What if there was a magic potion you could give your children to make them happier, healthier, and more successful?
What if the only side effects were living longer and having better relationships?
What if it was free?
Research shows this miraculous remedy exists. It goes by a lot of names. Depending which expert you ask, you’ll get a veritable smorgasbord of terminology:
• Social emotional learning
• Character strengths
• Emotional intelligence
• Virtues
• EQ
• Ethics
• Morals
• Manners
• People skills
• Prosocial behavior
• Positive psychology
• Old-fashioned right from wrong
For the past 20 years, researchers have been studying the skills and aptitudes that our grandmothers taught us, like kindness, grit, gratitude, and courage. And they’ve found extraordinary effects. Kindness lowers blood pressure. Gratitude raises happiness. Empathy predicts social success.
But perhaps the most amazing thing about all of this research: they’ve uncovered skills and practices that any parent can teach even on their busiest and craziest of days.
That’s why GreatSchools partnered with the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence, one of the country’s leading hubs of curriculum and research on social emotional learning in schools. With their insights and expertise, we created a wealth of diverse articles, videos, and tools to help parents nurture their children’s emotional intelligence one conversation at a time. We’ve got stories of real parents struggling with burning issues (the father who can’t get no respect, the mother watching her daughter fail to make friends, the parent struggling to help her bullied son), a documentary-style series of short videos called Through a child’s eyes about compelling topics like girl friendships and homework battles, a guessing game of videos about emotions called Do you feel me?, tools to quell conflict, and even Mad-Sad-Glad Libs to play on long car rides this summer. Soon, we’ll be adding hidden camera videos, a text messaging program, and even a mobile tool to help you solve that sticky issue that’s been driving you crazy.
At GreatSchools, we care about education. We know that learning is the ticket all children need to embark on a voyage toward their dreams. But we also know that reading, writing, and ‘rithmatic only scratch the surface of what children need to learn in life. A college degree isn’t worth much if you’re paralyzed by anxiety. An impeccable cover letter won’t help if your job references all mention your explosive temper. When we see our children make a friend or learn to resolve a conflict, as parents we know our kids need more than academics to become whole people. They need to learn how to be kind, responsible, and ethical to create the kind of world we all want to live in.
You want to raise a child who is kind, strong, and emotionally intelligent enough to succeed in this world. We’re here to help you.
