Video Gallery

Emotion Coaching: Raising Emotionally Intelligent Children

Go to Video Gallery Added Sep 15, 2020 •

Copy this URL:
Embed code:	<iframe class="edlio-embed-player" type="text/html" width="640" height="360" src="//www.whiteriver.wednet.edu/apps/embed/?v=291251" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe> Change dimensions

Go HD

Here you will find parenting tips taken from Emotion Coaching, developed by Drs. John & Julie Gottman. Jonathan Andrus, the School Counselor at Elk Ridge Elementary, will be breaking down Emotion Coaching concepts that will create more opportunities to build connections with your children during emotional moments and build your child's emotional intelligence. For more information on Emotion Coaching, please visit gottman.com or read "Raising an Emotionally Intelligent Child" by John Gottman.

Show Transcript

Hello White River Families! My name is Jonathan Andrus and I am the school counselor at Elk Ridge Elementary. One of the things that the counseling team has talked about as we start this school year is trying our best to continue what we did in the Spring. So not only providing social emotional videos/skills for your children, but also for caregivers and families, providing tools as much as possible during distance learning. One of the things that I'm passionate about is curriculum called Emotion Coaching. This is something that I taught, or co-taught, 3 years ago with a small group of parents from Elk Ridge Elementary, and I found it really helpful then. And that was before pandemics and distance learning and all that kind of stuff. Since then I've had families on occasion asking me for help on how to connect with their child when they're upset, especially during now, I know families are interacting with their children a lot more, now that they're at home during school. And also probably experiencing some new emotions, that have come up. So, the curriculum Emotion Coaching will help build connections with your child during this time. So, I feel it's really important now, just as much as it was 3 years ago. Today is just an intro video. These videos will be about 5 minutes each, each week, breaking down concepts taught in Emotion Coaching, so feel free to tune back in next week. But today is just an intro to tell you about what Emotion Coaching is. Emotion Coaching came from doctors John and Julie Gottman. They have 30 years of psychology experience. They're housed up in Seattle. Probably what they're known for best is their Love Lab, which is a research facility that's a part of the University of Washington. What they would do is film couples doing all sorts of different interactions. Just talking, or doing chores or basically interacting day to day. And, through a lot of different details and nuances, could predict pretty scarily if that couple would divorce in the next 5 years, or what the bumps in the road would be, how healthy their marriage was, and some tools and some things to work on. So, they have a wealth of information around that. More recently they've expounded on that and started looking at the whole family unit so not just the interaction between couples but also the interactions between parents or caregivers and their children and what were the strong predictors of future success. One of the things they found that was a strong predictor was emotional intelligence or an emotional IQ. A lot of things fall under this category of emotional intelligence, but think of it as all the soft skills that you would need in the workplace. So, things like patience, self-control, kindness, empathy, conversation skills. The ability to connect with others. All these things are a part of emotional intelligence. And, they're a lot less measurable than things like good grades, or a 4.0 GPA. But arguably equally as effective and important for adult success. So, again, I'll be breaking down concepts as we go, but if you want more information on Emotion Coaching the Gottman Institute or gottman.com has all their research on both couples and parent-child relationships and a wealth of information is there. And then John wrote a book, "Raising an Emotionally Intelligent Child". That is where emotion coaching came from. It's mostly from that book, so if you want more than what I can do in 5 minutes a week, I would strongly suggest you look at those two places. So, I'll explain the goal of emotion coaching. The goal is to build a connection with your child during emotional moments. So let's think about when we're parenting at our best, right? We had a great day as parents. We go to bed thinking, "Oh yeah, today was a great day." Usually it means we have all the patience in the world, we can get down at our child's level, we can problem solve, we can work through the feelings they have, right? On a good day we can do that. John Gottman would say that we do not need to build that kind of, those kinds of connections with kids every time they're upset. It's not always appropriate. So, I think about if my child is throwing a temper tantrum in the grocery store, not a great time to slow down and connect with them. You're just trying to squash the behavior, and that's okay. Or for me, if I'm coming home after a long day's work and my patience is really thin, and I open the door and my child's crying, I'm going to need a minute before I connect with my kid. It's not always appropriate to take the time and connect while they're feeling emotional, upset, sad, happy, all those emotions, any emotion. But, as we work through this curriculum, there are times where it's appropriate, and we'll kind of set up those scenarios for you as we go. So, building your child's emotional intelligence again is key to adult success, starting by labeling emotions, putting words to feelings, making it more concrete in their mind. But not only with just little kids, but having these connections with kids at all ages. I know there's families and parents that are hoping to connect with their teenagers more, right? So this is a curriculum, or tool that is helpful for kids of all ages. And the reason it's kind of a passion of mine is 3 years ago when I first co-taught this I didn't have any kids of my own yet. My little girl is 2 in this picture and my family is only going to grow, and I think about... I want what's best for my kids, right? We all do. And usually when we want what's best for our kids, we're equipping them for the future. We're training them for the future. Through all sorts of interactions, but emotion coaching, building their emotional intelligence, is one way we can do that. So I'll be back next week to start digging into some of the concepts. I hope you tune in! Take care.

Listed in COVID-19 Information

Video Gallery

Emotion Coaching: Raising Emotionally Intelligent Children

Popular Videos