May 14, 2025 • 35 mins
Child psychologist and parent coach Dr. Ann-Louise Lockhart returns to the podcast to help us understand emotional intelligence—what it is, why it matters, and how we can nurture it in our kids from an early age. In this powerful and practical conversation, Carol and Dr. Lockhart discuss:
Whether your child is melting down over the wrong color cup or you’re navigating teen turbulence, this episode is full of tools, insights, and encouragement to help you raise emotionally strong, resilient kids.
Follow Ground Control Parenting:
📱 Instagram, TikTok & Facebook: @GroundControlParenting
💼 LinkedIn: Carol Sutton Lewis
🌐 Website: GroundControlParenting.com
- The 5 key components of emotional intelligence (EQ)
- How EQ supports resilience in a world that increasingly demands it
- Why today's kids struggle more with bouncing back—and how parents may unintentionally be contributing to this struggle
- What Black parents need to consider as they raise confident, emotionally attuned children in a world that can often misread them
- How to model emotional intelligence even when you're having an off day
- The truth about failure, effort, and why “trying” is everything
Whether your child is melting down over the wrong color cup or you’re navigating teen turbulence, this episode is full of tools, insights, and encouragement to help you raise emotionally strong, resilient kids.
Follow Ground Control Parenting:
📱 Instagram, TikTok & Facebook: @GroundControlParenting
💼 LinkedIn: Carol Sutton Lewis
🌐 Website: GroundControlParenting.com
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:05):
Hello, and welcome to Ground Control Parenting, a blog and
now a podcast creative for parents raising black and brown children.
I'm the creator and your host, Carol Sutton Lewis. In
this podcast series, I talk with some really interesting people
about the job and the joy of parenting. Today, we're
talking about raising emotionally intelligent and resilient kids. We've heard
(00:25):
a lot recently about emotional intelligence or EQ, and that
it's an important social skill for children to have. But
what is EQ and how do we help our children
develop it? And how does it relate to how they
develop resilience, which is another important life skill. To help
us with these questions, I'm so excited to welcome back
the wonderful parenting expert, Doctor Anne Louise Lockhart. Doctor Lockhart
(00:48):
is a pediatric psychologist, parent coach, and national speaker with
over twenty years of experience. She founded a New Day
Pediatric Psychology in San Antonio, Texas to specialize in helping
parents understand stand and navigate the challenges of raising toddlers
through teens. She's passionate about empowering parents with practical strategies
(01:08):
to support their children's development, manage behavior, and foster strong
emotional connections. She is the mother of two, so she
brings both professional expertise and personal experience to her work.
Doc Lockhart brought her wonderful parenting expertise to the podcast
last season, and I'm so happy to have her back
for this conversation. Welcome back to Ground Control Parenting, Doctor Lockhart.
Speaker 2 (01:28):
Thanks for having me back, Carol.
Speaker 1 (01:30):
It's great to have you back. I'm really eager to
have your guidance on how we can help our children
build these important skills. So let's get started, and I
will start by asking you what exactly is emotional intelligence
and how does it help kids build resilience, especially in
today's world where we really need resilience.
Speaker 2 (01:50):
Yes, absolutely so. Emotional intelligence is called EQ because it's
the emotional quotient, which is from IQ, which is their intelligence.
Because emotional intelligence is a type of intelligence, right, because
you have book smarts, you have emotional smarts, you have
all kinds of smarts. So it's the ability to recognize, understand, manage,
(02:10):
and express emotions, both in yourself and in others. So
it plays a huge role in decision making, in relationships,
in your overall well being. People who are more emotional
intelligent are more satisfied in life and with their relationships.
So unlike IQ, which is your intelligence just general intelligence,
(02:31):
which measures cognitive ability or academic ability as well, your
emotional intelligence or EQ focuses on emotional and social skills,
and so it helps more with your success in life.
So people when they think about like the components of it,
they usually measure self awareness, self regulation, motivation, empathy, and
(02:57):
social skills. So those are usually the five of emotional intelligence.
And it's important because, like I mentioned, it helps with
your relationships, with handling social situations, handling stress because more
emotionally intelligent people can handle stress better because you're like,
oh wow, this is a stressful day, I'm going to
(03:17):
take a nap, or is a stressful day, I'm going
to go for a run. Like they learn to deal
and cope with things. And for parents, it really helps
because it improves It improves your communication with your kids.
It leads to health your communication with them because you
understand that this chaos that's happening isn't what I'm looking at,
it's what's going on behind it. So you have more
(03:38):
intelligence when it comes to that kind of stuff. So
basically it's not something that we necessarily have. It's something
that we learn. So just because your kid is struggling
or you as a grown up is struggling, many people
struggle with it as an adult because they never learned it.
It wasn't modeled for them, They never were taught. So
(03:59):
you have kids and you're automatically expected to be this
mature grown up who knows how to have emotional intelligence.
But if it was never modeled for you and you
never got to practice it, then yeah, maybe that's why
you're raging all the time because that's your go to,
that's your default. So it's not fixed, and that's the
good news. It can be changed and you can grow
(04:19):
it with practice, with self reflection, with self monitoring, and
just learning strategies.
Speaker 1 (04:25):
So yeah, so at what age do children begin to
develop it or have the potential to develop it? And
how can parents nurture it from the very beginning.
Speaker 2 (04:35):
That's a good question. So it depends because it would
depend on if do you have this kid who's neurotypical
and so they're kind of gaining from their environment and
kind of learning quickly and easily, And it also depends
on several different milestones. So, for example, Emotional intelligence can
develop at a very young age, and it evolves over
(04:57):
time as they grow because they're learning from their environment
all the time. So you might look at a child
in early childhood between two to five and around age two,
they start to develop awareness of emotions like sadness or anger,
or happiness or surprise disappointment, and they may not fully
understand what it is they're feeling or be able to
(05:18):
put it into words, but they start to express them.
Hence the Terrible twos, threes, and fours. They're showing it
because when people are like, oh, you should know better, well,
they don't know better because these emotions are new for
the first time. That's why they love the movie Inside
Out and how they portray this because these emotions show
up and now they have this feeling and I don't
(05:40):
know what to do with this because this is brand new.
It's a skill. So they might cry when they feel
upset at age four, or maybe they say I'm mad,
but maybe they're really disappointed. They don't know the difference
between the two. They just feel mad, and so then
the parent can then help, Oh, I know you felt
very disappointed when we didn't have the red cup and
(06:01):
you really wanted that, and I gave you the blue cup,
you know. So it's about kind of mirroring that. And
so as they get older, they're really learning how to regulate,
how to express themselves, how to see different perspectives, how
to communicate that. It's a hard process and it's a
very complicated process. And if you have a kid who
(06:22):
is dysregulated in some way because they are neurodivergent in
some way, they're immature because all kids are then, and
you don't know how to teach that, and you get
easily frustrated. Then it can actually hurt the process of
developing more emotional intelligence because it's not being model and
taught properly. Because it's hard. It's hard when your kid
(06:43):
is going through these phases and you have to keep
calm like that is hard.
Speaker 1 (06:49):
You know. I'm reminded of a story and it will
kill me for telling it, But when one of my
sons was young, he cried a lot. It took me
a while to discover anger brought tears as much as
sadness for tears. His response to being angry was to cry.
When I figured that out, it was easier for me
to not get annoyed with him crying, but it was
(07:12):
really instructive for me to understand that he demonstrated anger
through tears, so that when he was crying, I could
not concern myself with the crying part, but concern myself
with what was the underlying I mean, was he sad?
Was he angry? You know? And then sort of I
could act accordingly and interestingly he is as an adult,
he has a great deal of emotional intelligence, which serves
(07:34):
him very well in his work in his life. I mean,
but when children are young and they have you said,
so many things going on in them at the same
time that they can't really they're too young to be
able and not mature enough to be able to identify
what is making them feel this way. As a parent,
sometimes it's hard to deal with all those feelings, but
it's important because ultimately their ability to regulate them and
(07:56):
use them comes in handy.
