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Emotional intelligence is an inherent gift that every child is born with. If this gift is nurtured and protected, life will be fulfilling and heartfelt. If, however, this gift is neglected and undernourished, life will oftentimes become a lonely, confusing struggle.

The emotional intelligence of a growing child is subject to his personal experiences and environment. All babies and children learn through observing and mimicking what they see, and by internalising what others feel and convey in given situations. Fortunately, nature has provided mothers with an almost infallible maternal instinct, which ensures that both biological and emotional needs are met, thus providing children with all they need to mature and grow.

However, it is a sad twist of evolutionary fate that just as our unsullied maternal or paternal instincts contain all the 'knowing' necessary to reach the heart of a child, so too, do the issues that many adults harbour within the psyche, render them somewhat emotionally challenged. Therefore, many parents are ignorant of how their behaviour affects children, how they should discuss feelings or how they should foster the development of a child's self-esteem.

Self- esteem is at the core of emotional intelligence. Where one stands with regard to self-esteem, determines whether one is emotionally aware or, at the other end of the spectrum, emotionally crippled. While nature provides us with nurturing instincts designed to protect the self- esteem of our children, the all too fallible social environment we find ourselves in, can undermine those same instincts and even cut us off from emotional understanding. In this way, many of today's adults were brought up in either an emotional vacuum or varying degrees of emotional chaos. Should we, as adults and parents, remain unaware of the importance of emotional understanding within the family, our own children will suffer from regrettable limitations in their lives; not least those of poor self image and under-achievement .

According to Daniel Goldman (author of 'emotional intelligence'), self-awareness is the first step in a child's emotional development. So, it follows that, as parents, we must become self aware, in order to recognize our own limitations, in the hope of shielding our children from assaults on the psyche. Dramatic as that may sound, it is a commonplace reality for a child to be witness to negative comments, shows of excessive, unpredictable or misplaced anger, conflicting

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