Raising an Emotionally Intelligent Child -- Book Review

Just finished reading this book and I am impressed. This book feels like the continuation of Between Parent and Child and fills in the missing pieces in Between Parent and Child. Raising an Emotionally Intelligent Child focuses on using five key steps for Emotion Coaching. 1. Being aware of the child's emotion. 2. Recognizing the emotion as an opportunity for intimacy and teaching. 3. Listening empathetically and validating the child's feelings. 4. Helping the child verbally label emotions. 5. Setting limits while helping the child problem-solve. I learned about how to be empathetic to a child's feelings through all my previous readings, however, I have always felt a little permissive as a result, but this book fills in that gap with step 5. It teaches you how to be empathetic and understanding and yet still set limit and gives example of how to, setting limits is very important. Just being empathetic and not setting limits or helping your child to move on, is not going to help the child's emotions any better. I also love how the book does consider practicality, and list times that emotional coaching is not appropriate and how it can be delayed, like example when you are in a rush.
The book categorizes Parents into four types: 1. The dismissing parents, who disregard, ignore, or trivialize children's negative emotions. 2. The disapproving parents, who are critical of their children's displays of negative feelings and may reprimand or punish them for emotional expression. 3. The Laissez-Faire parents, who accept their children's emotions and empathize with them, but fail to offer guidance or set limits on their children's behavior. And of course the ultimate goal for me, 4. the Emotion Coach that follows the mentioned five steps above.
Another interesting point mentioned in this book is the strong influence of the father to a child. Even though for reasons unknown, their studies show that the father actually has a stronger influence on the child's emotional intelligent than the mother. So it is actually very important for the dad to get involve with emotion coaching too.

Let's Get Out and Play More -- It's Good for the Brain

Doing a simple search online and I find bunch of information regarding infant brain growth. Apparently 85% brain growth is done by age 3 and all significant brain growth in human children is completed by the time they are six years old. This means the first 6 years of our life is probably the most important for brain stimulation. I am thinking, maybe instead of spending all the money on expensive private schools or tutoring centers, it might be best to invest more into the first 6 years of your child’s life. Provide more stimulating activities for them, buy more toys or give more items of different uses and textures for your child, and provide the best nutritional food also, and ideally even more so before age 3.

I am already watching what my daughter is eating, and I am sure she has plenty of toys and books, I am going to make it my goal to do more activities with my daughter each day and to resist the temptation to just sit at home and watch TV or use the computer. Hey, this might even improve my health and quality of life.

Unconditional Parenting Review

This book has a point, and it definitely did open up my mind. I always thought that I wouldn’t want to use spanking as punishment on my child, but I thought that time-out is a good idea, and that lots of praising is good for self esteem. Oh boy this book sure changed my view. It is true, even the gentle method of time-out and using praise is really just tactics that we parents use in trying to manipulate our children into good behavior. We withhold our love from them when they behave in ways we don’t approve, meaning we only conditionally love them (at least it appears to them in behavior), so how are they going to know they can still come to us and count on our support in the future when they are in trouble. We praise and reward them excessively when they do act according to how we want and we turn the act into solely something to please mom and dad and instead of something that is rewarding in itself, so how are we going to expect them to do good on their own once we are not around to praise them. I definitely want my child to not behave badly, but I want her to do it for the right reasons, because of empathy and knowing the harmful effect on others from their behavior, not because there is a punishment. I also want her to do good and love learning and strive for higher achievement out of the reason that it is enjoyable and rewarding to herself and not just to please others including me. I know this is definitely a method that we are not use to, but it is definitely something that I want to try to achieve for my daughter.

Reading the book has really got me to start thinking, and I start to realize the horrible effect that traditional parenting has on me. I have memories of how it felt being a child and receiving the traditional punishments, threats, praises, and rewards, etc. I remember that the threats and sarcasms never motivated me, and my gut feeling will keep on telling me to do the opposite just to prove a point, but then the fear of punishment usually stops me from rebelling my parents physically, but doesn't stop the hate inside. I remember that those direct praise, good girl, and you are such an obedient kid, never felt good. Couldn't quite figure out why as a kid, but now I know why. Why would anyone want to get that kind of praise anyway? I know how I will feel if my boss says good girl to me, I will feel like a pet, it is not even a positive attribute. Anyway, but these are just memories, and how it didn't work effectively on me as a child, even though I was extremely obedient and well behaved. But now, I am realizing the effect it has on me today. Not saying this to blame my shortcomings on my parents, I wouldn't know how to unconditionally parent if I haven't been introduced to it either, but I do feel it is related. I feel like I have no passion for a lot of things, I am still desperately trying to figure out what I am passionate about, either it is for career or just for hobby, which I have none (although this is improving now since I am studying more and being passionate about my daughter’s upbringing). I picked a major in college just because it was a well respected and money earning career choice, and because that is what my parents expected me to. Maybe all that reward and punishment system just robbed me of all my natural passion. I read books only if it is required for a test during school age and now only if I feel it is practical, I never developed the natural love for reading, so forget those novels. I also admit I lack the general consideration for others, I have dificulty "reading people", which is a skill that is vital in society. I am working hard on improving myself, and it has gotten better as I open up my mind more. But just thought I would want to share my story for others to also see that traditional parenting does have long term effects. If I didn't learn about the AP way, I would have never realized this also. I would just be saying, I grew up this way and I turned out fine.


http://www.alfiekohn.org/parenting/gj.htm

My Daughter’s Gymboree Experience—Is Socialization Overrated in Toddlers?

