Mental health is not for adults, nor for children. Childhood is a key stage to 'furnish our minds well' and develop without prejudices, taboos, traumas or stereotypes that produce unwanted effects when we are adults.
Emotional intelligence, meditation or mindfulness, are useful tools for our emotional strength and stability in the face of difficulties. If adolescents were not immersed in personality creation processes, they would not have self-esteem problems or be affected by comments or criticism from their peers. But his mental and emotional strength in most cases is not very resistant to these challenges.
The challenge is to eradicate bullying and the victims of the unfortunately famous 'bullying', but one of the objectives must inevitably be as a solution, promoting mental health among children and adolescents to prevent this type of problems and conflicts.
In other words, fighting against bullying involves improving the emotional intelligence of our young people so that they are equipped with tools to channel criticism or frustration in childhood, adolescence or adulthood.
Some recommendations and advice to accompany the learning of emotional intelligence in children and adolescents are:
- Rage, tantrums and anger. Make them aware of the many occasions when anger or rage take over the little ones.
- Recognize emotions. Basic feelings, such as sadness, joy or fear, must be recognized in order to master them.
- Name your feelings. Knowing how to express what they feel is essential because "not only do I know that I'm angry, I know that it's because I don't like this snack."
- Learn to control your emotions. Teach them an alternative after yelling, hitting or crying. For example, if you cry I don't understand what you want, instead of hitting that toy tell me what's going on.
- Other emotions. Detect and know other emotions such as shame, affection or frustration. Know how they are, what and when they usually feel.
- Empathize. Putting yourself in the place of the person she has hit or said something nasty to, 'How will grandma feel if you say that?'
- Communicate. Ask them things that interest them so that they develop their arguments and opinions.
- Listen. In addition to knowing how to express your feelings, it is very important to know how to listen to others' arguments. Active listening is learning from what others tell us. 'Do you think it's OK?'
- Dialogue. The pacts, negotiations or decision-making taking into account your opinion will mark the importance of these.
- Express oneself. Showing their emotions is essential for their development and self-esteem in all aspects of life and it will mark their character so that in the future they can also express themselves and show their opinion normally.
- Channel the negative. Knowing that emotions will be unpleasant on many occasions and you also have to manage them. Some tricks like counting to 10 or dealing with the topic later can be useful resources for a child.
- Socialize. Feeling like a member of a group, family, collective,... helps to empathize with others and to acquire social skills.
- Encourage effort. If we highlight how well done we help their self-esteem, but if we highlight their effort we cause success to be thanks to their achievements, generating greater satisfaction and a culture of effort for the future.
The qualities of a child go through his awareness, his regulation, his motivation, his empathy and his social skills mainly. If you develop and strengthen these basic pillars positively as a child, when you reach adolescence you will have many more tools to easily solve complex situations, and when you become an adult you will be able to manage conflicts or situations in which stress or other parallel agents worsen. contexts for example.
Respect and empathy are great tricks to get the best out of work teams, improve productivity and optimize the management time of any process, so emotional intelligence is not just a short or medium-term investment, nor is it exclusive. from family spheres, also business.
