Gottman's Emotional Coaching

“Effects of Emotion Coaching: Your child’s mastery of understanding and regulating their emotions will help them to succeed in life in a myriad of different ways – they will be more self-confident, perform better in social and academic situations, and even become physically healthier.” - Doctor John Gottman

    During this unprecedented time, many of us are filled with anxieties, and children are no exception. Some parents may be struggling with ways to communicate effectively, and relate to their children, particularly in moments of distress. Particularly in this unusual time where many families are spending much more time together, these feelings may be exasperated or expressed in different ways by children. Using the basis of Gottman’s Emotional Coaching theory, this post will be outlining and addressing how to deal with and validate your child’s stresses, anxieties and difficult emotions during the pandemic. 

    Gottman’s Emotional Coaching theory focuses on validating your child’s emotions, negative or positive. The first step to this process that you take as a parent is simply being aware of your child’s emotion. You could observe them getting frustrated over their math homework, or anxious after watching the news with you. After you make this observation, ask your child how they are feeling. If they are having difficulty describing how they feel, work with them and help them label their emotions. This next step is important, as it helps your child develop emotional intelligence; a skill that will aid them socially, academically and mentally.

    Your child may be struggling to understand the way they are feeling themselves, and this is where you can help them locate and describe where these emotions are coming from. This can be done through guiding them through the events that may be contributing to their current emotions. For example, your child may be feeling anxious. Maybe they don’t understand what they are doing in school. They could be concerned about grandma and grandpa staying safe during the pandemic. Maybe it’s just as simple as they miss their friends from school, and are worried that they won’t get to see them for awhile. All these events are anxiety-producing, and helping your child identify and validate just what is causing them to feel the way they do is a crucial step in Gottman’s Emotional Coaching. 

    When you are able to identify, label the emotion and it’s potential source(s) with your child, validate their feelings. In the previously presented example, if your child is feeling anxious, here are a few examples of what you can say to validate their emotional state:

• “It’s understandable that you are feeling anxious right now. You miss your friends and you don’t know when you can see them again. It’s okay to feel that way.”

• “I get that you feel anxious right now, but we are doing all we can to protect grandma and grandpa. We are all concerned over our loved ones right now, and it’s understandable that you feel the way you do.” 

• “You feel anxious right now, and that’s okay. It is hard to transition to learning online, but I am here to help you.”

    Research has also examined the impact of parents not engaging in Emotional Coaching, but rather in what has been commonly referred to as Emotional Dismissing. Emotional dismissing is characterized by parents being unable to recognize their children’s emotions, viewing negative emotions as toxic, invalidating/criticizing children’s emotions, and striving to protect children from negative emotions. While it can be tempting to want to “fix” everything for your child and avoid seeing their emotional pain, this strategy is not conducive to children’s emotional development. 

    A research study conducted by Lunkenheimer, Shields, & Cortina (2007) examined just how emotional dismissing impacts children. The study had families come into a laboratory setting and participate in a narrative task. This task included three scenarios, one about a positive family experience, another about a difficult family experience, and a final scenario where the target child misbehaved. These scenarios were scored using the new family emotion communication scoring system, which allowed researchers to analyze whether emotional coaching or emotional dismissal was utilized by parents. Following these parents and children were interviewed separately, involved questions about family demographics and children’s emotion regulation and behavior. One month after this, teachers of the children were sent a questionnaire about the children’s emotional regulation and behavior problems. 

    This research found that emotional dismissal was found to be a direct risk factor for children’s emotional and behavioral outcomes. This result is important because it emphasizes the fact that dismissing children’s emotions, especially negative emotions puts them at a risk for them to have difficulties controlling their emotions and behaviors in the future. Now that children are at home all day, there are more opportunities for both emotional dismissal and coaching to occur. Parents should be aware of the harmful effects of emotional dismissing and be equipped with the tools necessary to coach children through both positive and negative emotions. 

    In addition to these findings on emotional dismissal, researchers also observed the positive effects of implementing emotional coaching. The coaching of negative feelings and emotions, but not positive ones, was found to have a protective effect on children’s emotional competence in the face of other potential risk factors.In conclusion, Gottman’s emotional coaching theory serves as a great foundation for parents when it comes to managing their child’s emotions, and in turn works to help children develop emotional intelligence and self-awareness. While these techniques can be hard to implement in stressful situations, which there seems to be no shortage of in the pandemic, focus on keeping it simple. Even just acknowledging your child’s feelings, and telling them it’s okay to feel the way they do can go a long way in helping them cope with the stresses and anxieties of the pandemic.

Source: Lunkenheimer, E.S., Shields, A.M., & Cortina, K.S. (2007). Parental Emotion Coaching and Dismissing in Family Interaction. Social Development, 16(2), 232-248