As a father of 7 children, Jake certainly has his hands full. His kids are between the ages 12 and 17 months. For the kids in grades 3,4,5, and 6 he wonders how he can teach them about emotional intelligence. He also wonders about what to do when his kids are experiencing name calling or cliquish behavior from other kids. How can he create a deeper understanding and empathy in his kids when they deal with this kind of behavior?

Today we talk about the importance of raising kids with emotional intelligence and the two most effective ways to do this. We talk about how to model emotional intelligence and secondly how to value all feelings. As parents we often want to fix things and make our kids happy but actually it's crucial that we let them have their feelings and normalize them. We also talk about teaching kids about why people act the way they do. Starting to shift and widen their thinking when they deal with someone having a bad day creates more empathy which leads to emotional intelligence.

This week on The Parenting Mentor:

• Tangible strategies to deepen your child's emotional intelligence.
• Empowering tools to validate and normalize your kid's feelings.
• Helping children understand why someone might act mean or hurtful.
• Tips for validating and non-judgemental communication and why this creates empathy and understanding.
• Trying not to fix everything as parents in order for our kids to sit with difficult but normal feelings.

"As parents we feel strongly about wanting our kids to be happy all the time. Right, it feels good. When they are happy, we are happy, when they are unhappy, we are unhappy. And so we have to sort of change that from yes I'm going to fix this so you can be happy instead of being disappointed or sad or frustrated or whatever that is, and instead I'm just going to validate that you feel that way." - Sue Groner