4 Ways to Raise Emotionally Intelligent Teenagers
What every parent wants to know about guiding their adolescent in the right direction.
It takes a special person to believe in the immense potential and capacity of a teenage mind and heart.
When I was in middle school, my mom handed me a book that challenged me as a teenager to do more and believe more in my capabilities. It made me want to rise to the challenge of being an adult-in-training.
“But try putting yourself in your child’s shoes. Ask questions, seek understanding, and convey to them that you’re on their side, you support them, and you’re there to hold their hand through those moments where things feel overwhelming and tough.” — April Eldemire, Marriage and Family Therapist
Emotional intelligence and maturity doesn’t develop on its own. Through teaching and experience it has to be learned continually over time. Here are a few recommendations I’d give you as an important person in a teen’s life:
#1: Embrace negative emotion
When your teen expresses negative emotion, make space for it. Don’t try and change it, stop it, mold it, or put it away. Let it rest and be what it is.
Creating a culture in this home where negative emotion is welcomed and allowed will give your teens space to feel the full bandwidth of their emotions.
“When parents offer their children empathy and help them to cope with negative feelings like anger, sadness, and fear, parents build bridges of loyalty and affection.”
― John M. Gottman, Raising An Emotionally Intelligent Child
The film Inside Out comes to mind. As protagonist Riley walks through her preteen years, her predominant emotion, Joy, has difficulty making room for Sadness, often setting her aside and asking her to get out of the way.
At the climax of the movie, she realizes how shut off she had become. Without sadness, she couldn’t fully experience or appreciate life, or connect with those around her.
Doing the same thing in your family can work wonders for the emotional maturity and intelligence of every member — especially your teens who are taking so many emotional cues from you as the parent.
#2: Don’t fix everything
One large component of emotional maturity is having space for emotions and not having to do something with them immediately. It’s in this space that self-awareness, self-respect, clarity, and calm can all be brought about in an individual.
“It helps, however, to remember that the goal of Emotion Coaching is to explore and understand emotions, not to suppress them. […] It is impossible to accept and validate a child’s emotion at the same time you wish it would just go away. Acceptance and validation come instead from empathy — that is, feeling what your child is feeling in the moment.”― John M. Gottman, Raising An Emotionally Intelligent Child
Part of embracing negative emotion is resisting the urge to fix the things that come up in your teen’s life. Hear them out.
Let the difficult feelings pertaining to bad grades, romantic rejections, and bad plays on their field sit and exist. Let them feel it. Feel it with them, getting into the trenches of their big and valid feelings.
That will help them to work through them with your support and security, ultimately navigating through them more healthily.
Oftentimes teens don’t need your answers and solutions as much as they need your simple love and a listening ear.
#3: Promote the practice of empathy
Adolescence is a normal period for teenagers to spend quite a bit of time thinking about themselves. This is normal and healthy.
However, that doesn’t mean that you can’t begin teaching them the crucial skill of empathy. Empathy isn’t sympathy.
It’s not feeling bad for someone — it’s a step further.
It means getting in the trenches with someone and really reasoning within yourself to grasp what they’re experiencing with as much emotional information as you have yourself.
“Empathy is the one human capacity that allows us to link minds and hearts across cultures and generations to transform our lives.”― Michele Borba, UnSelfie: Why Empathetic Kids Succeed in Our All-About-Me World
Promoting empathy in your teenagers means bringing it up in conversation, as well as modeling yourself. Empathizing with your teen will perform much of this empathy education, as will talking about it.
If you have kids who aren’t getting along, encourage them to empathize with one another and resolve their conflict with more empathetic mindsets.
This can look like talking about people at school, teachers, adults, peers, and other individuals in your teens life with a dose of empathy, especially when tensions are high.
Ultimately, the goal here is to encourage your teen to take baby steps towards not always thinking about themselves or seeing things through only their lens.
#4: Model emotional maturity & intelligence yourself
They say you can’t instill in others what you do not have inside yourself.
Let your teens see your mistakes and your struggles, just as they see your put together moments and your successes in life. Let them know that you don’t always have it all together.
“Be patient. You can not hurry some processes, but you can model them. Let them see that you don’t have to shout to be heard. Let them see you maintain your composure when people do not treat you well. Model kindness, helpfulness, and non judgmental behavior.” — Katherine Reinleitner, Clinical Psychologist
This will also look like, going back to the last point, having empathy. Being an empathetic person will serve as a great example to your kids that they’ll start unintentionally mimicking when they see it enough from you.
Remember that emotional intelligence isn’t about never getting mad or dealing with every feeling perfectly.
It means giving space to all of your emotions, trying to understand yourself and others instead of lashing out, and connecting well with others through empathy.
While your teens won’t see every internal effort you make or every feeling you mindfully manage, they’ll be able to feel the effects through your relationship and will be better off for it.
You won’t raise an emotionally intelligent teen in a day. It’s an ongoing process that you won’t always be able to see the fruits from. But let me tell you, as someone whose mother did a great job, it’s so worth it.
Letting your kids feel their feelings, teaching them empathy, and allowing conversations about hard things will go so far in improving your family culture and setting your teens up for later emotional and social success.
My brothers, both still in highschool, are two of the most communicative and emotionally mature young men that I know. That’s mostly because of what my mom has been able to do in our family. Her hard work has paid off, and I hope others can start putting in similar efforts as a part of loving their teens well.
I hope these recommendations have been helpful, and I’d love to hear from you how you’re promoting emotional intelligence in your family!
Best of luck to all.
