What we're reading - November 1, 2019

The Whole-Brain Child - What We’re Reading Now

There is a buzz word going around the business world, one that counsellors have been using for a while now: Emotional Intelligence or EQ.  What is emotional intelligence, and why is the business world interested in it?  Emotional intelligence is the ability to identify your own emotions and be able to manage them, and it also means you are able to identify emotions in others.  Here is the really obvious part – the part that the business world has only just figured out – being able to identify emotions in others means you are better able to connect with them and to lead them.  But why have counsellors been using this phrase for a long time?  Because our emotions can be complex and confusing, and often counsellors work to help their clients understand them.

So if emotional intelligence is so important, why don’t we talk about it with children?  In today’s society, we ask each other ‘how are you?’ and the response is almost always ‘fine’.  Fine is not an emotion; fine does not express anything; fine is a cover-up.  We try to protect our children from our negative emotions most of the time.  The problem with this is that children are the best emotional antennas, they can sense when their parents are not happy.  Not hiding emotions doesn’t mean we dump all our concerns on our children all the worries of being an adult and parent; it does mean that we can share in a controlled way.

Modelling our emotions, expressing them in a controlled and healthy way is the first way our children learn about emotions.  Your child is born, running on instincts and emotions.  Remember that stage when your child only asks ‘why’ over and over again?  That is the indication that the logic side of their brain has begun developing.  This development usually starts around age 3, and it is a fun time for parents; always answering that question of ‘why?’.  The development of the brain in this area does not mean that logic now becomes prevalent or that logic can override emotions.  The part of the brain that allows us to do this doesn’t start developing until the preteen years and doesn’t finish growing until our early twenties.  So now parents aren’t just modelling how to manage our emotions, we must help our children connect those various parts of their brain, and train them how to do this as their brains develop.  THAT IS A TON OF WORK.

Parenting is not easy.  The need to maintain your own control while not hiding your emotions from your children, and help teach our children to be able to do the same is a challenge!  Parents are the bridge builders and the ladder builders of our children’s brains.  This metaphor from Daniel Siegel and Tina Bryson’s book “The Whole-Brain Child” is one of the best I have heard.  The two sides of the brain are mainly responsible for these different aspects, logic and emotion, so we work to build bridges between the left and right sides of the brain.  When our children are young this means we have to be the bridge, connecting with the emotions that are showing through before helping move to that logical solution-finding.  There are different ways to build these bridges, one method suggested in “The Whole Brain-Child” is to “Connect and Redirect”; first you connect with the emotion – instead of telling your child “it’s late go back to bed” empathize with their emotions – and then redirect to a solution, or to finding a solution later (please don’t use the word “but” I’ll talk about that in a different article).

What is a real-life example of how to do this?  Although, I may not always be able to build these bridges here is one example of when I could.  The other day my young child was crying and upset about all the sirens in our neighbourhood, but it was well past his bedtime.  It would have been easy to respond with “it’s fine go to bed”, instead I took a breath (a crucial part of the process at this point as my quiet time was getting eaten up) gave him a hug and said “I know it’s scary to hear that, did you know that they are going to help people?” and talked with him about it for a minute.  After a minute or two of this, I asked him if he knew that none of those sirens were coming to our house and he was able to nod and say ‘yes’.  These steps allowed him to calm, and I was able to get him to go back to bed and go to sleep.

Graham Caesar is a Registered Clinical Counsellor and is passionate about helping parents navigate their role as parents, especially around children who have ADHD.  Learn more about him here, and the workshop that he is presenting on helping your child manage their anxiety by contacting Graham through his website.