Five Benefits Of Emotional Maturity In Parenting

Emotional maturity is the point in our emotional life where we have acquired the necessary skills and experiences to recognize, understand, interact with, and have a healthy and seamless relationship with our emotions.

As children, we know very little about our emotions. But with proper guidance and practice, we will gradually acquire the ability to have a healthy relationship with our emotions. What makes this relationship healthy is that we do not fear or avoid our emotions. Instead, we can interact with them without being drawn into chaos. Furthermore, we can respond to the emotions of other people with empathy, understanding, and tolerance.

In the context of parenting, emotional maturity is seen in our ability to respond to the emotional needs of our children without being defensive or intolerant.

So how do you feel when your child is having a difficult emotional experience?

How do you feel when your child is angry, sad, anxious, or frustrated?

Here Are Five Ways That Emotional Maturity Will Benefit Your Parenting:

Effective Communication

You will be able to have rich and healthy communication with your children because you possess the skills to communicate your thoughts, feelings, and desires to them. Your communication won’t be punctuated with outbursts, ambiguity, and confusion because you know how to manage your emotions and self-soothe.

Your communication will create an atmosphere of trust and healthy bonding, and facilitate open communication, which will enable your children to share their thoughts and feelings freely. You will also be able to listen actively and empathetically, which will help your children feel seen and heard because you have effectively demonstrated to them that what they are saying is important to you.

Effective communication creates room for you to get to know your children. Most parents know very little about their children because they communicate poorly. If a child doesn’t feel safe, he will hide himself, which means you won’t get to know that child.

Healthy Discipline

If you are emotionally mature, you will understand that discipline is a learning process. Providing discipline for your child will be motivated by a desire to teach the child a valuable lesson, not to punish. If you discipline your child from a place of anger and unregulated emotions, you tend to become aggressive and ruin the lesson.

You may deceive yourself into thinking that you have taught the child a lesson, but in the long run, you will realize that the lesson the child learned is how not to regulate his emotions and how to handle issues aggressively.

Emotional maturity helps you to manage your emotions, stay calm, and address your child’s wrongdoings or mistakes in a way that teaches them to do better.

Effective Conflict Resolution

Your emotional maturity will help you recognize and respect the divergent perspectives of your children. Children are entitled to their opinions, interests, and desires. Your child’s opinions should not be unbearable to you; they should rather make you curious, and want to understand the child better.

It is healthy for your child to want something different from what you want. Your child is not meant to be a robot, acquiescing to your whims. If your child’s contrary opinion or desire unsettles you significantly, then you need to look inward to figure out why you feel that way.

Some parents try to force their children to have the same desires, interests, and opinions as them. This robs the child of authenticity. But then, you won’t be comfortable with your child’s authenticity if you are emotionally immature.

With emotional maturity, you will be able to compartmentalize and see things from your child’s perspective without thinking it is a personal attack or a reflection of your failings as a parent. This will enable you to find a middle ground where both of your needs can be met.

Emotional Support

People say you don’t pour from an empty cup. I believe the same can be said about emotional maturity. You will not be able to offer enough emotional support to your children if your cup is empty.

I found that one of the major problems of parenting is when the parent is emotionally immature. It becomes difficult for the parent to nurture the child to emotional maturity, because how can you give what you do not have when you have no idea what it looks or feels like? No wonder some parents and their children end up doing tantrum competitions.

Emotional maturity means you have a filled cup and, as such, have the capacity to support your children emotionally. You can hold space for your children when they experience diverse emotions, especially difficult emotions, without trying to shut them down.

Emotionally immature parents tend to freak out when their children are dealing with difficult emotions. In extreme cases, they may even punish the child for having a bad emotional day. They would do anything they could to put an end to that emotional experience, even if it meant causing physical pain to the child. This is because they lack the maturity required to handle such emotions in themselves, not to mention dealing with them in their children.

For some parents, all is sweet and nice when the child is experiencing pleasant emotions. Pleasant emotions do not unsettle or make them uncomfortable. They like it when everybody is in a happy mood, but they don’t know what to do with a child experiencing difficult emotions, which is why they fall short in supporting their children during those moments.

Effective Modelling

It was Albert Bandura who suggested that children learn through observation, which he called observational learning. It is a major component of his theory of social learning. It suggests that we learn by observing other people.

Children are very good with observation because the moment they step into the world, they start trying to make sense of their environment. They begin to interact with the world through their eyes, mouths, fingers, etc., so believe me when I say that your child is observing you more than you can imagine.

Your child is more likely to learn from your actions than from your words. When your child is faced with the dilemma of choosing either your words or your actions, they are sure to choose your actions.

When you think about it, you will realize that your child learned aggression, yelling, and emotional outbursts from you. As they observe, they learn how you do things, and believe it’s the right way.

That said, when you are emotionally mature, it is easier for you to model emotional regulation, calmness, self-soothing, emotional resilience, etc., for your child. You will understand that it is a journey for your child and that in that journey, you ought to take the lead by showing instead of telling.

Final Word

I understand that you want to do right by your children and believe me, it is achievable. Even if you feel that you do not have the requisite emotional maturity to see your parenting through, it is never too late to start learning. Register for courses on emotional maturity and emotional intelligence. You can contact me at hello@nurturearena.com

I have parent training packages that will help you navigate your parenting challenges. I also offer therapy to help you resolve your childhood and eliminate the things interfering with your parenting.  Finally, read books on emotional maturity and parenting. I believe that when we know better, we will do better, and one way to improve our knowledge is to read. When you fill your cup, you will have enough to give to your children.

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