There is phenomenally helpful information in this book. Specifically, Gottman describes how parents can be “Emotion Coaches” for their children. His approach is straightforward and, in my opinion, every parent should be a Gottman Emotion Coach. Emotion Coaching is a model for how parents can best respond to a child’s emotions, especially when the child is experiencing intense feelings of anger, sadness, or fear. 

In Gottman’s model, there are five steps in the process of coaching your child through emotionally challenging situations.

1.  Become aware of the child’s emotions.

“Parents who are aware of their own emotions can use their sensitivity to tune in to their children’s feelings. … Being a sensitive, emotionally aware person, however, doesn’t necessarily mean that you’ll always find your child’s feelings easy to understand. Kids often express their emotions indirectly and in ways that adults find puzzling. If we listen carefully, with open hearts, however, we can often de-code messages children unconsciously hide in their interactions, their play, their everyday behavior.” p. 90 Raising an Emotionally Intelligent Child

2.  Recognize the emotion as an opportunity for intimacy and teaching.

“For many parents, recognizing children’s negative emotions as opportunities for .. bonding and teaching comes as a relief. … We can look at our children’s anger as something other than a challenge to our authority. Kid’s fears are no longer evidence of our incompetence as parents. And their sadness doesn’t have to represent just ‘one more blasted thing I’m going to have to fix today.’” p. 93 Raising an Emotionally Intelligent Child

3.  Listen empathically, validating the child’s feelings

“Empathetic listeners … use their imaginations to see the situation from the child’s perspective. They use their words to reflect back, in a soothing, noncritical way, what they are hearing and to help their children label their emotions. But most importantly, they use their hearts to feel what their children are feeling.” p. 94 Raising an Emotionally Intelligent Child

4.  Help the child find words to label the emotion he is having.

“One easy and extremely important step of Emotion Coaching is to help children label their emotions as they are having them. … Providing words in this way can help children transform amorphous, scary, uncomfortable feeling into something definable… Anger, sadness, and fear become experiences everybody has and everybody can handle.” p. 99 Raising an Emotionally Intelligent Child

5.  Set limits while exploring strategies to solve the problem at hand.

“Once you have spent time listening to your child and helping her to label and understand her emotions, you will probably find yourself naturally drawn into a process of problem solving. This process can have as many as five steps, as well: (1) limit setting; (2) identifying goals; (3) thinking of possible solutions; (4) evaluating proposed solutions based on your family’s values; and (5) helping your child choose a solution.” p. 101 Raising an Emotionally Intelligent Child

Raising an Emotionally Intelligent Child stands out as a rarity among parenting books in that it was written by a leading psychological researcher, and is based on the findings of his studies of children and families. In his research, Gottman found that Emotion Coaching in response to a child’s emotions — especially intense experiences of anger, sadness, and fear — had a long term effect on the child’s happiness and success. Specifically, these children had better relationships with their parents, were more capable of regulating their own emotions, were better able to focus their attention and be successful at school, had better friendships and generally related better to others, and were more resilient in the face of disappointment and hardship.

How to be an Emotion Coach is described in chapters 3 and 4 of the book. You only really need to read these two chapters to understand how to become an Emotion Coach for your child. Chapter 1 presents an introduction to Emotion Coaching and a summary of Gottman’s research on the long term benefits of Emotion Coaching Parenting. Chapter 2 provides a self-assessment for parents to see what their current parenting style is. Chapter 5 covers the benefits of using Emotion Coaching for families where parents are divorcing. Chapter 6 discusses the important role of fathers in the family and in the emotion coaching process. Finally, Chapter 7 presents how Emotion Coaching Parenting can be applied depending on the age of the child from infancy through the teenage years.

Chapters 3 & 4 of Raising an Emotionally Intelligent Child on how to Emotion Coach are a must read for any parent. These chapters are a perfect companion to my all time favorite parenting book How to Talk So Kids Will Listen, by Elaine Faber and Elaine Mazlish.