How to Raise an Emotionally Intelligent Child: What the Research Says

Emotional intelligence — the capacity to recognize,
understand, manage, and effectively use emotions
in oneself and in relationships with others —
is one of the qualities most strongly associated
with life success, relationship quality, and
psychological wellbeing across the lifespan.

Research by psychologist Daniel Goleman,
who popularized the concept in his 1995 book,
and by the researchers whose work preceded
and followed his — including Peter Salovey
and John Mayer, who first formally defined
the construct — finds that emotional intelligence
predicts important life outcomes independently
of cognitive intelligence. The child who can
read a room, manage their own frustration,
empathize with a struggling friend, and
repair a damaged relationship has capacities
that will serve them in every domain of life.

This article covers what emotional intelligence
actually is, how it develops, and what the
research shows parents can specifically do
to build it.

What Emotional Intelligence Actually Is

The formal definition of emotional intelligence,
developed by Peter Salovey at Yale and John Mayer
at the University of New Hampshire, describes
four branches arranged in a hierarchy from
more basic to more complex:

Perceiving emotions. The capacity to
accurately read emotional expressions —
in faces, voices, body language, and
other nonverbal cues — in oneself
and in others. This is the foundation
on which all other emotional intelligence
capacities rest.

Using emotions to facilitate thought.
The capacity to use emotional information
to guide thinking and problem-solving —
to notice, for example, that mild anxiety
improves performance on careful tasks,
or that a positive mood promotes
creative thinking.

Understanding emotions. The capacity
to understand how emotions work —
how they develop, how they change,
how they relate to each other,
and how they influence behavior.
This includes understanding that
emotions have causes, that they
can be mixed and contradictory,
and that they change over time.

Managing emotions. The capacity to
regulate one’s own emotional experience
and expression — to stay with
a difficult emotion when needed,
to shift out of a mood when
appropriate, and to manage emotional
expression in ways that serve
one’s goals and relationships.

These four capacities develop gradually
across childhood and adolescence —
and they develop most powerfully
in relationships with emotionally
attuned caregivers.

How Emotional Intelligence Develops

Research on the development of
emotional intelligence across childhood
finds a consistent developmental sequence:

Infancy and toddlerhood: The foundations
of emotional intelligence are laid
in the earliest relationships. Research
by Daniel Stern on early emotional
attunement and by Allan Schore on
right brain development finds that
the quality of early emotional
communication between infant and
caregiver literally shapes the
neural architecture of emotional
processing. An infant whose emotional
signals are consistently noticed,
responded to, and named is building
the biological foundation of
emotional intelligence.

Early childhood: Between ages three
and six, children develop the capacity
to name basic emotions, to understand
that others have different emotional
experiences from their own, and to
begin connecting emotions to causes
and consequences. Research on emotion
language development finds that the
richness of the emotional vocabulary
children develop in these years is
strongly predicted by how much
parents talk about emotions in
daily life.

Middle childhood: Between ages six
and twelve, children develop more
sophisticated emotional understanding —
including the capacity to understand
mixed emotions, to recognize that
emotions can be hidden, and to
begin regulating emotional expression
in social contexts. Research by
Susan Denham at George Mason University
finds that emotional competence
in middle childhood is one of the
strongest predictors of peer
relationship quality and academic success.

Adolescence: The emotional intelligence
capacities available to adolescents
are sophisticated — but their
deployment is significantly affected
by the still-maturing prefrontal
cortex and by the intense emotional
experience of the adolescent period.
Research on adolescent emotional
development finds that this is
a particularly important window
for explicit emotional intelligence
education and support.

What the Research Shows Builds
Emotional Intelligence

Emotion coaching. Research by John
Gottman at the University of Washington
on what he calls “emotion coaching” —
a specific set of responses to children’s
emotional experiences — is among the
most robust in this area. Gottman’s
longitudinal research found that
children whose parents consistently
noticed, acknowledged, validated,
and helped label their emotions
showed significantly better outcomes
across academic, social, emotional,
and physical health domains.

The five steps of emotion coaching —
awareness, seeing the emotion as
an opportunity, listening, labeling,
and setting limits while problem-solving —
build emotional intelligence through
the repeated experience of having
emotional experience understood
and supported.

Rich emotional vocabulary. Research
on emotional literacy consistently
finds that children who have a
richer emotional vocabulary —
who can distinguish between
frustrated and disappointed,
between nervous and scared,
between proud and relieved —
show better emotional understanding
and better emotional regulation
than those with a more limited
emotional language.

