You may not realise it, but we live in a world where parents work harder to help kids cultivate their intellectual development while often completely ignoring their emotional development. What I mean to say is that our kids are working diligently to reach higher levels of academic success, or finding ways to excel in extracurriculars but parents aren’t encouraging kids’ ability to deal with emotions.
Emotional stability is every bit as important as other areas of development. Being emotionally stable and understanding of emotions can teach kids how to deal with intense emotions, deal with and overcome stress, deal with daily routines, and empathise with their peers for years to come.
So how does a parent raise a kid who is intellectually and emotionally sound? Check out this list of 5 tips for raising well-rounded kids to find out!
1. Find your child’s motivation
Everyone has different preferences which means that other people find motivation from different places. In any case, a person’s source of motivation is a very personal and emotional thing. Help your kid find his inspiration by trying out different activities. These will help your kids develop socially, emotionally, and even intellectually depending on the activity. Just make sure that whatever the activity is, it’s helping your kid establish a source of motivation or inspiration that’s personal to them. Something through which they can express themselves.
2. Teach them how to express intense emotions
Some kids have trouble expressing emotion. Whether it’s trouble expressing too little, or trouble expressing too much at times, every kid is different. At any rate, parents should work with kids to teach them to properly express these emotions no matter what side of the spectrum their kid lies.
Each child requires a different strategy. For example, if your kid struggles with anger try helping learn to vent, express, or disperse their anger appropriately. If your child lacks the willingness to share their emotions, try experimenting with ways to open up to you. No child should harbor intense emotions as it leads to emotional instability later in life.
3. Learn where your kid needs to improve
As you may have picked up already, each and every child is different. Especially regarding how they emote. Parents know their kids like the back of their hands and should also learn and understand how their children emote.
Try to figure out where your child lies on the spectrum. In other words, does your kid need to work on developing their intellect, or does your child need help developing their emotions?
Both are important and can’t be overlooked, so be sure to find out. Once you’ve found out, you can work towards improving your child’s development where they are lacking. The result is a perfectly rounded child that’s smart, but also capable of handling emotions.
4. Embrace failure
If your kid falls closer to the emotionally understanding end of the spectrum, then they may have learned the importance of failure. As you know, failure can be a great thing because it teaches us our mistakes and how we can improve upon them. A child more adept in understanding emotions can recognize this, however, children more intellectual in nature may see failure a terrible thing. If your kid can’t see the beauty in failing from time to time, then you need to teach them how to effectively deal with failure or rejection and how to take advantages of it.
5. Cultivate personal identity
A child will never be able to be fully emotionally intelligent if he/she doesn’t develop a sense of personal identity. It’s impossible to empathize or sympathize if you don’t know or care for your sense of self. That’s why parents who want to raise kids who are well-rounded intellectually and emotionally work towards cultivating their kids’ personal identity. Let them be who they are. Find out what they cherish most, what their dreams are, what their biggest interests are. Always be encouraging and never rain on their parade.
This article was inspired by a list published by Smart Parenting.