November 7, 2006 by Amy

EQ

We went to a Parents as Teachers group meeting tonight on Emotional Intelligence, or EQ. Emotional Intelligence, according to Wikipedia, describes the ability, capacity or skill to perceive, assess, and manage the emotions of one’s self, of others, and of groups. Current understanding is that you can be extremely successful if you have a high EQ and low IQ, because EQ gives you self-awareness, self discipline, persistence and empathy, all of which are necessary to be successful. This is also another way of saying you can have the most brilliant mind in the world and still be as dumb as a box of rocks.

The session tonight was “Developing Emotional Intelligence in Children,” or, as I like to put it, “How to Not F*** Up Your Child.” We learned such things as there are four styles of parenting (Dismissing Parent, Disapproving Parent, Laissez-Faire Parent and Emotion Coach). At this point I’m just thrilled I was able to use the term “laissez-faire” in my blog, since when I learned it in high school I thought it was quite cool but irrelevant to everyday life. However, it is not cool to be a Laissez-Faire Parent, and instead we should all strive to be Emotion Coaches.

Parents all around us were raising their hands, “My child throws toys on the floor when she gets frustrated,” “My child hits others,” “My child cries every day when I drop him off at school…and he’s been doing it for two years now…” They made our issue of “Zozo exhibits an extreme distaste for her sippy cup when at home with her parents” seem quite mild. Granted, she’s only 14 months old, so I’m sure we’ve got some of those happy times ahead of us, but given her personality so far I think we’re going to be okay.

Anyway, it was a worthwhile evening and gave us some insight not only into how to help Zozo express her emotions (we’re to help her build her “emotion vocabulary,” so she doesn’t just get “mad” at everything) but also kind of how we (meaning M and I) tick. I could go on and on, but you can get a couple books and read for yourself. One is Emotional Intelligence; why it can matter more by Daniel Goleman, which I just happen to be reading now and which I find quite fascinating (for instance, it tells you why you crinkle your nose when you find something distasteful), or Raising an Emotionally Intelligent Child by John Gottman, which you bet your bippy has been added to my Amazon.com wish list.

After learning how to be emotionally intelligent, we came home where M messed around on the computer for work and I did the emotionally stimulating tasks of finishing up the laundry and loading the dishwasher. I’m gonna get me some dessert and them I’m gonna hit the sack. No post tomorrow morning, as I’ll be at KSDK editing three 15-second commercials for the spa for the holidays. Should be fun, but we’ll see. I’ve never been in a video editing booth before, but I love love love to edit (I used to edit my college roommate’s grocery shopping lists…she was an atrocious speller and it gave me a chance to show off my fancy schmancy editing marks newly learned at The World’s Finest School of Journalism) be it words or photographs, so why should video be any different?! Famous last words…