Speaker 2 (07:58):
Right, And that way, they're not being punished for feeling
a feeling that is confusing and new to them, because
again they've never experienced many of those or they have
never learned how to deal with them when they do
experience them. And that's just the clear cut emotions. We're
not even mentioning the ones that are confusing, like the
ambivalence where you feel both sad and angry, you know,
(08:21):
or you feel both satisfied and scared, you know, Like
how do you make sense of things that seem to
clash with one another? And that can be very confusing.
Speaker 1 (08:31):
And I imagine for parents. As a parent, you have
to understand for how you deal with emotions because a
lot of people are afraid of the intensity of emotions,
and it's easy if your child is being very emotional
to sort of shut it down because you don't want
to deal with that. I think it's understanding the importance
of developing emotional intelligence and that in so doing, you
(08:52):
have to deal with emotions and help your children deal
with emotions. And I think parents should try to put
their own reticence to deal with emotions aside because they
can really help their children. And importantly, this emotional intelligence
can help make our children more resilient. And I want
to talk to you about resilience because it seems now
(09:14):
and this is a question to you, why does it
seem that children and young people are having such a
tough time with resilience? Now there's a child psychologist who's
an executive at a health services business who says that
gen Z and that's ages thirteen to twenty eight now
are the loneliest, least resilient demographic alive today. Now, that
may be an exaggeration, but it just seems that children
(09:38):
seem more fragile. Is that just because I'm older, or
or are you finding this in your practice? That our
ability to help our young people sort of fend off
challenges and things that disturb them but they can get
over it just seems that it's getting more difficult for
them to do this.
Speaker 2 (09:56):
Yeah, I'm observing that I've noticed that I've been in
practice long enough that I've seen a couple of generations,
seeing millennials as well as gen Z and now gen
Alpha coming after them. And it feels like when I
used to treat patients when I worked in a hospital
setting and I was working at the time with the
(10:17):
next generation, ever I think was more of the millennials.
I found that it was easier to treat even very
complicated diagnoses. It is much harder now and I'm more experienced.
That says a lot. It takes longer to treat very
basic diagnoses. And challenges, and it feels like the clients
(10:39):
are more resistant to treatment. When you look at resilience,
resilience is the ability to bounce back from challenges in
adversity and to keep going despite challenges and how to
cope and how to deal with negative well emotions that
you view as negative and frustration and things that are tough.
And when you look at each generation, there are significant
(11:00):
events that occurred within each generation that built and tore
you down. Right, So you look at silent generation dealing
with World War Two and the Holocaust, and you look
at the Boomers with Vietnam, and then you look at
Gen X that's my generation where we were unsupervised, latch
key kids, had to figure things out for ourselves. And
(11:23):
then you go to the Millennials, like they're the first
ones that started. Half of them got more introduced into
cell phones and tech and more awareness of that. And
then Gen Z is the first generation who has They
came into the world with tech and social media and
smartphones at their disposal. And so there's a lot of
shifts that occur in nine to eleven, like all these
(11:45):
different events that shaped people's view of society and what
they went through so you would expect that people who
went through Jim Crow laws might be more resilient because
of what they had to go through, how they struggled,
versus this gen Z who's like, oh, that's in the past,
racism even exists. Why are you always talking about this stuff? Right, Well,
(12:05):
if you haven't had to go through things that were
hard like your previous generations and everything was plowed for you,
which is why they call a lot of like helicopter
parenting and lawnmower parenting because you're kind of hovering and
paving the way because you don't want your kids to
go through what you went through. So if you're always
paving the way, making everything easy, rescuing them, lifting them
(12:27):
out out of trouble, and providing air support, then how
are they supposed to ever build resilience When do they
ever have adversity that they have to work through? And
so I think one reason why a lot of our
kids nowadays don't have resilience is because of the type
of parenting that is being given. Because many of the
millennial and Gen X parents want to not have their
(12:48):
kids struggle like they did and not have the issues
where maybe their parents never hurt when they were struggling,
when they were going through challenges, and that they couldn't
talk about it and you just sweep it under the rug.
Very popular with brown and black kids, right, they're families.
We don't talk about problems.
Speaker 1 (13:05):
Right, right, right, Suck it up, suck it up.
Speaker 2 (13:07):
So then you go the extra extreme and you talk
about everything. And then anytime some kid picks on your
kid and you're like, no, you're going to pull you
out of this school, you know, and they never learn
to deal with things. And so I think then parenting
has swung all the way on the other side for
many people. Why people go after things like gentle and
conscious parenting because it feels too soft compared to the
(13:28):
authoritarian stuff that a lot of us got. So I
think that's a big, big.
Speaker 1 (13:32):
Part of it.
Speaker 2 (13:33):
I think another big part is this idea of everybody
gets a trophy and everybody is special, nobody loses, And
I think that's a big one, so that you don't
learn that, no, you lost, like they're winners and losers.
You lost the game, like that's it, Like you don't
get fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth place, like just you lost, right.
Speaker 1 (13:55):
We'll be right back after these messages welcome back for
the show. And the value of losing is that you
understand what you could do differently the next time. I mean,
the value of sports is that you get another show. Absolutely,
you can lose and then you can win, and the
win is sweeter because you figured out what you did
differently than when you lost.
Speaker 2 (14:15):
Right, And even you fail a test, you don't get three,
four or five chances. So many schools are telling their
teachers not to fail their kids because it looks bad
on their metrics. So kids then are given opportunities to
pass to the next unit, get a good grade on
something they never studied for, and they don't learn that yeah,
there is failure, or that they have to get all a's,
(14:36):
so they don't know how to deal with it when
they do poorly. So I think there's more academic pressure
as well, and there's a lot of overscheduling, and kids
are way too busy and they don't know how to
just be They don't know how to just be at
home and read a book, how to play outside, how
to hang out with their friends and just fill the
(14:56):
time with things rather than always being entertained. And I
think a lot of those things they're not learning how
to cope. They're not learning. And I think the last
thing that I'll mention too is the I don't believe
social media is bad. I believe excessive or too early
of an exposure is not good. And a lot of
(15:17):
kids have way too much time on social media and online,
and it's a very fake world. So they're doing a
lot of comparison, which leads to eating disordered behaviors, which
leads to depression, anxiety, envy, suicidality, like all of these
things that happen because it's fake and they're getting introduced
to that world way too soon and comparing their lives
(15:38):
to others and then think that's reality. And so I
think there's just a lot of things that have impacted them.
And I believe these digital natives they have this need
to constantly be connected and feel relevant. And sometimes you're
not the main character, like it's okay, that's your background.
Speaker 1 (15:57):
Sometimes you can be off center. You don't have to
be centered exactly. You know. It's so interesting because both
you and I approach parenting from helping the parents. I mean,
we want to help the children ultimately, but we really
want to help the parents. And I think it's important,
and parents are listening. This is not an effort to
sort of make you feel badly about all the things
that you're not doing well. It's all. We understand that
(16:20):
so much of parenting comes from the very good place
of wanting to help your children. Depending on how you
were raised, you want to help them the same way
or differently. But you can unintentionally be sapping your children's
ability to be resilient by doing things that you ordinarily
would think were good things to do. I mean, there
was an article just recently in the Wall Street Journal,
(16:42):
and the title pretty much says it all. It's titled,
parents who hire elite tutors are setting their kids up
for failure. I mean, that pretty much says it all.
