You want your child's emotions taken seriously when he is not with you, too, and you want that emotional coaching going on whenever a conflict comes up. If you talk with the caregiver on a daily basis about how your child is doing and ask questions about how he gets along with his peers and how disagreements are handled, you'll have a better sense of whether emotional coaching and mentoring is going on. Get in the habit of building strong ties to the people whom your child spends time with just as it makes a difference when children get consistent messages from their parents, it's important that the messages they receive from their child care providers are consistent as well.
While there are many things we can do to foster social development, here are some general suggestions for helping your children to tune in to their own feelings.
Avoid ignoring or belittling your child's feelings.
Although often you'd wish such moments would just go away, times of emotional upset can be understood as key opportunities for teaching children how to avoid or resolve such situations, while also taking the feelings of others into consideration. View these times as opportunities to teach your children how to make lemonade out of lemons, while still allowing them to experience their feelings of hurt or disappointment. A versatile recipe for lemonade will be very useful for dealing with life's inevitable frustrations.
Try to see the world through your children's eyes.
Once you do, you'll recognize that the things that cause our children pain are often different from the things that cause us, as adults, pain. You don't want to treat your children any differently than you would want to be treated when you express your emotions. How would you feel if you confided in a friend about something that bothered you and she made fun of you and laughed? Make a point of teaching your child that it's okay to show negative emotion, such as sadness or fear. Likewise, try to demonstrate positive ways of coping with your own anger and negative feelings. Remember: Your children are watching you for lessons on regulating their emotions.
The bottom line is to talk to your children and invite them to talk to you. The more you try to understand how they feel and help them understand how an event happened, the more coping skills your child will develop. And, as we have documented, social skills are essential for doing well, both in school and in life.
Reprinted from: Einstein Never Used Flash Cards: How Our Children Really Learn -- And Why They Need to Play More and Memorize Less by Kathy Hirsh-Pasek, Ph.D., and Roberta Michnick Golinkoff, Ph.D., with Diane Eyer, Ph.D. © 2003 by Kathy Hirsh-Pasek, Ph.D., and Roberta Michnick Golinkoff, Ph.D. (September 2004; $13.95US/$19.95CAN; 1-59486-068-8) Permission granted by Rodale, Inc., Emmaus, PA 18098. Available wherever books are sold or directly from the publisher by calling (800) 848-4735 or visit their website at www.rodalestore.com.
Authors
Kathy Hirsh-Pasek, Ph.D., is a member of the psychology department at Temple University, where she directs the Infant Language Laboratory and participated in one of the nation's largest studies of the effects of child care. The mother of three sons, she also composes and performs children's music.
Roberta Michnick Golinkoff, Ph.D., is the H. Rodney Sharp Professor in the School of Education at the University of Delaware, where she holds a joint appointment with the departments of linguistics and psychology and directs the Infant Language Project. She has also been a recipient of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Fellowship and is the mother of a son and a daughter.
Together, the authors were featured on the PBS Human Language series and are the authors of How Babies Talk.
Diane Eyer, Ph.D., is a member of the psychology department at Temple University and author of Motherguilt and Mother-Infant Bonding.
For more information, please visit www.writtenvoices.com.