The secret to having emotionally intelligent kids? How parents handle feelings

Want emotionally intelligent kids? Experts say it starts with how you handle their feelings — and yours.

Dr. Becky Kennedy is known for her science-backed parenting advice and podcast called “Good Inside.” She recently spoke with Dr. Marc Brackett, the founding director of the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence. They discussed how we think about parenting and emotions. In his research, Brackett found the No. 1 reason parents don’t ask their kids about their feelings is fear.

“They are afraid of not knowing what to do, and so what do you do when you don’t know what to do?” Brackett said. “You go to automatic, habitual, former ways that you learn things, which is my mother’s way of like, ‘I’m going to my room and you’re going to your room and we’re not talking.’ That’s the extreme, right? That’s like, suck it up. You’re on your own, kiddo. Doesn’t usually help.”

And there are some parents who have a totally different reaction.

“‘Oh my God, honey, what went wrong? Oh my God, I can’t handle this. Oh my goodness, we have to go.’ You know, that kind of over-dramatic reaction,” Brackett said.

So what’s the compromise?

“It’s like, ‘honey, tell me what happened. What’s going on?’ And it’s not this four-hour conversation. It’s really getting to know the experience,” Brackett shared. “‘Honey, I did notice that your facial expression was different today, so my hunch is that maybe something happened at school yesterday. Can we chat about it?’ And then you’re in learning mode. But the learning mode is not to then say, ‘Well, you should suck it up,’ or ‘Oh my God, the learning mode is to help engage in problem-solving mode.'”

Brackett said kids don’t become resilient by never falling down. They become resilient because we, as parents, believe they can get back up. When we hold steady and trust they can do hard things, they learn to trust themselves too.

When Dr. Brackett interviewed 15,000 people about their childhoods — and about the people who created conditions for them to thrive — there were three outstanding characteristics.

1. Be non-judgmental
2. Listening
3. Compassion

“I don’t think people are looking for other people to fix them,” Brackett said. “I think people are looking for people to create the conditions for them to thrive and to ask them good questions so they can develop the critical thinking skills to then problem solve for themselves. I don’t think that we create the conditions for that as much as we should.”

Brackett also believes time is a huge factor. Some parents lack the patience to let their kids figure things out for themselves; they just want to do it for them. He said teaching kids how to manage their feelings is in the service of making them more capable.