People and Feelings-Asset 33

People and Feelings

To create and invest in this next social competency asset, parents and other adults respond to children’s feelings and model positive interactions with others. They help children to express their feelings in appropriate ways and learn to respect the feelings of others. For some adults who haven’t grown up in emotionally expressive households, the first step in this process might be developing their own capacity for empathy (sensitivity to the feelings of others) and a feeling word vocabulary so they can express and experience feeling accurately.

Investment in your child’s people skills start at birth. Children who receive lots of nurturing touch, eye contact and smiles develop trust and feelings of security with other people, starting with their parents. Be sure to give plenty of verbal messages of love and adoration to your children from birth on too.

As your children learn to talk, be sure to pay attention to what they say as well as to how they are feeling when they express themselves (empathy). Using empathy, show them how to express themselves in emotionally appropriate ways, while at the same time teaching them words that express what they are feeling. For example, if you can tell from you child’s facial expression that they are sad about something, say, “You seem to be feeling SAD. Do you want to tell me what you are SAD about?” Or, if your child is really pleased with a painting they have done, you could respond by saying, “You seem to be very HAPPY with your painting. You should feel PROUD of yourself. That is very good work!”

You can make adding to your child’s “feeling word vocabulary” a fun activity when reading magazines, watching movies or television shows. This is made easier with DVDs and prerecorded shows that you can start and stop at will. You can set an objective of paying attention to and discussing how the people you are observing are feeling. As the parent, you can point out people who are expressing emotion and ask you child to say what they think the person is feeling. And then you can share your added perceptions as well, thus teaching the appropriate labels attached to feeling states and reinforcing your child’s perceptions.

The other essential investment in your child’s ability to relate successfully with others comes from observing and experiencing quality interactions between you and other people. For parents, this means being conscious of the fact that your quality of relationship is being downloaded into your child’s perceptions of how to relate to others. Therefore, it is important that parents make it their responsibility to treat others with kindness, respect, love and responsible communication of feelings. Also parents should take it upon themselves to learn how to be assertive (as opposed to being aggressive or passive) and how to communicate compassionately. There are books and workshops available to help parents develop these skills and learn how to pass them on to their children.

If you have any questions or if you would like more ideas on how to help you child learn people skills, please call or email me. And always remember, your children learn more from the way you live than they do from what you tell them they should do.