Book Nook - The Emotionally Intelligent Child

As the day-to-day effects of the pandemic ease, our children have been left with having to play catch up, learning the social tools and skills that parents of young children took for granted just 3 short years ago. To help them, parents need a new toolbox to foster their child’s emotional intelligence—an essential character trait for children to succeed in our fast-paced, social society.

Currently, parents are in a more challenging position than ever, whether they be first-timers or those that have brought up children prior to the pandemic's dramatic shifts and changes. More and more parents work from home and there’s no break from the demands of parenting to working. This can be exhausting!

Parenting takes serious patience and calm that can be hard to find today. A growing number of worries, such as climate change, the shift in global politics, inflation, and the constantly changing landscape of COVID-19 have caused a significant rise in anxiety levels. Where can parents find tools to support their child’s social and emotional learning and healthy development to meet today’s challenges? Child development experts, Rachael Katz and Helen Hadani, set out to address this in their new book, The Emotionally Intelligent Child.

This innovative approach breaks the mold on parenting. Katz and Hadani share relevant research on social and emotional awareness to help parents understand how their child’s mind is developing. They also provide powerful tips on how to help children build emotional intelligence to navigate the conditions of our times.

Parents will learn to shift their thinking from the adult viewpoint to a child’s so they can discover how to scaffold and support their child’s social and emotional learning and ensure that their child learns prosocial behavior, impulse control, and perspective taking. This shift in viewpoint is a total game-changer and will help parents to gain more patience, respond less reactively, and cultivate joy together as a family.

About the Authors:

Rachael Katz, MS, Ed., teaches social and emotional learning skills to parents and children. With more than twenty-five years of teaching experience, she is the former head of the Discovery School at the Bay Area Discovery Museum, and head of social and emotional learning for Early Years at Dulwich College Beijing.

Helen Shwe Hadani, Ph.D., is currently a fellow at the Brookings Institution where she conducts policy-focused research on the benefits of playful learning in both formal and informal contexts. She is the former director of research at the Bay Area Discovery Museum.