to slide down that pole, get the fire hose out, and extinguish that frown. Turns out, this tactic is counter-productive for my kids’ long-term happiness. Womp. Womp.
A more productive way to think about emotional processing is like a sewer system: 💩 happens and it isn’t always pleasant. If pipes are blocked (i.e., emotions aren’t processed), it’s gonna get stinky. If the pipes are clear (i.e., yay, our kids express and learn about their feelings in non-harmful ways), then sewage makes its way to the water treatment plant, is processed, we get drinking water and the shit becomes fertilizer (yep, that’s what happens). Science!
John Gottman did a whole slew of longitudinal studies complete with fancy stress hormone-measuring machines, sweat monitoring, and good old fashion report card sleuthing. He found that emotionally coached kids regulate their emotional states, have improved immune function, are more focused & attentive, relate to others better, have stronger relationships, and are more prepared for school. Emotion coaching develops the prefrontal cortex. It enhances skills like impulse control, abstract reasoning, long-term planning, and working memory. On the flip side, children that were not emotion coached were more prone to anxiety and depression. They also prefer Iron Man 2 to Captain America Winter Soldier.
Adults who bristle at emotions – seeing them as an indication of continual and impossible demands from their kids – feel like a power struggle, a manipulation, or blackmail tactic is upon them. They may believe that children are not supposed to be sad, so fix it. They may be afraid that lingering on bad emotions may lead to more destructive emotions. Perhaps they are worried that they’ll lose control of their feelings. Recovering droid here 🙋♀️.
Gottman suggests a valuable shift in this ☝️ perspective. Understand that emotions are adaptive from an evolutionary perspective; they helped us stay away from danger. In the “here and right now,” our kids’ negative emotions allow us to build trust. With an emotion coach hat on, parents can look at their child’s negative emotions like reps in the gym. Each meltdown is a chance for us and our kids to practice and get stronger. Every tear shed over someone taking the last slice of pizza is an opportunity to show our kids that we can handle their emotions and that they can feel bad and eventually feel calm again.
A fundamental tenet to building emotional intelligence is that all feelings are okay; all behavior is not. What does this sound like in real life? “You’re angry because your brother keeps scratching himself, but I can’t let you hit him.” What is cool about this framework is that it gives kids (and parents) a control element. While kids can’t control their emotions (over time, they will learn how to regulate them), they can learn to control their behavior.
Gottman’s 5 Steps of Emotion Coaching:
1. Building awareness of emotions (your kids’ and your own). You can do this by periodically doing a body scan: are you feeling stress in your shoulders, tightness in your throat, a jumpy mind? What do your kid’s face and body language tell you?
2. Allow expression. When big emotions happen, allow your kid to feel and express without hurting themselves or others.
3. Recognize and empathize with the emotion. Help your kiddo by naming the feeling to build pattern recognition. You can suggest, “are you feeling frustrated?” or “it looks like you are feeling angry.” Make sure you don’t invalidate what your kiddo is feeling. Yes, the flailing on the floor because a banana got peeled seems unreasonable to us, but it isn’t to your kiddo.
4. Seek calmness. Labeling an emotion above can have a calming effect because it engages the brain’s language center, taking the brain out of fight or flight mode. If more is needed, ask your kiddo how you can help them feel calm – this helps signal that their current state is temporary, and they are able to control their mood. It can be helpful to give two options, would you like to read a book or jump up and down? Other tactics for calming: dragon breaths, counting, tell your kid a joke, finding comfort item, telling your kiddo about a time when you felt the same way, indulge their fantasies, “I bet you would love if you could have Tootsie Rolls for dinner.” Once your kid is feeling calm, linger in it for a minute, make sure they appreciate and learn that they can calm their body down and how they’re feeling right now.
5. Problem-solving. Once your kiddo is calm, you can work on problem-solving. While it can be super helpful to solicit ideas from your kiddo, you get to set limits on the resolution that align with your family’s values and expectations as an adult.
Other Points:
Emotional coaching does not mean “no discipline.” As parents, you can display empathy while still maintaining rules - your kids are smart enough to understand the distinction (e.g., “You are sad that you can’t run around right now, you wish you could play tag, but at dinner time we sit at the table and eat.”)
It can be helpful for parents to express negative emotions and disagree in front of kids, so long as the kids also see the resolution and that the anger/sadness isn’t directed towards the child’s character or personality.
Help your kids understand when they might be feeling multiple emotions at the same time - the ability to hold more than one thing in one’s head begins at age 3 - (e.g. “seems like you might be feeling nervous and excited to spend the night at your grandparents.”)
Avoid telling kids how they should feel (e.g., don’t say, “you should be happy now, your friends are here to play, forget about the fact that they’re playing with all your toys.” When you tell a child what they ought to feel, they start to mistrust themselves. For younger children, useful language is, “it looks like you feel sad” or “you might be feeling frustrated or angry?”
Experiments show that men and women register emotions in their bodies the same; however, culture impacts how men and women express feelings.
The physical nature of dad-play is super helpful for kids. It shows them that playing with dad can be scary and exciting at the same time and can give them practice calming down after ruff-housing with dad.
You won’t always have time to be an emotion coach in the moment, and that’s okay. You can always come back at the end of the day or know that there will be another chance.
Talking about negative emotions won’t make them worse!
Parents who are emotional coaches for their children enjoy less stressful relationships.
If things escalate between siblings, it can be challenging to do emotion coaching – showing empathy for one child can look like you’re taking sides. Gottman recommends talking to siblings separately.
As mentioned in the sleep newsletter, a goodnight’s sleep, particularly the early morning REM sleep, helps process emotional learnings from the day prior.