Being a stay at home mom with my first and only so far makes me worry about the lack of interaction with kids for my daughter. I bring her to libraries and parks, even though she is not yet at an age to play with other kids, but I figure socialization is important, right? I see my friends signing up for Gymboree classes a long time ago, but I really didn’t want to spend the money when my daughter was so young. But now, she is reaching the mobile age, and I thought I would give it a try. I signed up for one of the free class and took her in. She was in shock the moment I arrived, she is usually wary of new environment and does take about 20 minutes of observation before she will make any moves, so during this time, I just let her cling on me for dear life. I see all the other kids laughing and running around, having a good time. Then the instructor rings her bell for a start of a new activity. She explains to us how the first activity is to lead the kids up the wedge to a bridge and drop a ball into the bucket. Well, that bell and all the loud music was a little too much going on for my daughter, so she was not quite ready to let go of me yet, so I respected that and let her continue to hang onto me. Slowly she start to let go of me and started to play with the balls she sees on the side, but is no way near letting me push her to do anything, hmm… as a matter of fact, I was never able to push her to do anything in her whole life so far, so I soon realize there is no way I can participate in any of the activities. The bell continues to ring for more different activities, but my daughter was solely interested in exploring on her own. That went on for the whole class, occasionally a kid would come over and want to grab the balls my daughter is holding, but the parent soon come in to stop them. Other than that, there is not much kid or adult socialization going on; all are busy running after their kids. After the class ended, it was hard for me to tell whether or not it was good, my daughter didn’t seem to like it that much, but it was only her first day, so I decided with the first month discount, I might as well try it for a month.

The very next day, there is open gym, I decided to take her in again to see if she will enjoy it more this time, I mean this is like a park right? But strangely she is still very unwilling to come down and play, even though she usually cheers at the sight of parks. Therefore, I lead her directly to the bucket of balls, she is willing to come down and play that, but throughout the majority of the time it is still the same. Except now there are more kids and the parents are not necessarily completely focusing on them. Many would come and attempt to grab the balls from my daughter. My daughter was able to keep her hands on the ones she is holding. One kid sneakily followed her until she bounces the ball on the floor and quickly snatches it, my daughter went after the kid to grab it back but was unable to until that kid lost interest in the ball. Then a maybe 2 year old went around the room and used his hand and wacked three kids, one including my daughter. It was not a hard hit, but I find myself dumb found and not knowing how I should react, I looked around for the parent and I see the mom, busy with a younger baby, no way of being able to notice what her son is doing. This really got me started to think about the value of socialization in daycare or preschool. Is it over rated? Is it really something I want? This is what I feel like my daughter might learn from this big group of kids of similar age in a small room, how to hold on tight to your toys or how to yank it from others and how to hit other kids or get hit by other kids. Do they really learn how to interact nicely with others by being in an environment like this? Something irks me about this concept. I know when my daughter is placed with nice and mature kids or people, she will model from their behavior; I really worry if all she sees is fighting for toys then what will she learn? Will she lose her trust in kids and be more unwilling to share?
Update: Since I signed up for the first month, I decided to go to yet another open gym time, but this time there was a lot less people. With a smaller group of crowd, and third visit, my daughter is able to relax and explore around. The smaller crowd has definitely made resources more available to all the kids. I guess this is the importance of small classes.

Between Parent and Child Review

I love this book! I am a very practical person, so I tend to like books that are straight to the point, have directions, and examples. Between Parent and Child is exactly like this. This book was written a while back, but definitely a classic that has withstood the test of time. Because it is base on one very important principle, “respect.” This was the first parenting book I read. When I first read the book, I definitely had doubts about it, won’t children run wild then? But then I reflected on my own childhood, my mom and dad pretty much did every single thing the book tells you not to, and I remember how I felt and how it affected me to today, which is definitely not good. The book teaches you very valuable social skills that I believe you can use beyond just with children.

I personally like to compare parent and child relationship with manager and worker relationship. I see a good parent like a good manager. Think about how you want to be treated by your manager at work. You want to be valued and be heard, doing work that you feel meaningful and contributing and involved, you want to be motivated, you want to be treated with respect. You don’t want a manager that is his/her way or the high way, but you don’t want a manager that is like your equal and can’t provide you guidance either. And to be a good manager/parent, definitely requires some skill, and this book helps you see this.

My favorite example in the book is when the author gives a group of women a scenario of a bad morning and a wife ended up accidentally burning a breakfast toast. The author asked them how they will feel and respond if the husband had criticized them for the burned toast. The group responded that they would not be happy and their whole day would be ruined. The author then asked if the husband sympathized with them how will they feel. The group responded that they would be so happy that they would give the husband a kiss. And finally the author asked how they would feel if the husband had say “here honey, let me show you how to properly make toast.” The group got the point, and realized that this is even worse than the first response, and that they would be furious. We as adults often use the third response with children thinking we are helping them, but with this example, we can see how unhelpful that really is.