Parenting Book Most Often Recommended by SLC Therapist Christy Kobe, LCSW, CCTP, EMDR Therapist Utah
As a society and as individuals, we often say that our relationships with our kids and our kids' wellbeing are some of the very most important things in our lives.
Yet, what have we done to take an intentional and educated approach to our relationships with our kids and our responsibilities of raising them to be healthy, resilient and well-adjusted adults, who contribute to society and who have good relationships themselves, have the strength to make their own healthy choices, and enjoy their lives?
As a Salt Lake City therapist who specializes in treating parenting issues, I’d like to introduce you to the lesser known parent-child research of well-known researcher John Gottman and his team which studied parents and children in very detailed laboratory studies and then followed the children as they developed. After a decade of this research in the laboratory, the research team encountered a group of parents who did five simple things with their children when their children were emotional which the researchers labeled “Emotion Coaching”. The researchers discovered that the kids who had Emotion Coaching parents were on an entirely different development trajectory than the children of other parents, and these Emotion Coaching parents had children who became what emotional intelligence expert Daniel Goleman calls “emotionally intelligent” people.
John Gottman and his team’s longitudinal research identified that the Emotion Coached children were better able to:
-Control their impulses
-Delay gratification
-Motivate themselves
-Read other people’s social cues
-Cope with life’s ups and downs
-Regulate their own emotional states
-Soothe themselves when upset
-Problem solve when faced with emotionally difficult situations
-Recover from unpleasant emotions
-Bounce back from stress
-Calm their heart rates quickly
-Focus their attention
-Relate with others, even in difficult situations like being teased
-Understand others
-Take on responsibility
-Carry on productive activities
Emotion Coached children were also shown to have:
-Better physical health
-Higher academic scores
-Fewer behavior problems
-Fewer discipline problems with parents
-Better friendships with other children
-More effective skills for forming and maintaining healthy relationships
-Less predisposition to violence and fewer incidences of aggression
-Fewer problems with peers
-Better general abilities in the area of their own emotions
-Fewer negative feelings
-More positive feelings
-A stronger desire to please their parents
-An added buffer against emotional events of trauma like divorce, abuse, and other losses/conflicts
-Closer relationships with their Emotion Coaching parents which include respect, deeper intimacy, and more collaboration between parent and child
Many parents tell me it would be worth it to them to use this process with their kids even if they gained only two or three of these benefits for their kids.
Here are the five steps of Emotion Coaching process.
The parents:
Become aware of the child’s emotion;
Recognize the emotion as an opportunity for intimacy and teaching;
Listen empathetically, validating the child’s feelings;
Help the child find words to label the emotion she/he/they are having; and
Set limits while exploring strategies to solve the problem at hand.
I’ve been teaching this Emotion Coaching process to parents and coaching them in fine tuning how they use it with each unique child for nearly 25 years now. My formal training in parenting education began in the social work profession in 1997 when I was employed as a parenting educator, and I continued to specialize in parenting throughout my master’s of social work degree from 2001-2003 which is when I was first introduced to this research and the Emotion Coaching method and began teaching it formally to parents.
Throughout my social work career and my career as a Salt Lake City therapist, I have continued to be passionate about the parent-child relationship. One reason I love assisting people with improving the parent-child relationship is because I have found that assisting parents in improving their parenting, and their relationships and communication with their children can have long-lasting, far-reaching and incredibly meaningful impacts on both parents and children, and those improvements often have positive ripple effects in the other areas of their lives.
I have also witnessed that applying this simple process is one of the best ways—and one of the simplest ways—you can improve your relationship with your child AND improve your child's well-being and life skills.
I strive to provided the highest quality and most up-to-date therapy services that I can as a SLC therapist so I have continued to study and obtain advanced training and certification in over the past 25+ years regarding therapeutic work with parents and their children. Even with all of the training and education I’ve completed in parenting and even though I literally have bookshelves full of parenting books, the book I continue to recommend most often and most highly is Raising an Emotionally Intelligent Child by John Gottman PhD with Joan DeClaire.
