WP8 Emotional intelligence and parenting
Parenting is an emotional business – parents and children are emotional
beings. Many parents, however, find it hard to cope with their own or their
children’s feelings. They may have grown up with negative messages about
feelings – such as being told they were making a fuss or that they should be
‘grown up’. If parents’ feelings were ignored or criticised when they were
children, they can find it hard to understand and manage their own feelings as
adults, as well as those of their children.
However, Haim Ginott believed that empathising with children’s feelings was
the foundation of effective parenting.1 His teaching and beliefs about parentchild communication were supported by research conducted by John Gottman
in the 1980s, which demonstrated that children who had been helped to
become ‘emotionally intelligent’ had higher levels of emotional wellbeing,
social competence, achievement at school and physical health.2
This handout provides an overview of:
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key messages from the work of Haim Ginott.
what is meant by the term ‘emotional intelligence’.
the benefits of ‘emotionally intelligent’ parenting.
helping parents to understand the feelings and needs underneath
their children’s behaviour.
emotion coaching.
Haim Ginott: empathy as the foundation of effective parenting
Haim Ginott (1922-73) was a teacher, child psychologist and psychotherapist,
who worked with children and parents. The parenting books by Adele Faber
and Elaine Mazlish, such as How to Talk so Kids will Listen and Listen so Kids
will Talk3, which are still widely read today, were inspired by the work of Haim
Ginott.
Haim Ginott’s work and teaching was based on certain key messages that
underpin emotionally intelligent parenting:
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Ginott, H.G. (1965) Between Parent and Child. New York: New York University
Gottman, J. (1997) The Heart of Parenting. New York: Simon & Schuster
3 Faber, A. and Mazlish, E (1982) How to Talk So Kids Will Listen and Listen So Kids Will
Talk. New York: Avon.
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Parents can build close relationships with children and their children’s
self-esteem by listening to them and hearing not only their words but
also the feelings behind their words.
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Effective parenting is based on empathy and respect for children’s
feelings.
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Children’s feelings don’t disappear when parents dismiss, ignore or
rationalise their feelings.
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Feelings are not right or wrong, they just are and need to be
recognised. This does not mean that there should be no boundaries on
how children act out their feelings through their behaviour; it is the
behaviour that is unacceptable, however, not the child:
“Feelings are OK, actions are limited.”
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Children’s feelings come out through their behaviour: boundary setting
is most effective when it is preceded by statements of understanding.
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When parents name and talk about their children’s feelings, they are
helping them to recognise and understand those feelings. When
children are able to do this, they are more able to manage those
feelings rather than act them out in a way that causes trouble for
themselves and other people.
Haim Ginott recognised that many parents worry that if they give too much
attention to the feelings underneath their children’s behaviour, this may
encourage the unacceptable behaviour. He emphasised, however, that
empathy and emotional intelligence are essential ingredients not only for the
development of self-esteem, but also for positive discipline that helps children
learn to understand their feelings, the impact of their behaviour on others and
how to manage their behaviour.
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What is emotional intelligence?
In his 1995 book, Emotional Intelligence, John Goleman defines emotional
intelligence as “the capacity for recognising our own feelings and those of
others, for motivating ourselves, and for managing emotions well in ourselves
and in our relationships”.4
The two different kinds of intelligence – intellectual and emotional – express
the activity of different parts of the brain. The intellect is based solely on the
workings of the neocortex, the more recently evolved layers at the top of the
brain. The emotional centres are lower in the brain, in the more ancient
subcortex. Emotional intelligence involves these emotional centres working in
concert with the intellectual centre.
In defining and exploring emotional intelligence, John Goleman draws on the
work of other theorists of intelligence.
Howard Gardner, a psychologist at the Harvard School of Education, set out a
wider concept of intelligence in his 1993 book, Frames of Mind5. He proposed
that there was not just one, monolithic kind of intelligence that was crucial for
life success, but rather a spectrum of seven different ‘types’ of intelligence,
including what he termed ‘interpersonal intelligence’.
A Yale psychologist, Peter Salovey, mapped in greater detail the ways in
which we can bring intelligence to our emotions, expanding Gardner’s
interpersonal intelligence into five domains. John Goleman summarises these
as follows:6
1. Self-awareness: knowing what we are feeling in the moment and using
this insight and understanding to guide our decision-making; having a
realistic assessment of our own abilities and a well-grounded sense of selfconfidence.
2. Self-regulation: handling our emotions so that they facilitate rather than
interfere with the task at hand; being conscientious and delaying
gratification to pursue goals; recovering well from emotional distress.
3. Motivation: using our deepest preferences to move and guide us towards
our goals, to help us take the initiative and strive to improve and to
persevere in the face of setbacks and frustrations.
4. Empathy: sensing what other people are feeling and being able to
understand their perspective.
Goleman, D. (1995) Emotional Intelligence – why it can matter more than IQ. London:
Bloomsbury Press
5 Gardner, H. (1993) Frames of Mind. New York: Basic Books
6 Goleman, D. (1995) Emotional Intelligence and Working with Emotional Intelligence.
Omnibus.
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5. Social skills: handling emotions in relationships well and accurately
reading social situations; interacting to enable negotiation and cooperation.