But it's an article about I'm here in New York City,
and that the article is based in New York City,
and that parents are hiring expensive tutors who go beyond
trying to help a child learn something about a course
they don't understand, but they write papers for them, they
(17:03):
write you know, they take tests for them, I mean,
or help them with tests. And clearly no parents sets out,
or few parents set out to say I'm going to
gain the system and have a grown person do my
child's work. I mean, because nobody would think that that
was a good thing to do. But parents, as you
focus on the things you want for your child. You know,
(17:23):
you want your child to do well in school. You
want them to go to a college, a good college.
You want them to get all the education they can get,
the best of the best, because parents want that for
their children. Generally, you really do have to think about
each step that you're taking on this road. If you
are hiring, tutors are important help. I mean, if your
child doesn't understand something, if it's moving too quickly in
the classroom, a tutor can make all the difference. They
(17:45):
can help your childl to break through. The stridency of
this title of this article is not something I'm agreeing with,
but I know, certainly when my children were in school,
and this article indicates is still going on, that parents
kind of lose sight of if there's someone that helping
their child, they kind of lose sight of the degree
to which they're helping their children. And parents, I would
(18:05):
just encourage you to think a little bit more about
I mean, we want to help them, but try to
think of the other side of helping them. I mean
it's you know, same with social media. Parents that are
personally very much engaged in social media themselves and have
put their children on it since their children are very little,
don't always think about how it impacts their children independent
(18:28):
of when their children start their own social media, how
soon they can start it, and how I mean, if
you're putting your kid on there from day one, from
the ultrasound picture to the birth to the first party,
and I mean even without trying, you may be signaling
to your child that this world of social media is
important and one that they really need to focus on.
And doing that can really sap resilience because you're preoccupied
(18:52):
with this alternative universe.
Speaker 2 (18:54):
So and the validation that you constantly need external validation
to say that I'm important because I've got likes or
follows or compliments. It's a bad message to send because
they're putting their faith in the wrong place and instead
of their internal state.
Speaker 1 (19:10):
Yeah, so both of us are saying that parents have
to be very careful. Yeah, I think people can accidentally
sap their kids resilience. They really think they're helping, They
think that they are giving them opportunities based on what
they've been able to do, and it's really important that.
I mean, goodness knows, my children, who are all grown now,
tell me that I stepped over that line every once
(19:32):
in a while when they were in school, but to
their credit, they would call me out on it when
I did. They would stop me from trying to help them,
because I mean, they understood that if somebody else is
doing work for you, then it kind of sends a
signal that you don't think your child is capable of
doing it themselves, which doesn't help their self esteem. I
really want to ask you about this in terms of
(19:53):
building resilience in terms of black parents, and we've got
a challenge because we have the responsibility of building up
our children's confidence, but we also have to make sure
that they understand and are aware that there're situations where
they could be judged differently and they need a different
kind of confidence and resilience to handle those situations. I mean,
(20:17):
I think about this in terms of police stops or
you want a child that has strong self esteem and
is confident, but we also say you have to comply
with whatever this authority figure says because you have to
under the circumstances So how do you think black parents
can think about sort of this duality of I mean,
we want to build up resilience, but we have to
(20:40):
also give them a sort of different kind of armor.
Speaker 2 (20:46):
Yeah, we certainly do, because the way we parent them
is different. And I think it's important to have a
discussion with our kids about that first, because different kids
have different ex experiences. Right, We're not a monolith, And
it depends on the age, depends on the parents' generation,
it depends on their environment, where they live, what kind
(21:07):
of city they're in. There's so many different factors, and
so I think it's first about being curious about what
your kid's experience is, Like how do they feel. Do
they feel like they buckle under pressure, that they have
too many responsibilities, that they feel like they're always fighting
the system all the time, Like how do they feel
because they might feel very confident and they might feel
(21:30):
like they're they're cool, like they don't need any additional
support and they got it. So I think it's important
to first get their perspective and understanding of where they
are so that way we're not making assumptions. And then
I think the other part of it is really building
resilience in them is encouraging healthy failure so that they
(21:51):
can view failure as a natural part of life and
a chance to learn. I talk to my kids all
the time that most of my growth that has ever
happened in my life has been because of failure. Did
I love it when I was going through it? Absolutely not.
But it has always built character and built more of
a persistence and perseverance and a desire to know what
(22:15):
I did wrong or what I could do differently every
single time. And so really that significantly builds resilience because
you also know that not everything has to work out
for you, and that life is about ups and downs,
and sometimes it's crappy, and sometimes it gets bad and
then sometimes it gets good again. So I think creating
a space, especially for our black and brown children, because
(22:35):
sometimes they feel like they have to man up, or
they feel like they can't be a punk, or they
have to be strong and strong black women, all these
narratives that we hear all the time. Be confident, but
not too confident, you know, And so we want them
to be able to express their emotions without judgment, without
being made fun of, without being mocked or like, you
know what, do you have to be sad about you
(22:56):
should be grateful after everything that our people went through. Well,
you can be grateful and sad, you know. So I
think it's about supporting their feelings in very healthy ways
so that way they can express how they're feeling without
being torn down. Like we need to build them up
and then model that resilience. That there are times when
you are pushing through and you're getting the thing done,
(23:18):
and other times that you take a break, that you
take a nap, you take a half day off from work,
that you go on that vacation, that you hang out
with your friends, and you encourage them to do that too,
that sometimes maybe they need a mental health day from school. Sometimes,
you know, if there's something going on and there's a
really tough discussion or event going on in the media
where black and brown people are being highlighted in some
(23:39):
way and the discussions are getting too heavy, giving them
space to be able to discuss those things, but also
helping them know to cope, but also not avoiding, and
that's a hard balance. Sometimes something that looks like coping
is actually avoidance. So we want to do that and
be able to introduce them to not being overscheduled, not
being the center of attention all the time, and learning
(24:03):
healthy coping strategies for themselves.
Speaker 1 (24:05):
You brought up failure, and I think about this a lot,
because certainly, letting our children fail has been in parenting
books and in parenting articles. It's been said that our
children need to understand failure. I've always had a little
bit of trouble with that, But here's how I look
at it. I agree that you can't prop your child up.
(24:27):
You can't. And I do think sports really helps because
there's so many failures in sports. Even the best players
and professional sports lose and you get to see time
and time again the ability to learn from what you
did wrong, view the team tape. What I would say
to my children when they were in school was what
(24:48):
Mas and I would say, is that the grade is
not that important. It's the effort that was important. And
if you put in a lot of effort and you
didn't understand this, and the grade indicates you didn't understand it,
there's no issue that and this is an instructive failure
because you need to figure out why I didn't understand it.
Maybe different approach, you know, maybe that was just really
(25:08):
hard stuff. And the thing, the next thing won't be
so hard, and maybe the next thing will make that
make more sense. I mean, there's a lot of reasons
to be okay with failure, but I would think, okay,
this concept of it's fine to fail, It's like, I
don't want us to just sort of full scale adopt.
The failure is a concept if we're not trying, Because
you can fail because you just didn't pay any attention.
(25:30):
And so it's important from a parent perspector to make
sure that the failure is really based on something substantive
and not just you know, video games all weekend.
Speaker 2 (25:39):
That is such an important distinction because I think it's
really easy to make a blanket statement, oh, failure is good,
you know, but yeah, I mean it's not good if
you just didn't literally do nothing and never studied and
never put forth any effort. And so yeah, I think
that is an important distinction, and it is something that
we have to state because you know, when my kids
don't do well in a time, but I saw that
(26:01):
they were studying their tails off, and you know, I'm like, well, yeah,
you put forth your best effort. You know, what do
you think you did? Why you missed? The mark, Well
it wasn't what I expected, or I studied the wrong thing,
or the test was very different or whatever it is.
It's like, okay, well, so then you could advocate for yourself,
go to the teacher, ask the teacher how you can
(26:21):
study differently or better for next time. My daughter just
told me the other day. She's in ninth grade and
she was struggling in the beginning of the school year,
and she was like, ninth grade is just so hard.
