Emotional Intelligence in Childhood: Education, Family and School

Great philosophers, including Plato, already spoke of Education as a means whose purpose was to provide the body and soul with all the perfection and beauty of which both are susceptible. Thus, from this point of view, we could define Education as the sum total of processes through which a social group transmits its capacities and powers. reorganizing and reconstructing emotions to adapt the individual to the tasks that he will carry out in the psychological process throughout his life (from infancy to childhood senescence).

In this PsychologyOnline article, we talk about emotional intelligence in children: education, family and school.

The Emotional intelligence, like all behavior, is transmitted from parents to children, especially from the models that the child creates. After various studies it has been proven that children are capable of capturing the moods of adults (in one of these they are discovered that babies are capable of experiencing a kind of empathic distress even before they are fully aware of their existence. Goleman, 1996).

Affective knowledge is closely related to the general maturity, autonomy and social competence of the child.

Personality develops as a result of socialization process, in which the child assimilates the attitudes, values ​​and customs of society. And the parents will be primarily responsible for contributing to this work, through their love and care, of the identification figure that they are for children (they are active agents of socialization). That is, family life will be the first school of emotional learning.

On the other hand, they will also influence the greater number of experiences of the child, having repercussions on the development of his personality. In this way, by controlling most of children's experiences, parents contribute to the development of social cognition.

Starting from the fact that you, the parents, are the main role model of your children, the ideal would be that You, as parents, begin to train and exercise your Emotional Intelligence so that your children can acquire those habits.

The prevailing rule in this regard, as M. J. Elías, S. B. Tobías and B. S. Friedlander (2000), is the following: "Treat your children as you would like others to treat them". If we analyze this rule we can obtain 5 principles:

1. Be aware of your own feelings and those of others.
2. Show empathy and understand the points of view of others.
3. Cope positively with behavioral and emotional urges and regulate them.
4. Set positive goals and make plans to achieve them.
5. Use positive social skills when managing your relationships

Observing these principles, we realize that we are in front of what are the five basic components of Emotional Intelligence:

1. Emotional self-knowledge.
2. Recognition of other people's emotions
3. Emotional self-control.
4. Self motivation.
5. Relationships.

To solve any problematic situation in the family environment, it would be advisable to answer a series of questions before acting:

• How do you feel in that particular situation? What do your children feel?
• How do you interpret what is happening? How do you think your children interpret it? How would you feel if you were in their shoes?
• What is the best way to deal with this? How have you done it on other occasions? Has it really worked?
• How are we going to do this? What do we need to do? How should we approach others? Are we ready to do this?
• Do we have the necessary skills? What other ways can there be to solve the problem?
• If our plan runs into unforeseen events, what will we do? What obstacles can we foresee?
• When can we get together to discuss the matter, share ideas and feelings, and set off for success as a family?

On the other hand, a study showed the three most inappropriate behavior styles on the part of their parents They are:

• Completely ignoring your child's feelings, thinking that your children's problems are trivial and absurd.
• The laissez-faire style. In this case, parents are aware of their children's feelings, but they do not provide emotional solutions. alternatives, and they think that any way of handling these "inappropriate" emotions is correct (for example, hitting them).
• Belittling or not respecting the child's feelings (for example, forbidding the child to get angry, being harsh if they get irritated ...)

If we stop at the type of education implemented a few years ago, we can see how teachers preferred conformist children, who they got good grades and demanded little (in this way receptive learners and disciples were being valued more than apprentices assets).

Thus, it was not uncommon to find self-fulfilling prophecy in cases where the teacher expects the student to get good grades and he gets them, perhaps not so much for the merit of the student himself but for the treatment that the teacher gives.

There were also cases of learned hopelessness, produced by the way teachers responded to the failures of their students.

But we have evolved, and to continue to do so we will have to assume that school is one of the most important means through which the child will "learn" and be influenced (influencing all the factors that make up her personality).

Therefore, at school you should consider teach students to be emotionally smarter, providing them with strategies and basic emotional skills that protect them from risk factors or, at least, mitigate their negative effects.

Goleman, 1995, has called this education of the emotions emotional literacy (also, emotional schooling), and according to him, what is intended with this is to teach students to modulate their emotionality by developing their Emotional Intelligence.

The objectives that are pursued with the implantation of Emotional Intelligence in school, would be the following:

1. Detect cases of poor performance in the emotional area.
2. Know what emotions are and recognize them in others.
3. Classify them: feelings, moods ...
4. Modulate and manage emotionality.
5. Develop tolerance for daily frustrations.
6. Prevent drug use and other risk behaviors.
7. Build resilience.
8. Adopt a positive attitude towards life.
9. Prevent interpersonal conflicts. Improve the quality of school life.

To achieve this, the figure of a new tutor (with a different profile than we are used to seeing normally) that approaches the process effectively for himself and for his students. For this, it is necessary for him to become a model of balance of emotional coping, of empathic skills and serene, reflective and fair resolution of interpersonal conflicts, as a source of vicarious learning for their students.

This new tutor must know how to transmit models of emotional coping appropriate to the different interactions that students have with each other (being the result of imitation models, by vicarious learning, for children). Therefore, we are not only looking for a teacher who has optimal knowledge of the subject to be taught, but who also be able to transmit a series of values ​​to their students, developing a new competence professional. These are some of the functions that the new tutor will have to develop:

• Perception of needs, motivations, interests and objectives of the students.
• Helping students to set personal goals.
• The facilitation of decision-making processes and personal responsibility.
• Personal orientation to the student.
• The establishment of a positive emotional climate, offering personal and social support to increase students' self-confidence.

The schooling of emotions will be carried out by analyzing conflictive situations and daily problems that occur in the school context that generate tension (as a frame of reference for the teacher, and on the basis of which to work on the different intelligence competencies emotional.

Finally, we are going to point out that in order for high school performance to occur, the child must have 7 important factors:

1. Confidence in yourself and your abilities
2. Curiosity to discover Intentionality, linked to the feeling of feeling capable and effective.
3. Self-control
4. Relationship with the peer group
5. Ability to communicate
6. Cooperate with others

And for the child to take advantage of these capacities once he goes to school, it should not be doubted that he will depend a lot on the care he has received from his parents.

In this way, we must emphasize that for an emotionally intelligent education, the first thing will be that the parents of future students provide that example of Emotional Intelligence to their children, so that once they begin their formal education, they are already provided with a wide repertoire of those capacities emotionally smart.

This article is merely informative, in Psychology-Online we do not have the power to make a diagnosis or recommend a treatment. We invite you to go to a psychologist to treat your particular case.

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