Gotta Love John Gottman!!!!

If you look through a lot of my couples books, you will see John Gottman come up a lot. He is wonderful!! For those of you who have never heard of Gottman, he created a "love lab" where he observed couples in conflict and was able to predict within 90+% the likelihood of a divorce based on observations. He then turned this into amazing books about how to make your marriage better. So... I was pleasantly surprised when I picked up another book by him about children called "Raising an Emotionally Intelligent Child".

Emotional Coaching, as he calls it in his book, is about connecting with your child in a way that validates feelings and prevents a lot of meltdowns. It also teaches kids to have better relationships as they get older, because they model what they were taught. How about that???!!!

The steps to emotion coaching are as follows:

1. Become aware of the child's emotion. (That's easy-- she's throwing Cheerios at me because I told her to turn off the TV! Anger, maybe?)



2. Recognize the emotion as an opportunity for intimacy and teaching (First, breathe deeply... there, that's better! Now, tell yourself-- "Wow, she's really mad. How can I help her with her feelings AND let her know I understand where she's coming from?)



3. Listen empathetically, validating the child's feelings (Say, "It's really hard when you can't have what you want, isn't it?")



4. Help the child find words to label the emotion he is having (Say, "I can see you are feeling really angry right now.")



5. Set limits while exploring strategies to solve the problem at hand. ("We have to turn the TV off right now, but can you think about what you could watch later on tonight? I heard the new episode of Victorious is on.")

If you haven't guessed already, this happened just last night at my house! Trapped inside on a rainy day, and finally getting a dry spell, I tortured my child by telling her she needed to go burn some energy outside- right before the new iCarly episode was on. *sigh* But I have to say handling it like above really helped. She felt like I could understand her, and it prevented the meltdown and power struggle that it is SO easy to get into. I also helped her see that this is a short-term problem, and I wasn't tellling her she can never watch TV again (she tends to be a little dramatic).

But back to Gottman... I highly recommend this book, especially if you didn't learn these skills in your Family of Origin. It can help you feel like a better parent and more connected to your child. And make life run more smoothly! Gottman also connects the dots about how people are skilled emotion coaches have better marriages! Gee- who knew a little validation and empathy could help a marriage, right???