Emotional Intelligence (EQ) talks about how we understand our own emotions, and how we take social cues from people besides ourselves. It affects how you can “read” other people’s emotions and your ability to cooperate with them. Studies show that a person’s EQ might be even more important than their IQ, so developing it early on will help your child a lot.

According to the most common models, there are five different categories of emotional intelligence:

• Self-Awareness, the ability to recognize and name your emotions
• Self-Regulation, the ability to control your emotions
• Motivation, otherwise known as initiative and drive
• Empathy, the ability to understand how other people feel
• Social Skills, otherwise known as communication and social management

In this article, we will be talking about how to train these traits in our children so they grow up emotionally intelligent. And who knows, maybe we adults can learn a thing or two as well.

Self-Awareness and Self-Regulation

The easiest way to teach your child to be self-aware is to allow them to feel and express themselves. Forcing them to repress negative emotions may have a harmful impact afterwards. When you acknowledge, help them to articulate how they feel. Empower them in widening their emotional vocabulary. This, in turn, teaches them how to deal with their emotions head on.

Sense of Motivation

Motivation isn’t a very hard emotional skill to teach. The best way to do so is simply to reward them for doing things. Did they pick up their toys? Praise them for it! Did they finish their food? Congratulate them! It may seem a little petty to do this, but the little victories are what teaches them that yes, you can do good things and feel good doing them.

Empathy for Others

The easiest way to teach empathy to your child is to empathize with them. Understand why they’re feeling that way and acknowledge it without having to agree with them. Feeling understood can make a whole world of difference for them.

Strong Social Skills

Many skills in this category are based off of the ability to solve problems. To teach your kids the necessary social skills is to teach them how to deal with problems one by one. Go through the feeling and the crying, then let them figure out the solution for themselves. You shouldn’t rush in and solve everything for them, otherwise they won’t learn to become emotionally independent.

Sometimes it helps to roleplay with your child, especially when they’re dealing with bigger problems like emotional attachments. Since your child is young, sitting down and talking about big problems might not so well, so concretizing such abstract problems through games and make-believe can help them work out their emotions.

Photo from: https://www.mcgill.ca/newsroom/files/newsroom/channels/image/mother-child-web.png

Your toddler is constantly developing and learning new physical skills. This is the stage where your baby possesses an incredible amount of energy to show off what he’s got. We need to equal top or even surpass the energy. I know, it’s entirely exciting for us parents to see them tricks so do not put away your camera right away!

From our article “Baby No More”, we have shared what is a toddler.

Toddler:

Your child is advancing from infancy toward and into the preschool years. As the name implies, a toddler is classically defined as a child who is just learning to walk, or one who toddles.There's no official definition of the upper limit of toddlerhood. However, most people consider the end of the toddler age to be around the time a child is ready to transition into preschool.

This is just the beginning of his active life. Most articles say that at 1 year of age, your baby is considered a toddler because he can now throw and kick a ball, squat, climb and many more. Here are the things you can expect to your one-year-old:

• Your tot uses their five senses to explore everything around them. They make things happen and they love doing them. Once certain activity is done, he will be enthusiastic to do it all over again!

• Tantrums. Tantrums. Tantrums. Since your toddler experience a wide range of emotions to which he is unfamiliar with, he might respond to situations through tantrums. One-year-olds tend to say “NO” all the time because he wants independence and autonomy.

• Finally, he can utter some few words! To fully enhance this, you may read books with him or simply converse with him time to time. Toddlers build their vocabularies by absorbing the language of people around them.

• Simple directions will also be understood by your little one. So you can tell him to shoot the ball or get the bottle or simply lie down.

• As one-year olds play, they start to build their mathematical thinking by recognizing patterns and understanding shapes. For example, they will notice that bathy time means undressing first or milk time is followed by burpees.

• You will see their creative side once you let them play paint and clay. You would also notice them stamp their feet or shake their bodies when they hear catchy music.

• Some of the most obvious changes that you will notice in your child this year are in the area of physical development. Most one-year-olds typically move from crawling to running by about 20 months.

And many more. . .

A toddler is constantly learning how to do new things. And he will learn faster than you can fathom! Give your loving support, a little freedom for him to strive for independence. Soon enough he’ll be a pro, whiz, and an ace about anything he finds interesting. As these developments will take place eventually, we know first hand how fulfilling it would be especially that we are a significant part in every stage he’s into. Then sure enough we’ll utter “Oh, how time flies!”

Source:

http://www.parenting.com/article/toddler-developmental-milestones

Learning don’t only thrives within walls of your home. Yes, early relationship starts at home, but there’s so much your tot can learn outside; when he mingles with other tots or even just by watching them. Everything can be a social opportunity for your toddler -- you just have to guide them all the way. Guiding, though, doesn’t mean you interrupt and push your toddler to do this and that. Most of the time he finds it out on his own. Some child takes pleasure  watching, some interacting. You just have to watch and learn.  
 
One old school way of playing and interacting with other kids is through “tin can phone”. I bet you played this game way back when you were a toddler , too. ​A tin can phone was used as a form of communication using two tin cans or plastic cups attached by a string in the middle. “One person would speak into one side where the other person would hold it up to their ear. The vibrations would travel and therefore the individuals could communicate”  
 
Beyond this mundane and not-so-flashy type of game, your tot can benefit from it especially on the area of “communication”. The more your child talk, the more she learns. She learns the foundation of communication which is to listen. She will also learn to find ways to respond and be heard. Overtime, she will learn to share, take turns, and solve conflicts. And most of all, she will somehow understand, on her level of thinking, what is it like to have a friend and to be a friend to someone.  
 
Here are other communication games that you and your tot and her playmates can do from author Eileen Bailey: Telling Stories.​ Cut out pictures from magazines and place them in a box.  Take turns pulling out one picture and tell a story of what you think is happening in the picture.  Play Feeling Charades.​  Make up cards with as many different feelings as you can think of: Happy, Sad, Angry, Excited, Bored, Scared, Nervous, Unhappy, Tired, Pleased, Interested, Uninterested, etc.  Play Action Charades:​  Make up cards with as many action words as you can think of: Run, Jump, Walk, Hopped, Ran, Skipped, Hurried, Tiptoed, Stir, Stretched, Rolled.

Use puppets.​  Sometimes children find it easier to talk if they are doing it through a puppet.  Have a variety of puppets, some happy, some sad, some silly.  Have your child use the appropriate puppet to tell you about their day. Role Playing.​  Make up cards with different activities.  This can be geared toward whatever age or situation your child is currently going through.  Finish the Story.​  Use pictures from magazines and tell a short story about the picture. Stop the story so that your child can continue it and make their own ending.  A few years down the road, your child will discover that friendship is a process of handling emotions and practicing new skills. And the interactions she has had with you or with her childhood friends through communication and play will have provided the foundation for successful, long-lasting friendships.
 

Source: Games to Help Teach Children Communication Skills. http://www.healthcentral.com/adhd/c/1443/61249/children-communication/