How to help your child manage their feelings and build resilience using Emotion Coaching

How to become your child’s Emotional Coach? Children experience a wide range of emotions as they move through life, it can be challenging as a parent to know how best to help children through these emotions. Would you like to learn how to support your child socially and emotionally through the process of connection? If the answer to that questions is yes, then Emotion Coaching is a technique that could benefit you as a parent.

Emotion Coaching is a tool that aims to support children to learn about their emotions and to start to manage them and their behaviour. The key to supporting children’s success now and into the future is supporting the development of their emotional intelligence. How parents connect with their children and the quality of their interactions is a key part of Emotion Coaching. The approach is based on the principle that it is our emotions that drive our behaviour. Children need support to process and manage their emotions, just like learning to ride a bike, managing emotions is a skill that is developed through practice.

Dr. John Gottman and his colleagues have been studying the difference between children who are able to manage and regulate their emotions and those who don’t. In his research he studied how well children performed in school, how well they related to their peers, whether they behaved appropriately in social situations and how they related to their parents. Dr Gottman found that children who had been Emotion Coached by their parents were more successful as an adult in areas such as peer friendships, employment and academic achievement.

Try the 5 steps below to support your child to manage their feelings and build resilience.

 

 

Dr Kayleigh Sumner
Assistant Head
Positive Education & Wellbeing Specialist
Sunmarke School