Raising an Emotionally Intelligent Child (29 page)

Remember also that your baby is looking to you for emotional cues. You can use this to help him cope with stranger anxiety, which so commonly emerges at this age. If mom looks relaxed around the new baby-sitter, perhaps even giving the sitter a hug, baby may get the message that this new person is to be trusted.

NINE MONTHS TO TWELVE MONTHS

This is the period when babies begin to understand that it’s possible for people to share their thoughts and emotions with one another. The baby hands a broken toy to his dad, for example, and dad says, “Oh it’s busted. That’s too bad. You feel sad, don’t you?” By nine months, the baby is beginning to comprehend that dad knows how she is feeling inside. Before, when a parent empathized with the baby, reflecting back the child’s feelings with voice inflection, facial movement, body language, the child was learning about the world of emotional expression. But the baby was not aware that parent and child could actually have
the same thoughts and feelings
. Now she knows such sharing is possible, all of which strengthens the growing emotional bond between parent and child. This new understanding is an extremely important leap in terms of Emotion Coaching because it’s what makes two-way conversations about feelings possible.

At the same time, the child is developing an understanding that the objects and people in his life have a certain amount of permanence or constancy. Just because a ball rolls under the chair and can’t be seen anymore, doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. And just because Mom has left the room and can’t hear me, she’s still part of my world and capable of returning.

As your child explores this concept of “object constancy,” he may be fascinated with games that allow him to take small objects in and out of containers, hiding them and then making them reappear. Or, he may repeatedly throw his spoon off his high chair and out of sight, then ask you to fetch it for him again and again.

This budding understanding of the constancy of objects and people may be related to another important development in your baby’s life: his growing attachment to specific people—namely, his parents. Now that he’s sure you exist even when you’re not around, he can miss you and demand that you stay. He may put up quite a fuss
when he sees you putting on your coat, or otherwise senses that you’re about to leave. When you’re gone, he has a sense that you must be
somewhere
, but he doesn’t know where, and he may find this upsetting. Also, he has very little sense of time, so it’s hard for him to understand just how long you’ll be gone.

Psychologists studying infant attachment have observed the way one-year-olds react to being taken care of by unfamiliar adults, to their parents’ leaving, and to their reunions. They have found that babies who feel secure may be upset when their parents return, but they allow themselves to be comforted, molding to their parents’ bodies as they are held and talked to. But babies who feel insecure about their parents’ emotional availability respond to reunions differently, usually in one of two ways: One is a dismissing or avoiding style, where the child ignores her parents when they return and acts as if she is just fine. When her parents try to comfort her, she may push them away from her body instead of molding to them. The other style is anxious and preoccupied, where the baby clings to the parent upon the parent’s return and seems hard to comfort. If your child shows such signs of insecurity, she may need for you to be more emotionally available when the two of you are together. In other words, she needs you to respond to her expressions of emotion with empathy, concern, and affection, all of which strengthen your emotional bond.

To help a child this age cope with the separation anxiety that typically occurs when parents have to leave, reassure him that you will return. Remember that although a one-year-old may not be able to speak well himself, he usually understands a great deal of your language, so your reassurances can help. Keep in mind also, that he’s looking to you for emotional cues, so if you appear anxious or fearful about the parting, he may pick up on that emotion and feel it, too. Therefore, it’s best to find a caregiver with whom you’re comfortable, and make sure you and the baby have time to get acquainted with this person before you have to leave. This will make you feel more relaxed and so will the baby. And finally, you can help your child practice being apart from you by letting him explore separate spaces at home on his own. If he crawls off to another (baby-proofed) room, for example, let him go for a while before you check up on him. If you’re together in one room and you have to go to another,
tell him where you’re going and that you’ll be back momentarily. Gradually, he’ll get the idea that parents can leave and nothing terrible happens, and that parents can be trusted to come back when they say they will.

Remember that you can help your child feel more secure, more emotionally bonded to you, by expressing your understanding of her thoughts and feelings. This can be done moment by moment as you care for her and play with her. Or, you can continue to invent games that encourage imitation and wide-ranging expressions of emotion. One game that my daughter, Moriah, and I invented when she was this age we called “The Guys.” Each night I would take a pen and draw a different facial expression on each finger of one hand. The thumb would always look angry, the index finger sad, the middle finger fearful, the ring finger surprised, and the little finger happy. Then Moriah would crawl up on my lap and we would talk with “the guys” about how our day had been. The thumb might say, “Oh, I had a bad day. I’m so mad I could kick something.” And the index finger would say, “Oh, I had a bad day, too, but I was sad today. I wanted to cry.” Then they would turn toward Moriah and say, “What kind of day did you have?” She would think for a while and then grab the finger that was most like her day. This would give me a chance to help her label her feeling. “Oh, you had a sad day today.” After she acquired more words, this gesture would be accompanied with her own words. She might say, “Missed Mommy.” Then I might add, “Oh, you felt sad today because you missed Mommy after she went to work,” which let me show her empathy. “I understand how you felt,” I might add. “Sometimes when Mom goes to work I feel sad too because I miss her.”

T
HE
T
ODDLER
Y
EARS
(A
GES
O
NE TO
T
HREE
)

T
ODDLERHOOD IS A
fun and exciting time as your child develops a sense of himself and begins to explore his autonomy. But there’s a good reason that this period has also been dubbed the terrible twos. It’s the time children become much more self-assertive and, for the first time, noncompliant. As your child practices his burgeoning language skills, the words you’ll hear most often include, “No!”
“Mine!” and “Do by myself!” or “Me do!” Emotion Coaching becomes an important tool parents can use to help toddlers deal with their emerging sense of frustration and anger.