It's so much more work, and she just wasn't putting
in the effort because she's like it's too hard. I
was telling her, if you don't put forth the effort,
then it will keep being hard. And so she started
(26:42):
doing it, putting forth the effort, staying up late study groups,
asking the teacher, like really, I was so impressed and
so proud of her. And now her grades are so great,
and again we're telling her it's not about the grade.
It's the grade is a reflection of what you know
and what you've mastered. So if you're flunking everything, you
haven't mastered nothing. So now that she's doing better, she
(27:03):
was like, Wow, school is so much easier. And I
was like, I don't think it's easier. I think you've
gotten smarter, not just in your intelligence, but you've learned
how to study. You've learned how to prioritize, You've learned
how to reach out for help, You've learned how to
manage your time, to use the people in your life
to help you with your study groups like you have,
(27:26):
you've gotten better. The things haven't gotten easier, right, right, Yeah, smarter,
not harder, exactly exactly.
Speaker 1 (27:34):
Yeah, So I just bet closing it. You've mentioned this already,
but you began by saying that emotional intelligence is something
that you can learn at any age, and that you
can become better at it any age. And I hope
parents listening take that to heart, because your ability to
be empathetic and your ability to understand your emotions and
benefit from what they tell you is something that not
only you can get better, you should try to do
(27:57):
that for the sake of your children. Can you just
give us a few more examples of how you can
model emotional intelligence and resilience for your kids. I mean,
earlier you said if you are experiencing an emotion explaining it,
are there ways that you should talk to your children
about when things are going on with you. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (28:13):
So I just finished writing a book that's going to
be released this year in October. One of the examples
I gave.
Speaker 1 (28:20):
What's the name of the book, so we'll look for it.
Speaker 2 (28:21):
It's called Love the Teen You Have.
Speaker 1 (28:24):
Oh love that title, Love the Team You Love the
Team you Have.
Speaker 2 (28:27):
So October twenty twenty five great and one of the
examples I gave because it really stuck out to me
and I remember it very clearly. So it's a few
years ago. My kids are twelve and fourteen, and a
few years ago I was taking them to school. They're
in the back of the car and I was very quiet,
uncharacteristically quiet, because usually I'm laughing and talking about different
things and sharing stories. And I was very quiet, and
my son, who's very highly sensitive and is very intuitive,
(28:49):
he's like, mom, you okay? And I was like I'm fine,
and he's like, you sure, because you'd not acted like yourself.
And in that moment it helped me to realize, like, wait,
he is right, I'm not acting like myself. It's like
I just feel kind of off today. And he's like,
is it something we did? And I'm like, no, I
just feel off, and he's like, well, sometimes it's stuff.
Life is like that sometimes, and it's something that I
(29:11):
had said many times before. So I kind of look
at him through the rearview mirror, he looks at me.
We both smile at each other, and he's like, well,
maybe as your day goes on, things will feel better,
and I was like, I already feel better already.
Speaker 1 (29:24):
Oh.
Speaker 2 (29:25):
And I think that part of being that emotional intelligence piece, well,
the emotional on intelligence on my part was me saying
I'm fine when I darn well know I'm not right,
because many times, what we have been conditioned is to
put on a mask and pretend like everything's okay, not
ask for help, not say when we're struggling, pretend to
(29:47):
our kids' face that we'ren't doing well, even whether it's
because of hormones or our own emotions, because we have
to be strong. That's not an emotional intelligent response because
you're out of alignment with it. The things that I
had mentioned in the book is that say that I
had continued to say I'm fine. In his gut, He's like, wait,
something is not right. Mom is not fine, but she
says she is, so I guess she is, So then
(30:09):
another time might come when I'm feeling not fine again,
but they don't ask me anything because I'm fine, right,
And so then they don't ask how I'm doing, And
in my mind, I'm thinking, these fools, they're not even
aware that I'm not doing well. How insensitive and unempathetic
of them. But it's like, but dude, you literally told
us you're fine when you are feeling like this, So
(30:30):
now they don't even know when to trust their gut,
and I'm giving them all these mixed messages. So a
lot of emotional intelligence, it's really about being aware of
how you are feeling, what is causing you this angst
or whatever, and making those connections about things in your environment.
Maybe you're just having an off day. Maybe you're feeling hormonal,
you didn't get enough rest, you're feeling hungry, there's so
(30:51):
many different reasons. But being aware of that and then
being able to express it and either asking for support
or just acknowledging because me, just even acknowledging that I
was not feeling fine help me to feel fine, right, right,
So that to me is being intelligent, because it's about
being aware of how you're feeling, how it's impacting others
(31:14):
what's going on inside of you, making those connections and
then doing something about it. It doesn't mean you have
the goal is to feel happy all the time, but
it's just about having that self awareness and I think
that's a big part of that. So that's just to me,
is just an example of how it can show up
where we miss the mark at first, but then we
can step back and say, Okay, wait a minute, that's
not a very smart response because it's not honest.
Speaker 1 (31:37):
That is a great, great example, Doctor Lockhart, thank you
so much for this really helpful discussion about emotional intelligence
and resilience and giving us a lot of good things
to think about and a lot of ways that we
can get better at helping our children with this, and
so thank you so much. So there's one more thing
before we go, and I'm going to ask you to
play the GCP Lightning Round for a very quick questions.
(32:00):
Are you ready? I'm ready? Okay? Your favorite poem or saying?
Speaker 2 (32:05):
So I think my favorite saying is from Victor Frankel,
and he said, when we're no longer able to change
a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves.
Speaker 1 (32:16):
Oh I like that. Your favorite two children's books, and
they can be from your childhood or books you loved
reading to your kids.
Speaker 2 (32:25):
So the one that I enjoyed reading to my kids
and I read it over and over again is good
Night Moon from Margaret wise Brown.
Speaker 1 (32:33):
Love that one.
Speaker 2 (32:34):
I love rhyming stuff and yeah, it's just so so cute.
Speaker 1 (32:37):
My thirty something, your old daughter still has money from
Goodnight Moon. I'm just so she can want to kill me.
Two books. I'm sorry, sorry to interrupt.
Speaker 2 (32:46):
The second book she persisted by Chelsea Clinton. I really
love that book. My kids love that book, and I
think it just shows really the power of perseverance and resilience,
like we're talked about today.
Speaker 1 (32:57):
That's great. Okay, So mom moments one that you would
love to do over differently, and one way you knew
you nailed it.
Speaker 2 (33:06):
So I think the one that I'd like to do differently.
And there's many moments like this when I was so
focused on correcting the behavior that I forgot to connect first.
And so I wish I would go back and realize
that in certain tough moments, that being curious and not
being quick to want to fix is not the most
important thing. So I want to remind parents. I mean,
(33:28):
I'm this, I'm a professional doing this for twenty years,
and I still do that. The right thing to do
for parenting isn't always the thing you want to do
because you want to just make it better. And so
I think the ones that I want to do over
is when I forget the connection instead and I focus
on the correcting.
Speaker 1 (33:44):
And the correcting doesn't really stick because nope, you haven't connected. Nope,
exactly exactly, and when you nailed it, yes.
Speaker 2 (33:51):
So what I feel like I've been very proud of
myself is when I've put words to feelings when my
kids are reacting or frustrating or stomping or slamming the doors,
and I'm able to name the emotions, I'm able to
connect with them. I'm able to empathize and connect with
them in the way that makes where they feel heard
and understood and they don't have to keep escalating just
(34:13):
to feel heard. And it's something that I didn't get
often when I was growing up, where a lot of
people don't get. And so that makes me proud to
see that I'm breaking cycles in that way.
Speaker 1 (34:23):
Oh that's great. Great answers, Doctor Lockhart, Thank you again.