You can learn more about the research on Emotion Coaching and the Emotion Coaching process in John Gottman and Joan DeClaire’s book: Raising an Emotionally Intelligent Child: The Heart of Parenting which you can purchase if you’d like by clicking the photo of it here on this page.
One of the primary reasons I recommend this book so highly, and more often than any other parenting book, to those I work with is that many research studies have shown that emotional intelligence (a.k.a. Emotional Intelligence Quotient or EQ) is the best predictor of how a child will develop and turn out as an adult.
This book teaches and simplifies the research-validated process of enabling your child to develop that emotional intelligence, using decades of research from parent-child pairs in which the child developed high levels of emotional intelligence.
Second, as most parents are aware, there are a LOT of parenting books out there. However, this is one of the most research-based parenting books available, and it gives you tools to better understand your parenting style as well as information to help you to focus on the interactions, relationship factors and communication that matter the most with your child. Gottman and his colleagues’ research has found that even a non-custodial parent using this process can be enough to develop emotional intelligence in their child.
Finally, I recommend this book so often and so highly because the Emotion Coaching process can be applied with a child of any age—even with adult children who have children of their own when done with respect and some sophistication—which is particularly useful because during most of our parenting journey, our kids are adults and there are not many books that help us to improve our bond with our kids once they become adults. All of these reasons makes this book my very favorite for parenting and I highly recommend it to you.
If you recognize that you could use additional assistance, support and guidance beyond what this book can provide, please reach out to me here through my contact form to get in touch with me most quickly, or you may also email or call me to request to schedule your 45 minute phone consultation to explore how I could assist you.
If you’d like more information about the therapy process, please click here to read this article which answers some of the most common questions I receive as a Salt Lake City therapist and Utah EMDR therapist.
Choosing a therapist who is a good fit for you is a really important part of the process of therapy. If you would like to learn more about the traits, behaviors and struggles of the clients with whom I’ve achieved the most transformative outcomes and best results in my work as a SLC therapist and trauma therapist in Salt Lake City, read this article.
If you want to learn more about how trauma affects you and how EMDR therapy can help, click here.
Author Bio
Christy Kobe, LCSW, CCTP, EMDR Therapist Utah, is a Salt Lake City therapist who has been practicing in the SLC area since Spring 2003. In addition to completing her licensure as a Licensed Clinical Social Worker (LCSW), Christy has completed certification as a Certified Clinical Trauma Professional (CCTP), completed training and certification as an EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing) Therapist which you can learn more about here, completed in-depth clinical training on Polyvagal Theory Informed Trauma Therapy, completed a certification training to help clients struggling to deal with an individual with a personality disorder in their lives, completed all of the Gottman Couples Method Therapy trainings through The Gottman Institute which you can learn more about here, completed a certificate in Trauma-Informed Parent Child Interaction Therapy at The Trauma Center in Boston, MA, and completed extensive clinical training on the treatment of trauma and attachment taught by international experts on these subjects.
She works with sensitive, high achieving, perfectionistic, or progressive women who are stressed, overwhelmed, burned out, and afraid they are about to break which you can learn more about here. She is especially passionate about working with clients who have experienced complex trauma, childhood trauma, relational trauma, or religious trauma, including developmental trauma, preverbal trauma, and emotional neglect. You can learn more about her unique approach and what it’s like to work with her here. Please reach out to request a consultation if you would like to explore the possibility of partnering with her as your therapist.
Toddler-aged child being kissed on the cheek by their dad—SLC Therapist Christy Kobe, LCSW, CCTP, EMDR Therapist Utah
Teen child hugging their mom——SLC Therapist Christy Kobe, LCSW, CCTP, EMDR Therapist Utah
Please note that I will receive a small amount on purchases made from my website in return for directing people to the books I recommend most highly as a therapist. However, I have been recommending these books and others to my clients, friends and family as long as I have been working in the social work and therapy professions. And, I would (and will) continue to recommend these particular books even if I don’t receive any compensation whatsoever.