For years, people have asked me when I talk to groups. "But what about their emotions?"
We need to understand more about emotions. We really do live in a time where there's
a lot of value put on people's emotions. And our emotions are an important part of who
we are. In fact, there are some people that are more emotionally strong, more emotionally
intelligent than others. This is a video I've been dying to make for people because it teaches
about how to teach our children emotional intelligence. And I think all those people
that have asked those questions over the years are going to like this. This is for you. Emotional
intelligence is a vital for the success and fulfillment of the person. So, what is emotional
intelligence? It's the ability to monitor and identify our own emotions so that we can
choose to have emotional strength instead of following into emotional bondage. Essentially,
emotional intelligence is freedom. In fact, if we want to sum up in a nut shell almost
everything I teach goes back to emotional intelligence. Even though I don't often do
classes just based on emotions. When a person has high emotional intelligence, that means
that they can self-motivate and self-govern themselves. They accomplish a lot more of
their goals. They often times feel much more fulfilled and confident in their daily lives
and communications with other people. They often feel understood and know how to understand
other people and their emotions as well. So, really if a person has a good emotional intelligence,
they are healthier. And can bring about a lot of healing for society. So, how do we
recognize what emotionally strong and emotionally intelligent people look like? Listen to this
list. I just want to read this to you. Emotionally strong and intelligent people are... And these
are just few of the things. Assertive, patient, careful, sociable, driven and enthusiastic.
Among others,I can keep going. What a great list for what it means to be emotionally intelligent.
So, what about a person who has low emotional intelligence or they're not very emotionally
intelligent? What is that list? Well, here it is. Let me read it to you. Those people
are: Aggressive, easily distracted, bossy, stubborn, picky, critical, perfectionistic,
selfish, egotistical, resistant to change and hard to please. Among other things. Now,
does that sound like I just made a lost of the person you want to be best friends with
and the person you don't want to hang out with at all? It probably sounds that way because
that's kind of what it's like. When a person has great emotional intelligence or they might
call it high emotional intelligence, that person attracts other people to them. That
person is someone you want to be with, you want to learn from. You want to be their friend.
But that other person who's hard to please and moody and picky and that kind of thing,
that person is a drain. And they don't recognize that they have a low emotional intelligence.
And so, that is why they're struggling so much with making friends and with having people
that seem like they care about them and talk to them. So, let's talk about helping our
children understand then their emotional intelligence. So, I want to share with you 4 steps for teaching
children emotional intelligence. Step number one, parents have to be working on their own
emotional intelligence in order to create children who are also emotionally intelligent.
So, when I teach people about self-government because that's what I most known for, is teaching
parents and children how to govern themselves. I always say, it's totally possible for your
children of almost any age... I mean, maybe accept 6 months old, you know? But usually
from about 18 months on, they can start self-government. And they're really great at it. And I say,
"It's totally possible for them to learn this. It's even possible if they have processing
difficulties or challenges in anyway." And I know because I taken so many of those youth
into my home. And I have taught them how to govern themselves. And I've seen so many families
do it now over the years. But then I always say, but there's a bit of bad news. Maybe
it's the good news. But I always say, "It's the bad news. And the bad news is you can't
teach your children to govern themselves unless you've also decided to govern yourself. Ouch!
That means that the parent has to first decide to face their own beasts and make a plan for
what to do with them. Because to self-govern means to analyze your self, plan for the future
and then self-correct again and again and again. That's what it means. That's the process
of self government. And you've used that process within the lost of cause and effect. So, if
your child is going to be emotionally intelligent, so, if they're going to learn to be resilient,
confident adaptable, all these different things that we get list for a person who has emotional
intelligence, guess who's going to have to be adaptable, motivated, resilient? You are.
The parent is. Of course. So, that's number 1. The second step to teaching children emotional
intelligence is to understand cause and effect with emotional unloading. I hope you know
what emotional unloading is. So, this is when you emotionally vomit on somebody else. There
is a kind of hypothesis out there that if somebody has something that taste bad in their
mouth, they have to spit it out. Or if somebody feels sick, then they throw up. So, if somebody
has a bad emotion inside, they need to throw it up and get it out. But that would mean
they would have to throw it up on somebody else. Well, what is the cause and effect of
emotional unloading on somebody else like this? They distance themself from you. They
don't trust you, they want to protect themselves from you. They feel manipulative. Maybe you're
going for pity, even. But t hey just can't keep giving pity to a person who's begging
for pity. It just feel like they're being used. They're being taken advantage of. So,
we've got to remember to teach our children when we emotionally vomit on somebody else
or emotionally unload on somebody else, they are going to probably have some feelings that
could be considered negative consequences or the wrong effects. The ones we don't want
them to have from our actions. So, what we need to teach our children is when and where
do we talk about our emotions. Because that's important, right? So, in our family, we have
certain times that we discuss emotions together. That leads me to step number 3 which is having
open communication with our children about their emotions and how to conquer their emotions.