For joining us. Look forward to talking to you again
when your book comes out. Same here. Thank you, thanks
so much. I hope everyone listening enjoyed my conversation with
doctor Anne Louise Lockhart about raising emotionally intelligent and resilient kids.
She'll be coming back to the podcast again later this
(34:45):
season to talk about parenting neurodivergent children, so be sure
to look out for this episode. If you like what
you've heard, please subscribe, rate and review where you find
your podcasts, and tell your friends. For more parenting info
and advice, check out the ground Control Parenting blog at
groundcontrol parenting dot com. You can also find us on Facebook, Instagram,
and tik tok at ground Control Parenting. Until the next time,
(35:08):
take care and thanks for listening.
Hello, and welcome to Ground Control Parenting, a blog and
now a podcast creative for parents raising black and brown children.
I'm the creator and your host, Carol Sutton Lewis. In
this podcast series, I talk with some really interesting people
about the job and the joy of parenting. Today, we're
talking about raising emotionally intelligent and resilient kids. We've heard
(00:25):
a lot recently about emotional intelligence or EQ, and that
it's an important social skill for children to have. But
what is EQ and how do we help our children
develop it? And how does it relate to how they
develop resilience, which is another important life skill. To help
us with these questions, I'm so excited to welcome back
the wonderful parenting expert, Doctor Anne Louise Lockhart. Doctor Lockhart
(00:48):
is a pediatric psychologist, parent coach, and national speaker with
over twenty years of experience. She founded a New Day
Pediatric Psychology in San Antonio, Texas to specialize in helping
parents understand stand and navigate the challenges of raising toddlers
through teens. She's passionate about empowering parents with practical strategies
(01:08):
to support their children's development, manage behavior, and foster strong
emotional connections. She is the mother of two, so she
brings both professional expertise and personal experience to her work.
Doc Lockhart brought her wonderful parenting expertise to the podcast
last season, and I'm so happy to have her back
for this conversation. Welcome back to Ground Control Parenting, Doctor Lockhart.
Speaker 2 (01:28):
Thanks for having me back, Carol.
Speaker 1 (01:30):
It's great to have you back. I'm really eager to
have your guidance on how we can help our children
build these important skills. So let's get started, and I
will start by asking you what exactly is emotional intelligence
and how does it help kids build resilience, especially in
today's world where we really need resilience.
Speaker 2 (01:50):
Yes, absolutely so. Emotional intelligence is called EQ because it's
the emotional quotient, which is from IQ, which is their intelligence.
Because emotional intelligence is a type of intelligence, right, because
you have book smarts, you have emotional smarts, you have
all kinds of smarts. So it's the ability to recognize, understand, manage,
(02:10):
and express emotions, both in yourself and in others. So
it plays a huge role in decision making, in relationships,
in your overall well being. People who are more emotional
intelligent are more satisfied in life and with their relationships.
So unlike IQ, which is your intelligence just general intelligence,
(02:31):
which measures cognitive ability or academic ability as well, your
emotional intelligence or EQ focuses on emotional and social skills,
and so it helps more with your success in life.
So people when they think about like the components of it,
they usually measure self awareness, self regulation, motivation, empathy, and
(02:57):
social skills. So those are usually the five of emotional intelligence.
And it's important because, like I mentioned, it helps with
your relationships, with handling social situations, handling stress because more
emotionally intelligent people can handle stress better because you're like,
oh wow, this is a stressful day, I'm going to
(03:17):
take a nap, or is a stressful day, I'm going
to go for a run. Like they learn to deal
and cope with things. And for parents, it really helps
because it improves It improves your communication with your kids.
It leads to health your communication with them because you
understand that this chaos that's happening isn't what I'm looking at,
it's what's going on behind it. So you have more
(03:38):
intelligence when it comes to that kind of stuff. So
basically it's not something that we necessarily have. It's something
that we learn. So just because your kid is struggling
or you as a grown up is struggling, many people
struggle with it as an adult because they never learned it.
It wasn't modeled for them, They never were taught. So
(03:59):
you have kids and you're automatically expected to be this
mature grown up who knows how to have emotional intelligence.
But if it was never modeled for you and you
never got to practice it, then yeah, maybe that's why
you're raging all the time because that's your go to,
that's your default. So it's not fixed, and that's the
good news. It can be changed and you can grow
(04:19):
it with practice, with self reflection, with self monitoring, and
just learning strategies.
Speaker 1 (04:25):
So yeah, so at what age do children begin to
develop it or have the potential to develop it? And
how can parents nurture it from the very beginning.
Speaker 2 (04:35):
That's a good question. So it depends because it would
depend on if do you have this kid who's neurotypical
and so they're kind of gaining from their environment and
kind of learning quickly and easily, And it also depends
on several different milestones. So, for example, Emotional intelligence can
develop at a very young age, and it evolves over
(04:57):
time as they grow because they're learning from their environment
all the time. So you might look at a child
in early childhood between two to five and around age two,
they start to develop awareness of emotions like sadness or anger,
or happiness or surprise disappointment, and they may not fully
understand what it is they're feeling or be able to
(05:18):
put it into words, but they start to express them.
Hence the Terrible twos, threes, and fours. They're showing it
because when people are like, oh, you should know better, well,
they don't know better because these emotions are new for
the first time. That's why they love the movie Inside
Out and how they portray this because these emotions show
up and now they have this feeling and I don't
(05:40):
know what to do with this because this is brand new.
It's a skill. So they might cry when they feel
upset at age four, or maybe they say I'm mad,
but maybe they're really disappointed. They don't know the difference
between the two. They just feel mad, and so then
the parent can then help, Oh, I know you felt
very disappointed when we didn't have the red cup and
(06:01):
you really wanted that, and I gave you the blue cup,
you know. So it's about kind of mirroring that. And
so as they get older, they're really learning how to regulate,
how to express themselves, how to see different perspectives, how
to communicate that. It's a hard process and it's a
very complicated process. And if you have a kid who
(06:22):
is dysregulated in some way because they are neurodivergent in
some way, they're immature because all kids are then, and
you don't know how to teach that, and you get
easily frustrated. Then it can actually hurt the process of
developing more emotional intelligence because it's not being model and
taught properly. Because it's hard. It's hard when your kid
(06:43):
is going through these phases and you have to keep
calm like that is hard.
Speaker 1 (06:49):
You know. I'm reminded of a story and it will
kill me for telling it, But when one of my
sons was young, he cried a lot. It took me
a while to discover anger brought tears as much as
sadness for tears. His response to being angry was to cry.
When I figured that out, it was easier for me
to not get annoyed with him crying, but it was
(07:12):
really instructive for me to understand that he demonstrated anger
through tears, so that when he was crying, I could
not concern myself with the crying part, but concern myself
with what was the underlying I mean, was he sad?
Was he angry? You know? And then sort of I
could act accordingly and interestingly he is as an adult,
he has a great deal of emotional intelligence, which serves
(07:34):
him very well in his work in his life. I mean,
but when children are young and they have you said,
so many things going on in them at the same
time that they can't really they're too young to be
able and not mature enough to be able to identify
what is making them feel this way. As a parent,
sometimes it's hard to deal with all those feelings, but
it's important because ultimately their ability to regulate them and
(07:56):
use them comes in handy.
Speaker 2 (07:58):
Right, And that way, they're not being punished for feeling
a feeling that is confusing and new to them, because
again they've never experienced many of those or they have
never learned how to deal with them when they do
experience them. And that's just the clear cut emotions. We're
not even mentioning the ones that are confusing, like the
ambivalence where you feel both sad and angry, you know,
(08:21):
or you feel both satisfied and scared, you know, Like
how do you make sense of things that seem to
clash with one another? And that can be very confusing.
