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What You Can Do
D Listen
D Be empathic
D Validate their emotional
experiences
D Explain why feelings happen and
the role of emotions
D Model emotional regulation
D Teach social problem-solving
D Use words to describe emotions
and situations that elicit those
emotions
D Identify emotions and facial
expressions that accompany them
D Discuss emotionally intense
situations
D Model failure and how to tolerate
failure in appropriate ways
D Make kindness and compassion a
value in the family
D Teach them how to listen to others
D Don’t try to control their emotions
or stop them from feeling them
Conversation
Starters
“
Making new friends and keeping
old ones can be really hard in
junior high. You’re different than
you used to be and are interested
in different things now. It can be
really hard to make connections
with new friends. Maybe starting
with a better understanding of
how you feel about each person
may make it easier to decide how
to move forward.”
“
You’re going to be trying new
things, which can be fun, but
also difficult and make you feel
stressed out. All of these feelings
are completely normal, so don’t
let them hold you back. Use
your feelings to guide you in
terms of taking a break or trying
something different. Feelings are
signals; they tell us if we are on
the right track or not.”
T
he latest research shows that a person’s emotional
intelligence, or EQ, may be a better predictor of success in
adulthood, as opposed to a person’s cognitive intelligence, or
IQ. For young teens, factors influenced by their emotional
intelligence show up in a variety of ways. Emotional
intelligence will impact how they behave on the sports field, choices they
make about relationships, performance in the academic arena, and overall,
can influence the outcomes of this critical developmental stage.
We know that young teens have priorities that are very different from
what parents and caregivers think is important. For them, the social field in
terms of their friends can make or break how they come out of this stage of
development.
To help them successfully navigate the world of social relationships,
parents and caregivers can focus on increasing their child’s emotional
intelligence as a tool to survive the early teen years. When young teens feel
successful on the social front, they tend to have higher self-esteem, make
safer choices in terms of health and wellness, and are likely to have better
academic performance.Signs &
Behaviors
q Socially sophisticated
q Empathic
q Kind and compassionate
q Listens to understand
q Shows an understanding of
how others feel and why they
feel that way
q Understands how situations
elicit specific emotions
q Problem-solves, comes up
with multiple outcomes and
evaluates those outcomes
q Provides compassionate support to others
q Stands up for others and themselves
q Increased self-esteem and self-efficacy
q Demonstrates frustration tolerance
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