The benefits of empathy and emotionally intelligent parenting
John Gottman, a research psychologist at the University of Washington, was
greatly influenced by the work of Haim Ginott. In the 1980s he studied parentchild interaction in 100 families over a 10 year period to assess the impact of
parent-child communication advocated by Ginott on children. His research
found that children who had been helped to become ‘emotionally intelligent’
had higher levels of emotional wellbeing, social competence, achievement at
school and physical health.
These children were better able to respond to and bounce back from stress,
possessing a characteristic which he referred to as ‘high vagal tone’. Gottman
concluded that children’s early emotional experiences while the
parasympathetic nervous system is still forming influence their longterm ability
to regulate the involuntary physiological processes of the autonomic nervous
system and manage stress.
He observed that children whose feelings had been accepted and sensitively
responded to were good at soothing themselves, focusing their attention,
inhibiting action when called for and responding to emotional cues in others.
Children whose parents had not been able to acknowledge or relate to their
feelings were more likely to have ‘low vagal tone’, becoming confused and
agitated by unexpected events and finding it hard to settle afterwards.
Understanding the feelings and needs underneath behaviour
Awareness and understanding of feelings are the foundation of empathy and
emotional intelligence. If parents are unable to recognise their own and their
children’s feelings, they will be unable to empathise or help their children
manage their feelings.
Helping parents to recognise the feelings and needs underneath their
children’s behaviour is a key practitioner skill. When parents understand their
children’s feelings and where they are coming from, they are less likely to
react with blame and judgement or to take their children’s behaviour
personally (“He’s just trying to wind me up.”) Understanding their children’s
feelings and needs will also help parents to address what is really going on for
the child.
The key to understanding children’s feelings and needs is their behaviour:
children express their feelings through the things they do and say – and the
way in which they do and say them. Behaviour is an attempt to get needs met.
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The fountain image7 can be helpful in portraying this link between behaviour,
feelings and needs.
In the picture below, common needs that we all, including children, share are
in the pool of water. The fountain’s jets of water are the feelings that children
may feel, depending whether these needs are met or unmet. When they feel
‘positive’ feelings eg happy or joyful, this usually means that their needs are
being met. When they don’t feel so good, it means that their needs are not
being met.
These feelings come out in behaviour, like the spray around a fountain.
From Roberts, K. (2004) Parents Together – a parenting programme from babyhood to the
teenage years. Parentline Plus
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Helping parents to recognise the link between feelings, needs and behaviour
can enable them to break out of stuck thinking and identify ways of reacting to
behaviour. Practitioners can share with parents that:
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Children express their feelings through their behaviour – feelings are
an important signal about what is really going on.
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Understanding and accepting feelings and needs helps to cut through
blame and judgement.
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Identifying the unmet need underneath behaviour helps parents to
address what is really going on – children’s feelings and needs don’t
go away if they are not recognised and continue to come out in
behaviour.
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Understanding and accepting feelings and needs under behaviour
doesn’t mean that parents shouldn’t challenge the behaviour – but
will help parents do this in a constructive way that doesn’t bring about
a defensive or angry reaction in the child or teenager and that helps
the child/teenager get their needs without ‘acting out’.
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Acknowledging feelings and needs whilst limiting behaviour or
problem solving builds a child’s self-esteem and emotional literacy,
as well as strengthening the parent-child relationship.
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Understanding needs does not mean parents have to meet them.
Just trying to understand what’s going on for the child/teenager and
acknowledging needs will help – parents may be more able to
support them to problem solve, rather than taking over.
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Parents’ attitude is likely to change when they understand the need
even if the behaviour doesn’t stop. When they can see that the
behaviour is not meant to wind them up, this helps to make the
behaviour less irritating.
Parents as emotion coaches
Having observed the benefits of emotional intelligence on children’s wellbeing,
health and achievement, in The Heart of Parenting John Gottman8 identifies
how parents can help their children develop the ability to understand and
manage their feelings.
He calls this process ‘emotion coaching’ and describes five steps:
1. Become aware of child’s emotion
For parents to notice what their children are feeling, they need to be aware of
emotions – in themselves and their children. Some parents may need help to
recognise the feelings underneath their children’s behaviour.
Gottman, J. And DeClaire, J. (1997) The Heart of Parenting – how to raise an emotionally
intelligent child. NY: Simon & Schuster
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2. Recognise the emotion as an opportunity for closeness and learning
Upsets are seen as opportunities for children to learn to understand and
manage their feelings. For parents it can be a relief to realise they can meet
their children’s needs and get close to them, by responding with empathy
rather than ‘fixing’ the problem.
3. Listen empathically, validating the child’s feelings
Rather than jumping in and sorting out their child’s problems, parents can say
things like
“You sound frustrated/ upset/ fed up …”
Or “Are you worried that …?”
This will help the child feel clearer about their feelings so they can think
through the problem, as well as showing them that their parent is on their side
and cares.
4. Help the child to name the feelings
Naming and acknowledging feelings as part of listening to children starts to
build a child’s ‘emotional literacy’. Providing words in this way can help
children to transform a scary or uncomfortable feeling into something that is
definable and is a normal part of everyday life. Anger, sadness and fear
become experiences everyone has and can handle.
5. Set limits while problem solving
Listening with empathy is an important first step in setting limits. When a child
has been helped to understand how they are feeling, this leads naturally into
explaining that certain behaviour is unacceptable and guiding the child to think
of more appropriate ways of handling their feelings.
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