Speaker 1 (08:31):
And I imagine for parents. As a parent, you have
to understand for how you deal with emotions because a
lot of people are afraid of the intensity of emotions,
and it's easy if your child is being very emotional
to sort of shut it down because you don't want
to deal with that. I think it's understanding the importance
of developing emotional intelligence and that in so doing, you
(08:52):
have to deal with emotions and help your children deal
with emotions. And I think parents should try to put
their own reticence to deal with emotions aside because they
can really help their children. And importantly, this emotional intelligence
can help make our children more resilient. And I want
to talk to you about resilience because it seems now
(09:14):
and this is a question to you, why does it
seem that children and young people are having such a
tough time with resilience? Now there's a child psychologist who's
an executive at a health services business who says that
gen Z and that's ages thirteen to twenty eight now
are the loneliest, least resilient demographic alive today. Now, that
may be an exaggeration, but it just seems that children
(09:38):
seem more fragile. Is that just because I'm older, or
or are you finding this in your practice? That our
ability to help our young people sort of fend off
challenges and things that disturb them but they can get
over it just seems that it's getting more difficult for
them to do this.
Speaker 2 (09:56):
Yeah, I'm observing that I've noticed that I've been in
practice long enough that I've seen a couple of generations,
seeing millennials as well as gen Z and now gen
Alpha coming after them. And it feels like when I
used to treat patients when I worked in a hospital
setting and I was working at the time with the
(10:17):
next generation, ever I think was more of the millennials.
I found that it was easier to treat even very
complicated diagnoses. It is much harder now and I'm more experienced.
That says a lot. It takes longer to treat very
basic diagnoses. And challenges, and it feels like the clients
(10:39):
are more resistant to treatment. When you look at resilience,
resilience is the ability to bounce back from challenges in
adversity and to keep going despite challenges and how to
cope and how to deal with negative well emotions that
you view as negative and frustration and things that are tough.
And when you look at each generation, there are significant
(11:00):
events that occurred within each generation that built and tore
you down. Right, So you look at silent generation dealing
with World War Two and the Holocaust, and you look
at the Boomers with Vietnam, and then you look at
Gen X that's my generation where we were unsupervised, latch
key kids, had to figure things out for ourselves. And
(11:23):
then you go to the Millennials, like they're the first
ones that started. Half of them got more introduced into
cell phones and tech and more awareness of that. And
then Gen Z is the first generation who has They
came into the world with tech and social media and
smartphones at their disposal. And so there's a lot of
shifts that occur in nine to eleven, like all these
(11:45):
different events that shaped people's view of society and what
they went through so you would expect that people who
went through Jim Crow laws might be more resilient because
of what they had to go through, how they struggled,
versus this gen Z who's like, oh, that's in the past,
racism even exists. Why are you always talking about this stuff? Right, Well,
(12:05):
if you haven't had to go through things that were
hard like your previous generations and everything was plowed for you,
which is why they call a lot of like helicopter
parenting and lawnmower parenting because you're kind of hovering and
paving the way because you don't want your kids to
go through what you went through. So if you're always
paving the way, making everything easy, rescuing them, lifting them
(12:27):
out out of trouble, and providing air support, then how
are they supposed to ever build resilience When do they
ever have adversity that they have to work through? And
so I think one reason why a lot of our
kids nowadays don't have resilience is because of the type
of parenting that is being given. Because many of the
millennial and Gen X parents want to not have their
(12:48):
kids struggle like they did and not have the issues
where maybe their parents never hurt when they were struggling,
when they were going through challenges, and that they couldn't
talk about it and you just sweep it under the rug.
Very popular with brown and black kids, right, they're families.
We don't talk about problems.
Speaker 1 (13:05):
Right, right, right, Suck it up, suck it up.
Speaker 2 (13:07):
So then you go the extra extreme and you talk
about everything. And then anytime some kid picks on your
kid and you're like, no, you're going to pull you
out of this school, you know, and they never learn
to deal with things. And so I think then parenting
has swung all the way on the other side for
many people. Why people go after things like gentle and
conscious parenting because it feels too soft compared to the
(13:28):
authoritarian stuff that a lot of us got. So I
think that's a big, big.
Speaker 1 (13:32):
Part of it.
Speaker 2 (13:33):
I think another big part is this idea of everybody
gets a trophy and everybody is special, nobody loses, And
I think that's a big one, so that you don't
learn that, no, you lost, like they're winners and losers.
You lost the game, like that's it, Like you don't
get fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth place, like just you lost, right.
Speaker 1 (13:55):
We'll be right back after these messages welcome back for
the show. And the value of losing is that you
understand what you could do differently the next time. I mean,
the value of sports is that you get another show. Absolutely,
you can lose and then you can win, and the
win is sweeter because you figured out what you did
differently than when you lost.
Speaker 2 (14:15):
Right, And even you fail a test, you don't get three,
four or five chances. So many schools are telling their
teachers not to fail their kids because it looks bad
on their metrics. So kids then are given opportunities to
pass to the next unit, get a good grade on
something they never studied for, and they don't learn that yeah,
there is failure, or that they have to get all a's,
(14:36):
so they don't know how to deal with it when
they do poorly. So I think there's more academic pressure
as well, and there's a lot of overscheduling, and kids
are way too busy and they don't know how to
just be They don't know how to just be at
home and read a book, how to play outside, how
to hang out with their friends and just fill the
(14:56):
time with things rather than always being entertained. And I
think a lot of those things they're not learning how
to cope. They're not learning. And I think the last
thing that I'll mention too is the I don't believe
social media is bad. I believe excessive or too early
of an exposure is not good. And a lot of
(15:17):
kids have way too much time on social media and online,
and it's a very fake world. So they're doing a
lot of comparison, which leads to eating disordered behaviors, which
leads to depression, anxiety, envy, suicidality, like all of these
things that happen because it's fake and they're getting introduced
to that world way too soon and comparing their lives
(15:38):
to others and then think that's reality. And so I
think there's just a lot of things that have impacted them.
And I believe these digital natives they have this need
to constantly be connected and feel relevant. And sometimes you're
not the main character, like it's okay, that's your background.
Speaker 1 (15:57):
Sometimes you can be off center. You don't have to
be centered exactly. You know. It's so interesting because both
you and I approach parenting from helping the parents. I mean,
we want to help the children ultimately, but we really
want to help the parents. And I think it's important,
and parents are listening. This is not an effort to
sort of make you feel badly about all the things
that you're not doing well. It's all. We understand that
(16:20):
so much of parenting comes from the very good place
of wanting to help your children. Depending on how you
were raised, you want to help them the same way
or differently. But you can unintentionally be sapping your children's
ability to be resilient by doing things that you ordinarily
would think were good things to do. I mean, there
was an article just recently in the Wall Street Journal,
(16:42):
and the title pretty much says it all. It's titled,
parents who hire elite tutors are setting their kids up
for failure. I mean, that pretty much says it all.
But it's an article about I'm here in New York City,
and that the article is based in New York City,
and that parents are hiring expensive tutors who go beyond
trying to help a child learn something about a course
they don't understand, but they write papers for them, they
(17:03):
write you know, they take tests for them, I mean,
or help them with tests. And clearly no parents sets out,
or few parents set out to say I'm going to
gain the system and have a grown person do my
child's work. I mean, because nobody would think that that
was a good thing to do. But parents, as you
focus on the things you want for your child. You know,
(17:23):
you want your child to do well in school. You
want them to go to a college, a good college.
