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Balancing IQ and emotional intelligence
Emotional Intelligence Quotient (EQ) has of late become a popular concept in the field of educational psychology
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Emotional Intelligence Quotient (EQ) has of late become a popular concept in the field of educational psychology. Emotional intelligence helps explain why people can, for example, succeed academically, but still exhibit poor work performance and have poor social skills.
What constitutes a precise definition of emotional intelligence is still disputable. Yet, psychologists such as John D. Mayer and Peter Salovey have offered a useful definition of emotional intelligence as the capacity to reason about emotions, and of using emotions to enhance thinking. It includes the ability to accurately perceive emotions, to access and generate emotions so as to assist thought, to understand emotions and emotional knowledge, and to reflectively regulate emotions so as to promote emotional and intellectual growth.
It is commonly assumed that there is no one-to-one correlation between Intelligence Quotient (IQ) and Emotional Intelligence Quotient (EQ). That is, intellectually gifted people (those with a high IQ) may not necessarily exhibit high EQ.
Despite the trend favoring EQ particularly in the field of educational psychology, teachers and parents today seem unwilling to swing the pendulum. They still cling to the old paradigm - the pursuit and development of mere academic achievement.
This is probably caused by the prevalent opinion that intellectual ability matters most for children's future careers. Children with a high IQ are believed to be likely to enjoy more success once they are deployed in the work place as compared to those with a low IQ.
In fact, the search for early intellectual talent is common in preschools here. Intellectually gifted children are still the ones the teacher praises in school, and the ones the parents dream of at home.
Preschool age has been perceived as the golden period for parents to begin efforts to uncover their child's true potential in such areas as language, mathematics, physics and music.
The more parents discover about their children's talents, the more demanding they become. Sadly, their demands are often unrealistic, forcing children to fulfill their parents ambitions.
After discovering that their children have exceptional ability, parents are generally not satisfied with what their children get at school, fearing that the schools cannot fully cater to their children's intellectual needs.
Parents who are overly concerned about their children's intellectual development almost always have an array of alternatives to help their children excel academically.
Some parents opt for private tutoring, while others enroll their children in courses not offered at school.
Parents cannot be faulted for dreaming that their child will become the next Einstein or Newton, but they must also be aware that their child's IQ may not match his or her social and emotional age.
Although children, often to their parents' surprise, show signs of exceptional ability at an early age, they have yet to mature socially and emotionally.
Clearly, striking a balance between intellectual ability and emotional maturity is something parents need to help facilitate to help their children to develop into an emotionally mature adult. This can start at home where a parental guidance is most important.
Parents can help facilitate their children's emotional growth by starting with simple things such as sympathizing with them when they are given a tough school assignment, finding out why they loathe certain school subjects, by giving them genuine praise even if they fail a school assignment and respecting their frustration when they struggle with schoolwork.
Essentially, parents need to understand their youngsters' psychological state, and not burden them with a hectic schedule of extra academic activities.
Understanding children, as Gerda K. Wanei, child psychologist from Atma Jaya University, says, is the key not only to building their character, but also to enhancing their emotional intelligence.
Drawing insights from her own research and observations, Gerda notes that children of parents who are eager to push them into pursuing academic knowledge and to be the top of their class, may experience what she calls academic stress.
To avoid boredom, apathy, and aversion to learning, and at the same time help enhance a child's intellectual growth, it is necessary for parents to be realistic and clear in their expectations, and more importantly to strike a balance between IQ and EQ.
-The writer is chief-editor of Indonesian Journal of English Language Teaching and teaches English composition at Atma Jaya Catholic University, Jakarta. He can be reached at setiono.sugiharto@atmajaya.ac.id.
