The other morning, I watched Ellie carefully comfort Milo after he bumped his knee. She knelt down at his level, put her hand on his back, and said, “You’re feeling sad right now, aren’t you?” It stopped me in my tracks. Where did she learn that?
Then I remembered my own childhood and the moments I barely noticed at the time but that shaped who I became.
Emotional intelligence isn’t something that just appears. It’s cultivated through hundreds of small moments, the way parents respond when we’re upset, how they handle their own feelings, whether they made space for all our emotions or just the convenient ones.
If you remember your parents doing these seven things, there’s a good chance they helped you develop exceptional emotional intelligence, even if you didn’t realize it at the time.
1) They acknowledged your feelings instead of dismissing them
“Don’t cry, it’s not a big deal.”
“You’re fine, stop making such a fuss.”
“There’s nothing to be scared of.”
Sound familiar? Most of us heard some version of these growing up. But if your parents did the opposite, if they actually acknowledged what you were feeling, you got something precious.
When parents validate emotions, they’re not agreeing with every reaction or condoning every behavior. They’re simply recognizing that the feeling itself is real and acceptable.
Research from Developmental Science examined how emotional validation affects children and found something remarkable: parents who validated their children’s emotions had kids with significantly higher persistence when facing challenges.
The children who received validation exhibited higher levels of determination than those who received invalidation or no feedback at all.
I still remember sitting at the farmers’ market last month, watching a mother crouch down to her crying toddler’s level. Instead of shushing him, she said, “You really wanted that apple, didn’t you? It’s hard when we can’t have what we want.” The child’s tears slowed almost immediately. He’d been seen.
That’s the power of validation. It doesn’t remove the disappointment, but it makes the emotion manageable.
2) They modeled emotional regulation themselves
Here’s something I’m still working on: showing my kids what healthy emotional management actually looks like.
If your parents demonstrated how to handle big feelings, how to take a breath when frustrated, how to say “I need a moment” instead of exploding, you witnessed emotional regulation in action.
Children learn far more from what we do than what we say. When parents model that it’s okay to feel angry but not okay to throw things, that it’s normal to feel overwhelmed but important to find healthy ways to cope, they’re teaching emotional intelligence through example.
Matt does this beautifully. When something goes wrong with a project he’s working on, I’ll hear him say out loud, “Okay, I’m getting frustrated. I’m going to step outside for a few minutes.”
Then he does exactly that. Milo has started mimicking this, announcing “I need space!” when he’s upset and retreating to his room.
The message our parents sent, whether they realized it or not, was that emotions are information, not emergencies. They’re meant to be felt and managed, not feared and suppressed.
3) They encouraged you to name what you were feeling
“You seem upset right now.”
“Are you feeling disappointed?”
“I notice you’re getting frustrated.”
If your parents helped you put words to your internal experience, they gave you one of the most valuable tools for emotional intelligence: the ability to identify what you’re actually feeling.
Many adults struggle to name their emotions beyond “good” or “bad,” “happy” or “sad.” But emotional granularity, the ability to distinguish between feeling anxious versus overwhelmed, disappointed versus hurt, matters tremendously for managing those feelings effectively.
When I taught kindergarten, I kept an emotions chart on the wall. One student would point to it throughout the day, checking in with himself. His parents had clearly made emotional vocabulary a regular part of their home life. He could articulate feelings that many adults struggle to name.
Creating space for children to identify and label what they’re experiencing builds their emotional awareness from the ground up. It turns confusing internal sensations into something understandable and therefore more manageable.
4) They gave you space to feel without trying to fix everything
This one’s hard for most parents, myself included.
Our instinct when our child is hurting is to make it stop immediately. But if your parents resisted that urge and instead sat with you through uncomfortable emotions, they taught you that feelings won’t destroy you.
Sometimes the most powerful thing a parent can do is simply be present. Not offering solutions, not minimizing the problem, not distracting you from the feeling, just staying nearby while you work through it.