You want them to get all the education they can get,
the best of the best, because parents want that for
their children. Generally, you really do have to think about
each step that you're taking on this road. If you
are hiring, tutors are important help. I mean, if your
child doesn't understand something, if it's moving too quickly in
the classroom, a tutor can make all the difference. They
(17:45):
can help your childl to break through. The stridency of
this title of this article is not something I'm agreeing with,
but I know, certainly when my children were in school,
and this article indicates is still going on, that parents
kind of lose sight of if there's someone that helping
their child, they kind of lose sight of the degree
to which they're helping their children. And parents, I would
(18:05):
just encourage you to think a little bit more about
I mean, we want to help them, but try to
think of the other side of helping them. I mean
it's you know, same with social media. Parents that are
personally very much engaged in social media themselves and have
put their children on it since their children are very little,
don't always think about how it impacts their children independent
(18:28):
of when their children start their own social media, how
soon they can start it, and how I mean, if
you're putting your kid on there from day one, from
the ultrasound picture to the birth to the first party,
and I mean even without trying, you may be signaling
to your child that this world of social media is
important and one that they really need to focus on.
And doing that can really sap resilience because you're preoccupied
(18:52):
with this alternative universe.
Speaker 2 (18:54):
So and the validation that you constantly need external validation
to say that I'm important because I've got likes or
follows or compliments. It's a bad message to send because
they're putting their faith in the wrong place and instead
of their internal state.
Speaker 1 (19:10):
Yeah, so both of us are saying that parents have
to be very careful. Yeah, I think people can accidentally
sap their kids resilience. They really think they're helping, They
think that they are giving them opportunities based on what
they've been able to do, and it's really important that.
I mean, goodness knows, my children, who are all grown now,
tell me that I stepped over that line every once
(19:32):
in a while when they were in school, but to
their credit, they would call me out on it when
I did. They would stop me from trying to help them,
because I mean, they understood that if somebody else is
doing work for you, then it kind of sends a
signal that you don't think your child is capable of
doing it themselves, which doesn't help their self esteem. I
really want to ask you about this in terms of
(19:53):
building resilience in terms of black parents, and we've got
a challenge because we have the responsibility of building up
our children's confidence, but we also have to make sure
that they understand and are aware that there're situations where
they could be judged differently and they need a different
kind of confidence and resilience to handle those situations. I mean,
(20:17):
I think about this in terms of police stops or
you want a child that has strong self esteem and
is confident, but we also say you have to comply
with whatever this authority figure says because you have to
under the circumstances So how do you think black parents
can think about sort of this duality of I mean,
we want to build up resilience, but we have to
(20:40):
also give them a sort of different kind of armor.
Speaker 2 (20:46):
Yeah, we certainly do, because the way we parent them
is different. And I think it's important to have a
discussion with our kids about that first, because different kids
have different ex experiences. Right, We're not a monolith, And
it depends on the age, depends on the parents' generation,
it depends on their environment, where they live, what kind
(21:07):
of city they're in. There's so many different factors, and
so I think it's first about being curious about what
your kid's experience is, Like how do they feel. Do
they feel like they buckle under pressure, that they have
too many responsibilities, that they feel like they're always fighting
the system all the time, Like how do they feel
because they might feel very confident and they might feel
(21:30):
like they're they're cool, like they don't need any additional
support and they got it. So I think it's important
to first get their perspective and understanding of where they
are so that way we're not making assumptions. And then
I think the other part of it is really building
resilience in them is encouraging healthy failure so that they
(21:51):
can view failure as a natural part of life and
a chance to learn. I talk to my kids all
the time that most of my growth that has ever
happened in my life has been because of failure. Did
I love it when I was going through it? Absolutely not.
But it has always built character and built more of
a persistence and perseverance and a desire to know what
(22:15):
I did wrong or what I could do differently every
single time. And so really that significantly builds resilience because
you also know that not everything has to work out
for you, and that life is about ups and downs,
and sometimes it's crappy, and sometimes it gets bad and
then sometimes it gets good again. So I think creating
a space, especially for our black and brown children, because
(22:35):
sometimes they feel like they have to man up, or
they feel like they can't be a punk, or they
have to be strong and strong black women, all these
narratives that we hear all the time. Be confident, but
not too confident, you know, And so we want them
to be able to express their emotions without judgment, without
being made fun of, without being mocked or like, you
know what, do you have to be sad about you
(22:56):
should be grateful after everything that our people went through. Well,
you can be grateful and sad, you know. So I
think it's about supporting their feelings in very healthy ways
so that way they can express how they're feeling without
being torn down. Like we need to build them up
and then model that resilience. That there are times when
you are pushing through and you're getting the thing done,
(23:18):
and other times that you take a break, that you
take a nap, you take a half day off from work,
that you go on that vacation, that you hang out
with your friends, and you encourage them to do that too,
that sometimes maybe they need a mental health day from school. Sometimes,
you know, if there's something going on and there's a
really tough discussion or event going on in the media
where black and brown people are being highlighted in some
(23:39):
way and the discussions are getting too heavy, giving them
space to be able to discuss those things, but also
helping them know to cope, but also not avoiding, and
that's a hard balance. Sometimes something that looks like coping
is actually avoidance. So we want to do that and
be able to introduce them to not being overscheduled, not
being the center of attention all the time, and learning
(24:03):
healthy coping strategies for themselves.
Speaker 1 (24:05):
You brought up failure, and I think about this a lot,
because certainly, letting our children fail has been in parenting
books and in parenting articles. It's been said that our
children need to understand failure. I've always had a little
bit of trouble with that, But here's how I look
at it. I agree that you can't prop your child up.
(24:27):
You can't. And I do think sports really helps because
there's so many failures in sports. Even the best players
and professional sports lose and you get to see time
and time again the ability to learn from what you
did wrong, view the team tape. What I would say
to my children when they were in school was what
(24:48):
Mas and I would say, is that the grade is
not that important. It's the effort that was important. And
if you put in a lot of effort and you
didn't understand this, and the grade indicates you didn't understand it,
there's no issue that and this is an instructive failure
because you need to figure out why I didn't understand it.
Maybe different approach, you know, maybe that was just really
(25:08):
hard stuff. And the thing, the next thing won't be
so hard, and maybe the next thing will make that
make more sense. I mean, there's a lot of reasons
to be okay with failure, but I would think, okay,
this concept of it's fine to fail, It's like, I
don't want us to just sort of full scale adopt.
The failure is a concept if we're not trying, Because
you can fail because you just didn't pay any attention.
(25:30):
And so it's important from a parent perspector to make
sure that the failure is really based on something substantive
and not just you know, video games all weekend.
Speaker 2 (25:39):
That is such an important distinction because I think it's
really easy to make a blanket statement, oh, failure is good,
you know, but yeah, I mean it's not good if
you just didn't literally do nothing and never studied and
never put forth any effort. And so yeah, I think
that is an important distinction, and it is something that
we have to state because you know, when my kids
don't do well in a time, but I saw that
(26:01):
they were studying their tails off, and you know, I'm like, well, yeah,
you put forth your best effort. You know, what do
you think you did? Why you missed? The mark, Well
it wasn't what I expected, or I studied the wrong thing,
or the test was very different or whatever it is.
It's like, okay, well, so then you could advocate for yourself,
go to the teacher, ask the teacher how you can
(26:21):
study differently or better for next time. My daughter just
told me the other day. She's in ninth grade and
she was struggling in the beginning of the school year,
and she was like, ninth grade is just so hard.
It's so much more work, and she just wasn't putting
in the effort because she's like it's too hard. I
was telling her, if you don't put forth the effort,
then it will keep being hard. And so she started
(26:42):
doing it, putting forth the effort, staying up late study groups,
asking the teacher, like really, I was so impressed and
so proud of her. And now her grades are so great,
and again we're telling her it's not about the grade.
