John Gottman
and the emotion coach
From John Gottman, QUID+ has learned the importance of the parent's function as an emotion coach, i.e. able to recognise their child's difficult emotions and help her to regulate them in order to regain a state of calm.
John Gottman is an American psychologist, professor emeritus of psychology at the University of Washington, known for his studies on the parent-child relationship. Drawing on the themes of emotional intelligence developed by Daniel Goleman, Gottman identifies in particular the role of the parent as an “emotion coach”. He advocates taking children's emotions seriously, a task that requires empathy, listening skills and a desire to see things from their perspective. The parent-coach does not attempt to shield the child from experiencing any “difficult” emotions, but validates those emotions and helps the child to work through them, so as to develop self-regulation, recover from disappointments and internalise an appropriate behavioural pattern.
