Emotional Intelligence develops in many stages, starting with growth beyond the subconscious mind. For example, babies begin by having emotions that make them cry or relax, before they even learn to smile. By the time they reach the terrible two's, they are learning that life is filled with desires and barriers. They don't yet have the emotional awareness to overcome all barriers, so it results in dramatic meltdowns. This is where learning begins.
To get from there to emotional intelligence, there are many layers of growth. Along the way, most people inherently absorb the ability and skills to navigate life. For many the learning process is not natural - such as with neurodiversity. Others live in situations that passes on negative learning such as through abuse or neglect.
Not all abuse or neglect is intentional. It's the age old story of a child permanently left with a babysitter. The child who is raised by a single parent with long term depression. The child who is constantly bullied in a larger family, while parents are busy being gown up. Parents themselves still living with the effects of trauma can inadvertently pass on emotional learning such as fear and avoidance. What matters most is learning to improve life going forwards.
During the terrible two's children quickly bounce back. They magnificently fail forward without doubting their ability to keep growing and learning. That is when learning is natural, progressive, and filled with hope. They are learning some forms of self-awareness. at this stage. What they want, what they like, and what happens when they can't get it.
By the time they reach teenage years, their emotional development has been through many stages of growth, yet these five steps are consistent throughout. As a parent or teacher, understanding this process, helps you support them.
With the right circumstances and mentality, teenagers can display high levels of emotional intelligence. displaying this levels across all aspects of life, is rare. Some are great with family, but a menace behind a steering wheel. Some adults are emotionally intelligent at work but not around family, and so on. That's why the rest of these steps are crucial to every aspect of life - including parenting.
Daniel Goleman describes five levels of emotional intelligence that are a natural progression of learning. These are all stages that can be learned from childhood, while for many adults, this is still a gap in their emotional learning. The stages are:
1. Self-Awareness
2. Managing Emotions
3. Empathy
4. Social Skills
5. Motivation
Over the next couple of years they learn more self-awareness. How they move, speak, interact, ask by saying please and thank you, and more. They learn who they trust and like, or what their favourite T.V. program is.
As teenagers, every situation comes with a new sense of self-awareness. What they bring to a situation, and what they can get from it. Who they are and who they like. How they behave, and how it impacts others. The list goes on.
Developing past the terrible two's, children will learn to lie, deny, rationalise and negotiate as part of their learning. This is about 'The Self' and what they want. It creates important progress in learning self awareness.
How these stages are responded to by parents and teachers, will affect how they develop emotionally. Reward them for lies and they will continue to do lie. Reprimand them too much and they may live in fear or hold back crucial information.
If a child or teenager is guided to do the right thing, they will learn and grow. by teaching them how to see the other person's point of view, and to understand how their own actions and reactions impact other people, they will learn empathy. This begins to transfers forward into empathy and understanding. they recognise that their self awareness must co-exist with that of others.
The skill of Empathy is more challenging for many. If they don't inherently learn this, then Social Skills become a little more challenging as a result. On the flip side, children with ample empathy, struggle socially to get long with children who have little to no empathy. This can often be ovserved as the anxious child vs the playground bullies.
By the time children are about 9 or 10 years old, they are more aware of their own body physically, their own internal feelings and emotions, and those of the people around them. They are even aware to some degree of the emotions in news, that affect the nations outside their own little world. This is all relevant to understanding empathy - not to be confused with sympathy.
Children and teens progressively become aware of a past, present and a future, and how that impacts feelings. They understand that memories can impact the present, creating excitement, anxiety, and fear. Some can ask rational questions to support friends, even offer sensible debate and suggestions on some levels according to their own knowledge and environment.
Some teenagers still struggle with self-awareness and cannot offer empathy. This is a potential sign of some unaddressed issues, that if not handled appropriately, can impact them for many years to come.
High school has the biggest growth impact on social skills, being the key focus from getting on the bus to greeting friends, or avoiding bullies and not getting called out by their least favourite teacher. Every school days becomes and emotional minefield, then home can add more pressure with homework, chores, and noisy siblings.