It's the grade is a reflection of what you know
and what you've mastered. So if you're flunking everything, you
haven't mastered nothing. So now that she's doing better, she
(27:03):
was like, Wow, school is so much easier. And I
was like, I don't think it's easier. I think you've
gotten smarter, not just in your intelligence, but you've learned
how to study. You've learned how to prioritize, You've learned
how to reach out for help, You've learned how to
manage your time, to use the people in your life
to help you with your study groups like you have,
(27:26):
you've gotten better. The things haven't gotten easier, right, right, Yeah, smarter,
not harder, exactly exactly.
Speaker 1 (27:34):
Yeah, So I just bet closing it. You've mentioned this already,
but you began by saying that emotional intelligence is something
that you can learn at any age, and that you
can become better at it any age. And I hope
parents listening take that to heart, because your ability to
be empathetic and your ability to understand your emotions and
benefit from what they tell you is something that not
only you can get better, you should try to do
(27:57):
that for the sake of your children. Can you just
give us a few more examples of how you can
model emotional intelligence and resilience for your kids. I mean,
earlier you said if you are experiencing an emotion explaining it,
are there ways that you should talk to your children
about when things are going on with you. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (28:13):
So I just finished writing a book that's going to
be released this year in October. One of the examples
I gave.
Speaker 1 (28:20):
What's the name of the book, so we'll look for it.
Speaker 2 (28:21):
It's called Love the Teen You Have.
Speaker 1 (28:24):
Oh love that title, Love the Team You Love the
Team you Have.
Speaker 2 (28:27):
So October twenty twenty five great and one of the
examples I gave because it really stuck out to me
and I remember it very clearly. So it's a few
years ago. My kids are twelve and fourteen, and a
few years ago I was taking them to school. They're
in the back of the car and I was very quiet,
uncharacteristically quiet, because usually I'm laughing and talking about different
things and sharing stories. And I was very quiet, and
my son, who's very highly sensitive and is very intuitive,
(28:49):
he's like, mom, you okay? And I was like I'm fine,
and he's like, you sure, because you'd not acted like yourself.
And in that moment it helped me to realize, like, wait,
he is right, I'm not acting like myself. It's like
I just feel kind of off today. And he's like,
is it something we did? And I'm like, no, I
just feel off, and he's like, well, sometimes it's stuff.
Life is like that sometimes, and it's something that I
(29:11):
had said many times before. So I kind of look
at him through the rearview mirror, he looks at me.
We both smile at each other, and he's like, well,
maybe as your day goes on, things will feel better,
and I was like, I already feel better already.
Speaker 1 (29:24):
Oh.
Speaker 2 (29:25):
And I think that part of being that emotional intelligence piece, well,
the emotional on intelligence on my part was me saying
I'm fine when I darn well know I'm not right,
because many times, what we have been conditioned is to
put on a mask and pretend like everything's okay, not
ask for help, not say when we're struggling, pretend to
(29:47):
our kids' face that we'ren't doing well, even whether it's
because of hormones or our own emotions, because we have
to be strong. That's not an emotional intelligent response because
you're out of alignment with it. The things that I
had mentioned in the book is that say that I
had continued to say I'm fine. In his gut, He's like, wait,
something is not right. Mom is not fine, but she
says she is, so I guess she is, So then
(30:09):
another time might come when I'm feeling not fine again,
but they don't ask me anything because I'm fine, right,
And so then they don't ask how I'm doing, And
in my mind, I'm thinking, these fools, they're not even
aware that I'm not doing well. How insensitive and unempathetic
of them. But it's like, but dude, you literally told
us you're fine when you are feeling like this, So
(30:30):
now they don't even know when to trust their gut,
and I'm giving them all these mixed messages. So a
lot of emotional intelligence, it's really about being aware of
how you are feeling, what is causing you this angst
or whatever, and making those connections about things in your environment.
Maybe you're just having an off day. Maybe you're feeling hormonal,
you didn't get enough rest, you're feeling hungry, there's so
(30:51):
many different reasons. But being aware of that and then
being able to express it and either asking for support
or just acknowledging because me, just even acknowledging that I
was not feeling fine help me to feel fine, right, right,
So that to me is being intelligent, because it's about
being aware of how you're feeling, how it's impacting others
(31:14):
what's going on inside of you, making those connections and
then doing something about it. It doesn't mean you have
the goal is to feel happy all the time, but
it's just about having that self awareness and I think
that's a big part of that. So that's just to me,
is just an example of how it can show up
where we miss the mark at first, but then we
can step back and say, Okay, wait a minute, that's
not a very smart response because it's not honest.
Speaker 1 (31:37):
That is a great, great example, Doctor Lockhart, thank you
so much for this really helpful discussion about emotional intelligence
and resilience and giving us a lot of good things
to think about and a lot of ways that we
can get better at helping our children with this, and
so thank you so much. So there's one more thing
before we go, and I'm going to ask you to
play the GCP Lightning Round for a very quick questions.
(32:00):
Are you ready? I'm ready? Okay? Your favorite poem or saying?
Speaker 2 (32:05):
So I think my favorite saying is from Victor Frankel,
and he said, when we're no longer able to change
a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves.
Speaker 1 (32:16):
Oh I like that. Your favorite two children's books, and
they can be from your childhood or books you loved
reading to your kids.
Speaker 2 (32:25):
So the one that I enjoyed reading to my kids
and I read it over and over again is good
Night Moon from Margaret wise Brown.
Speaker 1 (32:33):
Love that one.
Speaker 2 (32:34):
I love rhyming stuff and yeah, it's just so so cute.
Speaker 1 (32:37):
My thirty something, your old daughter still has money from
Goodnight Moon. I'm just so she can want to kill me.
Two books. I'm sorry, sorry to interrupt.
Speaker 2 (32:46):
The second book she persisted by Chelsea Clinton. I really
love that book. My kids love that book, and I
think it just shows really the power of perseverance and resilience,
like we're talked about today.
Speaker 1 (32:57):
That's great. Okay, So mom moments one that you would
love to do over differently, and one way you knew
you nailed it.
Speaker 2 (33:06):
So I think the one that I'd like to do differently.
And there's many moments like this when I was so
focused on correcting the behavior that I forgot to connect first.
And so I wish I would go back and realize
that in certain tough moments, that being curious and not
being quick to want to fix is not the most
important thing. So I want to remind parents. I mean,
(33:28):
I'm this, I'm a professional doing this for twenty years,
and I still do that. The right thing to do
for parenting isn't always the thing you want to do
because you want to just make it better. And so
I think the ones that I want to do over
is when I forget the connection instead and I focus
on the correcting.
Speaker 1 (33:44):
And the correcting doesn't really stick because nope, you haven't connected. Nope,
exactly exactly, and when you nailed it, yes.
Speaker 2 (33:51):
So what I feel like I've been very proud of
myself is when I've put words to feelings when my
kids are reacting or frustrating or stomping or slamming the doors,
and I'm able to name the emotions, I'm able to
connect with them. I'm able to empathize and connect with
them in the way that makes where they feel heard
and understood and they don't have to keep escalating just
(34:13):
to feel heard. And it's something that I didn't get
often when I was growing up, where a lot of
people don't get. And so that makes me proud to
see that I'm breaking cycles in that way.
Speaker 1 (34:23):
Oh that's great. Great answers, Doctor Lockhart, Thank you again.
For joining us. Look forward to talking to you again
when your book comes out. Same here. Thank you, thanks
so much. I hope everyone listening enjoyed my conversation with
doctor Anne Louise Lockhart about raising emotionally intelligent and resilient kids.
She'll be coming back to the podcast again later this
(34:45):
season to talk about parenting neurodivergent children, so be sure
to look out for this episode. If you like what
you've heard, please subscribe, rate and review where you find
your podcasts, and tell your friends. For more parenting info
and advice, check out the ground Control Parenting blog at
groundcontrol parenting dot com. You can also find us on Facebook, Instagram,
and tik tok at ground Control Parenting. Until the next time,
(35:08):
take care and thanks for listening.
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