Emotional Skills: What The Evidence Supports

Why it's important to develop emotional intelligence in children during the early years. This articles explains in detail why IQ isn't everything...

“EQ matters more than IQ” is one of the most repeated claims in parenting. The strong version of it isn’t well supported.

What’s overstated: that emotional intelligence is a single measurable quantity that predicts life success better than cognitive ability. The popular version of that claim ran well ahead of the research.

What’s well supported: that specific emotional skills can be taught, things like naming feelings, recognising them in others, managing distress and taking another perspective, and that children who have them do better socially and in school.

So drop the competition with IQ. The skills are worth teaching on their own terms.

The four skills you can teach

1. Naming what you feel

The foundation, and the one most easily built. A child who can say “I’m frustrated” doesn’t have to demonstrate it.

Name your own feelings out loud, constantly. “I’m annoyed the bus is late.” This is the whole method.
Name theirs, tentatively. “You look disappointed.” Being slightly wrong is fine. They’ll correct you, and that’s the exercise itself.
Go beyond happy, sad, angry. Frustrated, embarrassed, nervous, jealous, left out, overwhelmed, relieved. Anger in particular is usually one of these wearing a disguise.

2. Recognising it in other people

Point at faces: in books, in films, at the playground. “How do you think he’s feeling?”
Ask about the other side of a conflict. “What do you think she wanted?” Not as an accusation, as a question.
Books are the best tool available for this, because you can stop and discuss what a character is thinking.

3. Managing distress

Learned largely by borrowing yours first. A child’s nervous system settles against a calm adult, so staying calm during a tantrum is doing more than it looks like.

Acknowledge before solving. “That’s really annoying” comes before any suggestion, and often no suggestion is needed.
Don’t dismiss. “You’re fine”, “don’t cry”, “it’s not a big deal” teach that feelings are unwelcome instead of teaching regulation.
Teach a physical strategy: slow breathing, a quiet spot, squeezing something. Practise it when they’re calm; nobody learns a new skill mid-meltdown.
Separate feeling from behaviour, every time. “You’re allowed to be furious. You’re not allowed to hit.”

4. Repair

Probably the most helpful and the least taught. Everyone damages relationships; the skill is coming back.

Model it. Apologise to your child properly when you get it wrong: specifically, without excuses, and without a “but”.
Go past “say sorry”. “What could you do to make it better?” teaches the repair, not the word.

What gets in the way

Rewarding suppression. Praising a child for not crying teaches concealment, not regulation.
Rescuing from every difficult feeling. Children need to experience manageable distress and come out the other side; that’s where the evidence of their own capability comes from.
Treating boys differently. Boys are given markedly less emotional vocabulary and much more instruction to suppress. It’s the single largest avoidable gap in this area.

One caveat about the research

Some famous findings in this field are less solid than their popularity suggests. The well-known marshmallow experiment on delayed gratification, for instance, looks much weaker under replication, and much of what it appeared to show reflects a child’s circumstances, not their character.

Keep that in mind mainly so you don’t over-interpret one moment. A four-year-old who can’t wait is a four-year-old, not a prediction.

Frequently asked questions

Is EQ really more important than IQ?

The strong version of that claim isn’t well supported. It ran ahead of the research. What’s well supported is that specific emotional skills can be taught and that children who have them do better socially and at school. You can build the skills without the competition framing.

How do I teach my child about feelings?

Name your own out loud constantly: “I’m annoyed the bus is late.” Then name theirs tentatively, since being slightly wrong prompts them to correct you, and that’s the exercise. Go beyond happy, sad and angry to frustrated, embarrassed, nervous, jealous and left out; anger is usually one of those in disguise.

How do children learn to calm down?

Largely by borrowing an adult’s calm first, so staying steady during a tantrum does more than it appears to. Acknowledge before solving, avoid dismissing the feeling, and teach a physical strategy such as slow breathing, practised when they’re calm, since nobody learns a new skill mid-meltdown.

What’s the most useful skill to teach?

Repair. Everyone damages relationships and the skill is coming back afterwards. Model it by apologising to your child properly: specifically, with no excuses and no “but”. Replace “say sorry” with “what could you do to make it better?”.

What undermines emotional development?

Praising a child for not crying, which teaches concealment, not regulation; rescuing them from every difficult feeling, which removes the evidence that they can cope; and giving boys less emotional vocabulary and more instruction to suppress, the largest avoidable gap in this area.

Is the marshmallow test real?

Less solid than its fame suggests. It looks much weaker under replication, and much of what it appeared to show reflects a child’s circumstances, not their character. A four-year-old who can’t wait is a four-year-old, not a prediction.

What to take away

Drop the EQ-versus-IQ framing. Teach the four skills: name feelings, read them in others, manage distress, and repair afterwards.

Name your own emotions out loud. That single habit does most of the work.

And give boys the same vocabulary as girls. That gap is the biggest one going, and it’s entirely within your control.