As in all stages of development, parents do well to look at conflicts and challenges from the perspective of the child. Because the toddler’s primary developmental task at this age is to establish herself as an independent little being, try to avoid situations that make her feel that she has no power, no control. A woman in one of our parenting groups described trying to make her two-year-old take a dropperful of pink medicine prescribed for an ear infection. Using the tack she had employed since he was an infant, she swaddled him in a towel, held him down, and tried to force him to swallow the medicine. “But he fought like crazy and refused to take it,” she explained. “Then my sister walked in, took the dropper out of my hand, and said to my son, ‘Do you want to do it yourself?’ My son nodded, took the dropper, squeezed the medicine into his mouth, and swallowed every drop.” All he wanted was a little control over the situation.

It helps to give toddlers lots of little (but real) choices as you go through your day together. Rather than saying, “It’s chilly outside. You must wear a coat,” say, “What would you rather wear today? Your jacket or your sweater?” Keep your limit setting focused on issues of your toddler’s safety and your peace of mind. Providing her with a stimulating, child-proofed environment makes this easier.

At the same time toddlers are grappling with matters of self-assertiveness, they are becoming increasingly interested in other children. In fact, from a very early age, they seem to be acutely aware of differences and similarities among people most like themselves. Research psychologist T. G. R. Bower showed that
baby boys preferred looking
at films of a young boy moving and baby girls preferred looking at films of a young girl moving. Amazingly, when Bower created a film showing only bright dots placed at the joints of the moving children (a dot at the knee, another at the elbow, and so on), he found that once again, baby boys preferred the “boy dot” films while baby girls preferred the “girl dot” films.

While toddlers may be extremely attracted to one another, they don’t yet have the social skills needed to play well together. Indeed, attempts at cooperative play and sharing are often problematic,
given the “toddler rules of ownership,” which are: (1) If I see it, it’s mine; (2) If it’s yours and I want it, it’s mine; and (3) If it’s mine, it’s mine forever. Parents should realize that such attitudes are not based on meanness; they are simply an expression of the toddler’s developing sense of self. Children this age can only consider their own points of view and are incapable of understanding that others may feel differently. Consequently, the concept of sharing is meaningless to them.

There is a positive side to toddlers’ conflicts over toys, and the emotional fireworks that usually result. Such episodes provide terrific opportunities for Emotion Coaching. Parents can help their toddlers by acknowledging and labeling the child’s anger or frustration. (“You feel mad when somebody takes your doll,” or, “You feel frustrated that you can’t have that ball right now.”) Parents can also begin to explore problem solving with the children by introducing them to the concept of taking turns. If a conflict deteriorates into a physical fight, let the perpetrators know that “we don’t hit” or otherwise hurt our playmates out of anger, and then turn your attention to the victims, offering empathy and soothing.

Remember, also, to praise and encourage your toddler anytime you see him making even the slightest overture toward sharing, but don’t expect it. Parallel play, where each child stays in his or her own space playing independently, is usually more successful at this age.

Toddlers’ conflicts over belongings will never be completely eliminated. But for sanity’s sake, you may want to minimize such episodes. This can be done by explaining to children that they should only take toys to a friend’s house or to the child-care center if they intend to share them. And when your toddler is expecting playmates at his house, have him choose a few special belongings that will be off-limits to the visitors. Then, with some degree of ceremony, put them away before the outsiders arrive. This may give the child the sense of power and control that he is seeking.

In addition to his increasing awareness of himself as separate from others, another important social milestone is the toddler’s developing interest in symbolic and pretend play. Sometime between the ages of two and three, children begin acting out behaviors they’ve observed earlier in other family members. What’s new here is the child’s ability to store memories of actions and events in their
mind and then retrieve them for imitation at a later time. It’s fun to watch a two-year-old pretend to cook, shave, sweep the floor, or talk on the telephone. And watching a child tenderly kiss her teddy bear good night or harshly scold her dolls for misbehaving may serve as a poignant reminder that children learn much about how to handle their emotions by observing those around them.

E
ARLY
C
HILDHOOD
(A
GES
F
OUR TO
S
EVEN
)

B
Y AGE
4, children are usually out and about in the world, meeting new friends, spending time in a variety of environments, learning lots of new and exciting things. Along with these experiences come new challenges: School is fun, but teachers soon expect you to be able to sit quietly in groups and pay attention to the matter at hand. You generally know how to get along with friends, but they still make you mad or hurt your feelings sometimes. And now that you’re old enough to comprehend horrors like house fires, wars, burglars, and death, you’ve got to keep from being overwhelmed by fear of such things.

Mastering these challenges requires the ability to regulate your emotions, one of the major developmental tasks kids face in early childhood. By this, I mean children must learn to inhibit inappropriate behavior, focus attention, and organize themselves in the service of an outside goal.

Nowhere are children more likely to develop skills at regulating their emotions than in their relationships with their peers. It’s here that they learn how to communicate clearly, to exchange information, and to clarify their messages if they are not understood. They learn how to take turns in talking and playing. They learn to share. They learn how to find a common ground in their play activities, to have conflicts, and to resolve them. They learn to be understanding of another person’s feelings, wishes, desires.

Because friendship provides such a fertile ground for the emotional development of young children, I encourage parents to ensure that kids get plenty of one-on-one free time with one another. We now know that even a very young child can form strong and lasting attachments to other kids. And we know that these relation
ships should be taken seriously and respected by parents.