What is Emotional Intelligence?
Emotional Intelligence or commonly known as EQ is a relatively new field of psychology. Emotional intelligence means the ability for a person to access, influence and conclude our emotions and also the emotions of other people around us.
The term emotional intelligence was first made popular by Daniel Goldman with his book Emotional Intelligence and since then many researchers have began studies in this new field of psychology. Since then, we have understood a lot more about emotional intelligence.
Emotional intelligence can be broken into 4 separate entities namely
1. Empathy: the ability for a person to be able to perceive the emotions of others around him/her and acknowledge those feelings.
2. Relationships: the ability for a person to be able to handle negotiations and mediations.
3. Self Awareness: the ability for a person to understand his/her own feelings, know what they means and acknowledging these feelings.
4. Handle Emotions: the ability for a person to manage and handle their own personal feelings responsibly and accurately depending on the situation.
Since everyone of us handle each emotion differently under different situations, it is also the reason why researchers are finding it difficult to measure emotional intelligence accurately.
Over the years, there are certain rules in emotional intelligence that seems to apply to the majority of us though. And we can train ourselves to be better equip to handle these emotions when it comes. Training your emotions takes time and being self aware of them.
Unlike IQ where it is innate and some people are just born to be a genius. Emotional intelligence is a skill that can be developed. In fact, emotions were not even implanted on us when we were still a baby or in the mothers womb. It is through the interactions with our environment and the people that we developed these emotions.
Raising ‘Emotional Intelligence Through Play
Every day, children face mental and emotional challenges that require patience, understanding and good judgment. How can parents teach their children to cope with this complex world?
Many Emotional Intelligence activities focus on developing positive social skills for children and young teens to reduce conflict and increase their self esteem. Here are a few of the skills that the some emotional intelligence games teach:
Assertiveness: This involves expressing one’s desires, opinions and ideas in a tactful way to avoid hurting the feelings of others.
Active listening: This aims at improving empathy through frequent eye contact and the use of gestures and verbal cues to encourage open communication.
Anger management: This concerns techniques to increase self-control. Children learn how to cool down and to explore alternative behaviors.
One of the most important things to understand about Emotional Intelligence is that it cant be learned ONLY through reading. There are courses, videos, that children watch a video or can take. One of the best things about it is that no matter what situation children are in, or what circumstance, increasing their Emotional Intelligence skills will help help them over time in the long run. They’ll become more aware of what’s going on around them, and the things they couldn’t quite grasp before. They’ll also become far more knowledgeable about what’s going on with other people, and isn’t that always the most difficult thing to figure out?
Be sure to check out these Additional PDF Resource from Ohio Government that offers over 100 pages of extra emotional intelligence activities for kids and teens.
Emotional Intelligence Activities
Comment down below on your thoughts about emotional intelligence and why you think it’s important or not?