So, it's one thing to just listen to a person. But then it's another thing to help them became
proactive. And to take steps in a direction that's going to lead them toward freedom and
empowerment. So, we have talked to our children. We call them Parent Counselling Session. And
we will occasionally sit down with them and bring up and issue that we notice before or
they might say, "Hey, can we have special talk?" And I'll say, "Sure." Now, during this
talk time, nobody is going to be corrected. We're just going to talk and listen. And then
we're going to make a plan in the future. Then going forward, if they follow through
of something, then they can be corrected. But during that talk time, it's just a time
for understanding and planning an unity and bonding. Obviously, some children specially
those who are seeking negative attention. Especially the pity kind of negative attention
can be calling those meetings all the time. And then you might have to set a certain time
of the day or a certain day of the week where we have those meetings. And if there's something
we want to talk about in one of those meetings, we have a list where you jot it down. So that
when you have that meeting, you can discuss that. Now, we have regular weekly meetings
with our children that we call mentor meetings. And we do discuss some of their emotional
concerns in the mentor meetings. But we also have one off meetings that we call parent
counseling sessions where we talk more in depth about one specific issue that they feel
they might need help with. And this could go on to issue-related to their emotions.
But the most important part for creating emotional intelligence is we help them make a plan for
the future so that they don't feel like they're stuck in emotions. Step number number 4 is
to help children analyze themselves by teaching them skills that break down their actions
so that they can actually see where to improve. So, in our family, we teach 4 basic skills.
We teach our children how to follow instructions, accept no answers and criticism, accept consequences
and disagree appropriately. The skill sets to these 4 basic skills take care of almost
every negative behavior that they might have. Well, these skills sets are for instance,
for following instructions, there's 5 steps. You look at the person; keep a calm face,
voice and body, say okay or ask to disagree appropriately. Do the task immediately and
then check back. So, if a person says, "Okay, I'll go and clean the kitchen sink" but they
roll their eyes when they say it, then they're almost all the way following an instruction
but not quite. So, they learn how to recognize, well, I looked at the person. And I said,
okay. And I went to go and do it. And I probably would've checked back but that calm face thing
really got me this time. And I didn't get the calm face. And how do they learn to analyze
those things by having a parent who is diligent in correcting them. In kindly, calmly correcting
them. It doesn't have to be something that feels like a burden to the parent. If it does,
then the child will feel like they're training in something that is a burden to the parent.
And that's not good for your roles and identity and the family. Or for your bond. So, the
children needs to be able to analyze themselves which requires teaching ahead of time and
really consistent correcting. I know I told you that I was going to tell you 4 steps.
But as I'm going along, I'm like, "No. There's one more I want to share." And it's a bonus
step. And this bonus step, so we call it step 5 of the 4 steps of helping children become
emotionally intelligent is describing. Descriptive language. So, remember the last step, step
4, we were talking about helping them see which step they miss. Well, the way that the
parent does that is by increasing their description skills themselves. So, the parent would say,
"You know, just know, I gave you that instruction and you've looked at me. But you didn't keep
calm face. You did have calm voice though and you said okay and you went off to do it.
But because you didn't keep a face, you're not fully following instructions. What you
should have done was...." And then they would describe, "You should've kept a calm face,
voice and body then said okay. Go off to do the task immediately and check back. Since
you chose not to..." And then they would go into their rest of that correction. Which
it is a 7-step process that we teach for parents. And I'm not going to go into all that here.
But that describing step is so important. Because it helps the child see even more exactly
what they're doing and exactly what they can do to make a positive change for themselves.
Here's the thing: When a person learns emotional intelligence, what they're learning is how
to choose the positive. How to choose the productive.The people with low emotional intelligence
are the once making excuses, blaming other people for their condition in life. They're
not taking actions. They're just choosing to wait for somebody else to save them. The
people who high emotional intelligence are the people who aren't afraid to make a change
within themselves. How do children learn to not be afraid of making a change within themselves?
By having parents who completely embrace ho[ping their children make a change within themselves.
And who are even working on their own problems as a parent, as an adult. They're self-governing
themselves too. They're the ultimate example of that for their children. Another way that
parents can help their children develop really good emotional intelligence is by helping
them learn how to communicate with other children as well. There's a great video that I highly
recommend that you watch. It's coming up next. And it's called "How To Get Kids To Sop Fighting
At Each Other?" I know you're going to like it. It's going to add to what we just talked
about now. Find that video. I'll see you there.