I remember being devastated after not making the soccer team in middle school. My mom didn’t tell me I was better off or that the coach was wrong. She sat on my bed and said, “This really hurts, doesn’t it?”
Then she just stayed there while I cried. That moment taught me more about emotional resilience than any pep talk could have.
As parenting researcher John Gottman notes, “emotion coaching” parents who accept emotions and explore them with their children raise kids on entirely different life trajectories. Two kids with the same IQ at age four would have completely different educational achievement by age eight if their parents practiced emotion coaching.
The difference? One learned that emotions are temporary and survivable. The other learned to fear and avoid them.
5) They maintained consistency in how they responded to emotions
One of the most confusing things for a child is emotional unpredictability from parents.
If your sadness was met with comfort on Monday but irritation on Thursday, if your anger was validated sometimes but punished other times, you learned that expressing emotions was risky and unpredictable.
But if your parents responded consistently, you developed emotional security. You knew that showing vulnerability wouldn’t result in rejection one day and acceptance the next.
This doesn’t mean parents need to be perfect or never have bad days. It means they demonstrated a general pattern of emotional availability and responsiveness that you could count on.
Consistency builds trust. And when children trust that their emotions will be met with understanding rather than punishment or dismissal, they develop the confidence to actually feel and process those emotions rather than stuffing them down.
6) They respected boundaries around emotional expression
Not every emotional moment requires processing out loud.
If your parents understood this, if they gave you space to work through things privately when you needed it, they taught you that emotional autonomy matters too.
Some kids need to talk immediately. Others need to retreat, think, and process internally before they’re ready to discuss what happened. Parents who respected these different emotional styles helped their children develop self-awareness about their own needs.
I’ve noticed this with my own two. Ellie wants to talk through everything the moment it happens. Milo needs time alone first. Neither approach is wrong, they’re just different.
Forcing a child to talk before they’re ready can feel intrusive. Respecting their pace, while staying available, teaches them to trust their own emotional rhythms and to recognize what they need to regulate effectively.
7) They demonstrated that all emotions have a place
Anger wasn’t “bad.” Sadness wasn’t weakness. Excitement wasn’t too much. Fear wasn’t shameful.
If your parents communicated, through words and actions, that the full range of human emotion is acceptable and normal, they gave you permission to be fully human.
Too often, we categorize emotions into acceptable and unacceptable. Happy, calm, grateful? Welcome. Angry, sad, anxious? Please keep those to yourself.
But emotional intelligence requires recognizing that every emotion serves a purpose. Anger tells us a boundary has been crossed. Sadness helps us process loss. Fear protects us from danger. Anxiety signals something needs attention.
Parents who made room for all of it, who didn’t shame certain feelings or celebrate only others, raised children who could access their full emotional range as a source of information and wisdom rather than something to be managed and controlled.
I recently read Rudá Iandê’s book Laughing in the Face of Chaos, and one insight particularly resonated with me: “Our emotions are not some kind of extraneous or unnecessary appendage to our lives, but rather an integral part of who we are and how we make sense of the world around us.”
This captures exactly what emotionally intelligent parents understand. Our feelings aren’t obstacles to overcome or problems to solve. They’re essential information, part of what makes us human and helps us navigate the world.
Conclusion
Looking back at how our parents handled emotions can be complicated. Some of us had parents who did these things naturally. Others had parents who struggled but did their best with what they knew. And some of us are still healing from childhood environments where emotions weren’t safe.
The beautiful thing about emotional intelligence is that it’s never too late to develop it. Even if you didn’t receive these gifts in childhood, you can learn these skills now. You can become the person who validates your own feelings, who sits with discomfort, who makes space for the full spectrum of human emotion.
And if you’re raising children, you have the opportunity to give them what you might not have received. To notice when they’re struggling and name it. To stay present when they’re hurting. To model that emotions are meant to be felt, not feared.
We won’t get it right every time. But we’re trying. And in the end, maybe that’s the most important lesson about emotional intelligence: it’s not about perfection, it’s about showing up, staying present, and making room for all the messy, beautiful feelings that make us human.