Teenagers frequently find their social skills challenged and overwhelming. It can hold back their education when they feel rejected, lonely or unworthy. In today's world this applies in person plus the online world of social media.
At every step of teenage life, they are learning new situations, new emotions, new challenges, and the support they receive, has an equally vast impact on how they learn to manage their own emotions. Not everyone knows how to navigate each new social situation. The next trend, being ousted, rejected, unrequited crush, failed exams, college refusals and more.
At every stage, communication is key. Whey they are support through the five step technique, life becomes a little easier and progress a little more hopeful. They need a little empathy too. When all this is in place, it transfers forward to them finding motivation within themselves rather then just doing what is expected.
Most teenagers can naturally motivate themselves and achieve their needs, once they have the previous steps in place. For some teens, motivation happens in early teens when they have been raised in an emotionally intelligent environment. For others they may reach their 20's and even 30's before obtaining even sufficient emotional skills to find motivation. These are the individuals who still struggle with social skills or empathy, affecting further education, employment, friendships, and relationships.
When motivation is not achieved, this is the time to start revisiting the previous stages and find out what is missing. What challenge is holding them back from motivation? Until they find this and resolve it, they will continue to struggle. Many will blunder through life unnoticed, but not truly happy. Many will be successful but always regret some choices along the way.
Teenagers who reached motivation level before going on to further education, are more likely to have higher grades, achieve higher pay levels, have wider friendship circles, or networks, and have a life they are happy with.
When children have all these steps in place, with great family support, and good social skills, they want to learn. They do well in school and excel at life naturally. This process repeats and repeats for every stage of life they go through. New situation, new awareness, new emotions and so on, finding motivation and success.
For others, the process of navigating these five steps is a lifelong CHALLENGE. The steps may come and go, with burst of enthusiasm followed by a world that falls apart at every hurdle. In a perfect world, every child should learn this before their teens. In reality, many adults are still discovering this, and suffer with stress, anxiety, depression, fear of failure, low self-esteem and more.
Teenagers who reach this stage early enough, are more likely to become leaders, managers, teachers, doctors, lawyers and more. Some may choose to go with more menial roles, but they do so with self-awareness that it was a choice, not a lack of choice. They are usually happy with their choice and more likely to stick with it as their chosen career.
There has been a negative history of people who have focused on emotion solutions incorrectly. From mental institutions to prisons and wars, there has been much mismanagement of emotional failure for centuries.
Today the world mostly accepts that emotions can be improved with gentle support, education, and rehabilitation. Many courses and therapies implement positive thinking, affirmations, meditation, mindfulness and more.
This all goes hand in hand with understanding emotions but there is still something missing for many. The ability to truly understand their four core emotions - Their emotional cycle.
For those with different influences such as strict cultural biases, anxious or angry parents, gang related culture, bullying at school and much more - these can be difficult circumstances for learning emotional awareness. Instead they learn emotional survival and self preservation.
These people's learning is over-ridden by negative experiences, coping strategies, barriers, bad habits, addictions, and destroy their chances at passing on emotional awareness skills to the next generations. So how can we help them break the cycle?
Today more than ever, we have excellent educational systems to teach children a wide variety of topics, yet more teenage mental health issues than ever. Why? Because the system does not teach them Emotional Awareness as a curriculum topic.
Point to ponder: We can go weeks without food, days without water, and minutes without air, but we can barely go seconds without emotions. So why is this not taught in schools?
The answer is simple - emotions cannot be seen. There has never been a constructive strategy for learning Emotional Awareness - till now.
My own son was depressed and suicidal. |He was unable to understand the emotional overwhelm that drove his behaviour. As a young adult, I developed a way to teach him. I created diagrams and strategies as I mentored him. It was so successful, in 2017 I gave a TEDx Talk and in 2020 I published the book. This is the foundation for all learning related to emotional intelligence at every level - find out more below.
View the Brain Unchained Synopsis or Buy Now on Amazon
Brain Unchained is a toolkit for talking. Parenting teenagers, and raising teenagers with Emotional Awareness has become a whole lot more achievable.
