Women’s Health Blog

Communicating with our children can be a difficult task at times. We feel like they’re not listening to us; they feel like we’re not listening to them. Good listening and communications skills are essential to successful parenting. Your child’s feelings, views and opinions have worth, and you should make sure you take the time to sit down and listen openly and discuss them honestly.

It seems to be a natural tendency to react rather than to respond. We pass judgment based on our own feelings and experiences. However, responding means being receptive to our child’s feelings and emotions and allowing them to express themselves openly and honestly without fear of repercussion from us. By reacting, we send our child the message that their feelings and opinions are invalid. But by responding and asking questions about why the child feels that way, it opens a dialog that allows them to discuss their feelings further, and allows you a better understanding of where they’re coming from. Responding also gives you an opportunity to work out a solution or a plan of action with your child that perhaps they would not have come up with on their own. Your child will also appreciate the fact that maybe you do indeed understand how they feel.

It’s crucial in these situations to give your child your full and undivided attention. Put down your newspaper, stop doing dishes, or turn off the television so you can hear the full situation and make eye contact with your child. Keep calm, be inquisitive, and afterwards offer potential solutions to the problem.

Don’t discourage your child from feeling upset, angry, or frustrated. Our initial instinct may be to say or do something to steer our child away from it, but this can be a detrimental tactic. Again, listen to your child, ask questions to find out why they are feeling that way, and then offer potential solutions to alleviate the bad feeling.

Just as we do, our children have feelings and experience difficult situations. By actively listening and participating with our child as they talk about it, it demonstrates to them that we do care, we want to help and we have similar experiences of our own that they can draw from. Remember, respond – don’t react.

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For long, man had a common perception that emotions have nothing to do with success. On extremes, many believed that they do not only interact negatively with our decision-making but may also cause us to fail.

There are various intelligence types that human has. And lack of one doesn’t actually imply failure in the general picture of life. Some are naturally endowed with higher I.Q. scores that make them in the advantage of having larger storage for information. Other people, on the other hand, have the special ability to truly discern themselves. This is what they call intrapersonal intelligence.

Emotional intelligence therefore is the ability to become sensitive to understand one’s own emotions and the emotions that observe from other people. This in the end will be consciously monitored to serve as determining factors in creating decisions and in putting up reactions to various stimuli.

Since we are dealing with the various aspects of emotions, it is pretty obvious that there is no gray line between emotions and emotional intelligence.

Emotions affect decision-making, our reactions to things, our moods, our sentiments, our general disposition in a given situation. Oftentimes, solutions do not come from the intellect. Too much thinking may even cause paralysis of the mind. This is largely due to the fact that when we think too much for a solution, our minds seem to clutter with answers that point to nowhere but to the beginning. Analysis takes time and when it does, it may allow time for the aggravation of problems.

It is not to discourage anyone from analyzing personal problems clearly. However, we want you not to enclose yourself with the idea of I.Q. alone. There is more to intelligence than using your cranial capacities in creating decisions.

We weren’t inherently equipped with emotions though. When we were born, we were likely to be blank white pages where various stimulus must be written before we ever find the concept of reactions to emotions. Only as we age and therefor exposed to spectrums of experiences do we learn to react with the different types of emotions.

This is probably the reason why when we were children, we had no fear or anxiety over tripping on the floor or doing something dangerous. After all, we still have no idea what fear is or what is anxiety or what are dangerous experiences.

Knowing the degree of your emotions and the various reactions that are created during specific conditions. Having enough knowledge of determining how well you cope up with given stimulation. And knowing what are the factors that will create the rise of emotions in you will all be helpful in gaining new insight of yourself.

Emotions are inevitable parts of our existence. And experts in the field have learned to evaluate emotion intelligence by determining its five domains.

Management of emotions
This generally covers the ability to handle one’s emotions to fit a given condition. This also entails the proper mixture of emotions and the realization of what caused a specific reaction to arise.

Self-awareness
This is different from self criticism mainly in the manner by which specific emotions are determined. It is the systematic observance of oneself to recognize feelings and moods as they happen.

Self motivation
This is evident in delayed gratification, in positive use of emotions to channel emotions into goals, and in over-all self control.

Empathy
This is basically the sensitivity to other people’s feelings and perspectives of things.  

Handling of relationships
This is one dimension of social intelligence, which is closely intertwined with emotional intelligence since it covers the management of emotions to retain and harmonize relationships.

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