Nadia Buckus (Certified Life Coach and Counsellor)
Having Good Grades Is Not The Only Way A Child Will Excel In Life. With matric results looming over us soon we should not put too much pressure on our kids for excellent results.
ALSO SEE: Blog: Choose happiness right now
Their mental health matters more, 80 percent of our success in life is attributed to our emotional intelligence, while IQ only takes up 20 percent.
In a school setting, for example, I always stress that having good grades and even earning awards and distinctions are not an accurate predictor of whether or not you’re going to be successful in life.
Usually, academic achievers are sticklers for rules and follow their teachers to a T, but that is not always advantageous when they become adults.
“In general, life is messy,” There are no rules in life. Most of the time those students who excel in life (in the real world) are creative, innovative, and who know how to think outside the box.
Five ways to help your child:
1.You help your child sort through his or her feelings
As a parent, you can address this by being gentle and understanding. Avoid dictating your child’s emotions and instead allow them to open up and talk about how they are feeling.
It’s important to establish a safe environment where they can trust you with their thoughts. Teach kids that they cannot always choose what emotions to feel, but they have a choice of what to do with it.
2.You set boundaries on behaviours’, not emotions
Setting boundaries will help kids take control of their emotions as they experience them. Kids are impulsive by nature, and when left unchecked, they can become impulsive adults.
So, it’s okay to step in if they behave inappropriately, like when they turn physical and violent to others and themselves. If results are bad some kids might look at suicide as their end result. So parents don’t ignore the signs.
3.You recognize and praise their efforts to remain in control
The third domain of emotional intelligence is motivating oneself. This is where you can use the motivational aspect of delayed gratification and teaching your kids impulse control.
Acknowledging efforts more than the results is important in nurturing a child’s emotional intelligence. Always remind your kids that perseverance and the hard work they put into achieving a goal has more weight than the achievement itself.
4.You teach them empathy
It’s important to teach them about empathy. When your child talks about an event that happened to someone else in school, ask them to imagine how that person felt at the time.
Learning how to relate to others through verbal or non-verbal clues helps a person be more kind, considerate, and mindful of their actions.
5.You encourage conversation and build relationships
At home, encourage open communication with your kids so that they’re able to learn how to connect with other people, exchange ideas, and develop a sense of respect as a way of nurturing their emotional intelligence.
As children are exposed to more perspectives, they become more flexible in their thinking, making them more accepting and tolerant of others and themselves.
SEE THIS: BLOG: How to deal with emotional pain
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