Children who learn at a young age how to recognize their feelings and how to deal with them have a better chance to lead successful lives in many aspects (relationships, effectiveness, health, quality of life). Young people with high EQ earn higher grades, stay in school, and make healthier choices. In a trusted environment where emotions are talked about openly, most kids will speak freely about their feelings and are quick to have empathy for their peers. When you teach kids emotional intelligence, you teach them the most essential skills for their success in life, research has shown.

Dr. Marc Brackett, the Director of the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence, has developed the RULER program for schools. RULER is an acronym that stands for Recognizing emotions in self and others, Understanding the causes and consequences of emotions, Labeling emotions accurately, Expressing emotions appropriately and Regulating emotions effectively.

The program has been shown to boost student’s emotional intelligence and social skills, productivity, academic performance, leadership skills and attention, while reducing anxiety, depression and instances of bullying between students. RULER creates an all-around positive environment for both students and teachers, with less burnout on both ends.  

Here are some guidelines for parents to help their children develop a healthy emotional intelligence:

• Acknowledge your child’s perspective and empathize

Even if you can’t “do anything” about your child’s upsets, empathize. Just being understood helps humans let go of troubling emotions. If your child’s upset seems out of proportion to the situation, remember that we all store up emotions and then let ourselves experience them once we find a safe haven. The same happens in child-parent interactions.

Accept your child’s emotions, rather than denying or minimizing them, which gives children the message that some feelings are shameful or unacceptable. Empathizing doesn’t mean you agree, just that you see the problem from his side, too. He may have to do what you say, but he’s entitled to his own perspective.

Disapproving of your child’s fear or anger won’t stop him/her from having those feelings, but it may well force them to repress such feelings. Unfortunately, repressed feelings don’t fade away, as feelings freely expressed. They are trapped and looking for a way out. Because they aren’t under conscious control, they pop out unmodulated, when a child has nightmares or develops a nervous tic. Instead, parents should teach their kids that all emotions are acceptable but all behaviors are not and some actions must be limited.

• Teach problem solving

Emotions are messages. Teach your child to feel and tolerate them without needing to act on them and once they aren’t in the grip of strong emotion, to problem-solve and act if necessary.

When kids (and adults) feel their emotions are understood and accepted, the feelings lose their charge and begin to dissipate. This leaves an opening for problem solving. Sometimes, kids can do this themselves. Sometimes, they need your help to brainstorm. However, resist the urge to interfere and handle the problem for them unless they ask you to. Show them that you have confidence in their ability to handle it alone.

Emotional intelligence is a skill that your child can develop over time as he or she interacts with you and the world. Teach empathy and model your own emotional intelligence to give your child the best start possible.

The post Why Your Child’s Emotional Intelligence Matters? appeared first on Novak Djokovic Foundation.

Peace may be an abstract notion, but it’s a simple reality – a life with no threat of violence or fear. Peace means people living and coexisting in harmony. It’s something that should exist universally, but unfortunately, humans are prone to retorting to our animalistic instincts of greed and pride, and continue to wreak violence and war across the world.

We’ve gotten to a point in our society that we celebrate events like Memorial Day and Remembrance Day, as though they were joyous occasions we should pride ourselves in. We forget the millions of innocents who died, the millions of sons and daughters that never returned home to their parents, the huge economic wreck that resulted. We continue to celebrate this day as though it were a birthday. We celebrate our successes and victories. But in what way does any way result in victory? How is it a win if such huge losses were suffered?

Copyright: Alena Ozerova

Novak Djokovic’s Story

We particularly seem to become oblivious to the effects of war on civilians, whether those be children or adults, who become stuck in the midst of a conflict that wreaks damages on their mentality and often times health. It’s not easy to overcome experiences like this, war leaves a toll so severe some may never recover, but those who do, have a story and experience that will shape their life.

Novak Djokovic, a world-renowned tennis player and athlete, has a history that is all too common nowadays, having grown up in the midst of war and conflict, but his success is proof that even the greatest adversities can be overcome. Djokovic spent much of his childhood coping with the threat of attacks of missiles and bombs, as do many children in the Middle East today, but found solace in playing and practicing tennis. By fuelling his energy into sport, Djokovic found an escape, and this escape in turn would completely change his life, and the lives of many others, as he continues to inspire people, and children, from around the world to pursue their passions relentlessly.

Novak visiting School of Life in Sirca

How Sports Can Help

Sport is not about winning, it’s about being part of something great, said Djokovic.

Djokovic’s war-torn background and his capacity to rise above the adversities speaks to the importance of sport. Sports give us the opportunity to channel our energy and emotions into an activity that is both positive and beneficial. Sport unites us, rather than divides us, and teaches us important traits surrounding sportsmanship, hard-work, and passion. Sports bring warring nations together, they connect people of all races, religions, nationalities, and provide us with the opportunity to unite as one amidst even the most extreme of circumstances.

The work of organisations like the Novak Djokovic Foundation is to ensure that children’s needs are being met.

Educating Children on Peace

Educating children on peace doesn’t just help them cope with the horrors they may face in life, but it helps in the movement of attaining a world in which the atrocity that is war may never be known. Children are the future of the world. They represent the innocence, purity, and hope that remains, and their resilience, even in the face of the upmost atrocity, teaches us that their lives are to be valued.