Parents build this vocabulary by
using it themselves — naming their
own emotions specifically and
helping children find specific
words for their experience:
not “you seem upset” but
“you seem really disappointed —
like you were hoping for something
that didn’t happen.”

Empathy modeling and development.
Research on empathy and emotional
intelligence finds that empathy —
the capacity to accurately perceive
and share another person’s emotional
experience — is one of the core
capacities of emotional intelligence
and one of the most powerful
predictors of relationship quality.

Parents build empathy in children
through: directing children’s
attention to others’ emotional
experiences (“look at her face —
how do you think she’s feeling?”);
reading fiction together and
discussing characters’ inner lives;
and modeling genuine empathic
response to others’ difficulties
in daily life.

Emotional self-disclosure by parents.
Research on parental emotional
expression and children’s emotional
development finds that parents
who share their own emotional
experiences — authentically,
age-appropriately, and with
appropriate self-regulation —
raise children with stronger
emotional intelligence than
those who present as emotionally
unavailable or who hide
their emotional experience.

“I’m feeling really frustrated
right now — I’m going to take
a breath before I respond”
is emotional intelligence
education in a single sentence:
it names the emotion,
acknowledges its intensity,
and models a regulatory strategy.

Social problem-solving support.
Research on social cognition
and emotional intelligence finds
that supporting children through
social problem-solving — helping
them think through interpersonal
difficulties, consider others’
perspectives, generate solutions,
and anticipate consequences —
builds the social-emotional
reasoning that is central
to emotional intelligence.

This support looks like asking
rather than telling: “What do
you think is going on for them?
What are your options? What
might happen if you tried that?
What feels most fair?”

Reading fiction. Research on
fiction reading and theory of
mind — including work by
Raymond Mar at York University —
finds that people who read
more fiction show better
capacity for understanding
others’ mental and emotional
states. Fiction provides
a unique opportunity to
inhabit other people’s
inner lives — to experience
the world from a perspective
that is not one’s own —
in ways that build the
perspective-taking at the
heart of emotional intelligence.

Reading to children and discussing
characters’ emotional experiences
is one of the most accessible
and most evidence-supported
emotional intelligence practices available.

What Undermines Emotional Intelligence

Dismissing or minimizing emotions.
Research on emotion dismissing —
responding to children’s emotional
experience with “you’re fine,”
“stop being so sensitive,”
“there’s nothing to cry about” —
consistently produces worse
emotional regulation outcomes
and less emotional competence
than validating responses.

A child whose emotions are
consistently minimized learns
that their emotional experience
is unreliable, excessive,
or unwelcome — which is
the opposite of the
emotional awareness that
emotional intelligence requires.

Modeling poor emotional regulation.
Research on observational learning
and emotional development finds
that children’s emotional
regulation strategies are
significantly shaped by
observing how their parents
manage emotional experience.
A parent who responds to
frustration with rage,
to anxiety with avoidance,
or to sadness with suppression
is demonstrating the emotional
management strategies their
child will learn.

This is not a counsel of
perfection — all parents
have difficult emotional
moments. What matters is
the pattern and the repair:
returning to regulation,
acknowledging the difficulty,
and demonstrating that
emotional experience can
be managed.

Solving emotional problems
for children rather than
supporting children through them.
Research on emotional support
versus emotional rescue finds
that children who consistently
have their emotional difficulties
resolved by parents — who never
have to sit with discomfort,
navigate disappointment, or
work through conflict —
develop less emotional
competence than those who
are supported through
difficulties rather than
protected from them.

The Bottom Line

Emotional intelligence is not
a fixed trait that children
either have or do not have.
It is a set of capacities
that develop through relationship —
through the consistent experience
of having emotional life
noticed, named, validated,
and worked with by a
caring adult.

The parent who names emotions,
who responds to distress
with warmth and curiosity,
who models their own
emotional awareness,
and who helps children
think through the emotional
dimensions of their social world —
that parent is building
emotional intelligence
in the most powerful
way available.

Not through instruction.
Through relationship.

Sources

Salovey, P., & Mayer, J. D. (1990).
Emotional intelligence.
Imagination, Cognition and
Personality, 9(3), 185–211.

Gottman, J. M. (1997).
Raising an Emotionally
Intelligent Child.
Simon & Schuster.

Denham, S. A. (1998).
Emotional Development
in Young Children.
Guilford Press.

Mar, R. A., Oatley, K., &
Peterson, J. B. (2009).
Exploring the link between
reading fiction and empathy.
Communications, 34(4),
407–428.

Goleman, D. (1995).
Emotional Intelligence.
Bantam Books.