Parenting

At the Gottman Institute™, we understand that parenting is one of the most important, intense challenges adults with children have. In the preface to Dr. Gottman’s book on parenting, Raising an Emotionally Intelligent Child, he explains, “Before I became a father, I had spent nearly twenty years working in the field of developmental psychology, studying the emotional lives of children. But it was not until our child arrived in 1990 that I began to truly understand the realities of the parent-child relationship.” Intense love. Frustration. Joy. Disappointment. Vulnerability.

“Surprisingly,” Dr. Gottman explains that, “much of today’s popular advice to parents ignores emotion. Instead it relies on child-rearing theories that address children’s misbehavior, but disregards the feelings that underlie that misbehavior. The ultimate goal of raising children should not be simply to have an obedient and compliant child. Most parents hope for much more for their children. They want their children to be moral and responsible people who contribute to society, who have the strength to make their own choices in life, who enjoy accomplishments of their own talents, who enjoy life and the pleasures it can offer, who have good relationships with friends and successful marriages, and who themselves become good parents.

“In my research I discovered that love by itself wasn’t enough. We found that concerned, warm, and involved parents often had attitudes toward their emotions and their children’s emotions that got in the way of talking to their children when the child was sad or afraid or angry. The secret to being an emotionally intelligent parent’ lay in how parents interacted with their children when emotions ran hot.” –adapted from pp. 15-16, Raising an Emotionally Intelligent Child by John Gottman with Joan DeClaire.

Dr. Gottman’s research has also shown that an important element to successful parenting was based on how parents interacted with each other when emotions ran hot. Dr. Gottman and other researchers have observed that children benefit the most when parents have a strong relationship. “It isn’t so much about staying married for the sake of the kids. Couples need to stay happily married, if they can, in order to help their children. In families where the parents aren’t living with each other or are not going to stay married, the parents can best help their children by minimizing their children’s exposure to destructive conflict. High levels of parental conflict create emotional distress on the children and decrease effective parenting skills.

The Gottman Institute provides support to families by providing parenting tools that are based on Dr. Gottman’s research. Below are several support options offered through the Gottman Institute.

Products
The Gottman Institute has developed educational products, including videotapes, audiotapes, and books, to help couples and families improve and repair their relationships. These products are based on scientific evidence gathered from studies on families, parents and couples. The products are easy-to-use, accessible, and entertaining. For further information on Parenting Products, click on the link above.

Research on Parenting
For fifteen years Dr. Gottman and his colleagues at the Family Research Laboratory at the University of Washington have studied parents and children in detailed laboratory studies and followed the development of the children over many years. Dr. Gottman has made numerous discoveries about the powerful impact that emotional processes in families can have on children and their parents. Research on emotion coaching, the impact of marital discord, and the transition to parenthood are all elements of Dr. Gottman's research agenda. To read more on Dr. Gottman’s studies on Parenting, click on the link above.

 Bringing Baby Home Research Project
The "Bringing Baby Home" project at the Relationship Research Institute is a research study on the transition to parenthood involving families from the Puget Sound area in Washington. This study will help us learn more about the changes couples go through as they become parents, and it will lead to methods for helping parents make the transition to parenting with greater ease and success. This study is being conducted at Swedish Hospital in Seattle where we are testing several interventions for helping families when a child is on the way.