And that is what the work of the Novak Djokovic Foundation targets. We cannot expect children who’ve lived their entire lives in fear of losing their lives and their families from a missile attack to develop into psychologically sound and functioning members of society. Childhood is the time of ultimate mental development, hence the importance of teaching children the importance of peace at a young age.

Copyright: Oksana Kuzmina

We notice as early as 6 months that children are sleeping a little better, eating a little better, their pre-language starts to develop and they seem connected in a trusting way with people around them. Those are traits that eventually turn into an appetite for peace, said Kyle Pruett, profesor of Child Psychiatry at Yale University

The Novak Djokovic Foundation works to encourage the implementation of programs targeting children in warzones and war-torn countries, because the organisation and its leaders are well aware of the toll war and conflict can take on a child’s mind, hence the necessity to maintain their purity and innocence and channel their knowledge into that of peace not of violence.

Children who understand the necessity of peace in a society ridden with violence and war, will grow to appreciate it, and will hopefully aspire to work hard to demolish all violence and war in the world, rather than being drawn into the cycle of war and suffering.

The post Long-Term Effects of Integrating Peace Education into ECE appeared first on Novak Djokovic Foundation.

Identifying great leaders is a very important yet extremely difficult task. When a country is experiencing a recession, who is the best candidate for president? When a company is struggling to make a profit, who should be chosen to lead? If the New England Patriots are down 20 in the championship game, which quarterback has the ability to dig them out?

From the above questions, it is evident that the trouble in identifying great leaders has plagued everyone from our nation’s superdelegates to NFL analysts. Throughout the decision process of electing a leader, scouts or coaches may often say something along the lines of, “this candidate has the intangibles or we are looking for the intangibles.” But what does that really mean? Superbowl winning coach, Brian Billick, explains that, “[the] intangibles are just a euphemism to say that we have no idea what we’re looking for, but we just know it when we see it.”

For the past two decades, many psychologists have embarked on a mission to quantify these so-called intangibles and explore ways to inculcate these unidentified, yet crucial, skills to the leaders of tomorrow; more commonly known as children. The result of years of research has given birth to a concept known as Emotional Intelligence (EQ) – a metric highly correlated with future success and effective leadership. Furthermore, this research has begetted many statistically significant parenting techniques that allow children to increase their EQ before reaching adulthood.

Copyright: KonstantinChristian

By definition, Emotional Intelligence (EQ) is the ability to identify and manage your own emotions and the emotions of others.

It is thought to have three skills:

1. Emotional awareness – the ability to identify your own emotions and those of others
2. The ability to harness emotions and apply them to tasks like thinking and problem solving
3. The ability to manage emotions, including the ability to regulate your own emotions, and the ability to cheer up or calm down another person.

Simply stated, those with greater EQ have better self awareness and confidence. They understand that great achievements in our world are not usually independent feats but the efforts of many.  With the ability to manage their emotions and impulses, they can understand how other members of their team react and feel. TalentSmart has conducted a study with more than a million people and attributed EQ for 58% of a leader’s job performance. They also identified that 90% of the top-performing leaders have high EQs and that people with high EQs make on average $29,000 more per annum than their low EQ counterparts.

For a long time, EQ has been considered to be in the category of intangible skills because active development of EQ had never been a parenting priority. Only 36% of people, tested by TalentSmart, were able to accurately identify their emotions as they happen. So how do we instill emotional intelligence into children?

Copyright: Andrii Oleksiienko

The billion dollar answer is actually quite intuitive. Modeling. Children primarily learn emotional intelligence from their parents via observation. In the early stages of development, kids absorb the behavior of their parents with a keen focus on emotions. How does mom or dad behave in response to strong emotions? How do they react and respond to the emotions of others?

5  Useful Techniques for Increasing the EQ

Below are five useful techniques that parents can use to increase the EQ of their children:

1. Don’t overpraise individual achievement: High fixation on individual achievement actually has an adverse effect on children. This is because the most constructive advances in the world are not a product of individual achievement, but the result of the collective efforts by tens of thousands of people. By overemphasizing a child’s individual achievement, he or she may incorrectly perceive how work gets done.
2. Showing that everyone is human: Parents want to often serve as good role models for kids, but it is important for children to see who they really are. Children need to see vulnerability from their parents and know that their heroes are also prone to making mistakes. If vulnerability is not shown, the child may develop intense guilt from every failure with the incorrect notion that they are the only ones who make mistakes.  
3. Allowing children to experience risk and failure: In the real world, the road to success is paved with failure. Children need to know how to adapt to failures and become increasingly resilient. The best leaders don’t sink from disappointments but learn from their mistakes and are eager to try again.
4. Stand by your word: By staying true to the things that you promise to do, children will develop a strong sense of responsibility. Understanding that you are held accountable for the things you promise to do is one of life’s most important skills; regardless of whether or not you are the leader of a team.
5. Delay gratification: A great leader is patient as he or she understands that the fruits of great work are more often enjoyed in the long-run as opposed to immediately after a task has been completed. Patience is not simply the ability to wait, but how one behaves while waiting.

Copyright: William Perugini

When you provide children with the skills to not only control their emotions, but also relate to others in positive ways, you are giving them the tools to be a great leader. Such children grow up to be passionate about the goals of the team, compassionate about the members of the team, and dispassionate about the obstacles that lie ahead.

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