Raising a child in today’s fast-paced, achievement-driven world is no small feat. While many parents focus on grades and extracurriculars, one of the most overlooked skills is emotional intelligence.

This doesn’t just help kids excel socially; it helps them grow into resilient, empathetic, and successful adults who can navigate challenges with confidence, foster meaningful relationships, and lead fulfilling lives.

So, what do parents who raise emotionally intelligent kids do differently? After years of studying over 200 parent-child relationships — and from practicing healthy habits with my own child — I’ve uncovered seven powerful strategies that these parents embraced early on.

They gave their child space to process their feelings and trust their inner voice. When their child was upset, they sat quietly beside them, offering comfort without words. Embracing silence can help children better navigate and reflect on their emotions.

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By verbally sharing feelings — like “I’m frustrated” or “I’m happy” — they taught their children emotional awareness and gave them words to express themselves. This helped their children see emotions as normal and share them openly rather than suppressing them.

They showed their child that mistakes are part of life and taking responsibility is a strength. Apologizing built trust and showed respect, making their child feel valued. It also modeled empathy and taught them how to repair relationships.

This might sound unconventional, but they knew kindness and respect can’t be forced. Instead, they modeled these behaviors, trusting their child to learn by example. If their child forgot to say thank you, the parent said it for them, confident the lesson would stick over time.

This takes a lot of bravery! But as a parenting coach, I’ve never told my 6-year-old to say please or thank you. Now he says it all the time on his own — because he hears me say it.

They took their child’s concerns seriously, whether it was a lost toy or trouble with a friend. By validating their feelings, they showed their child that emotions matter. This fostered self-worth, emotional safety, and respect for their experiences.

The best way to teach decision-making is to encourage children to make their own decisions. Instead of fixing problems, they asked, “What do you think we should do?” This helped boost critical thinking, confidence, and independence.

They let their child get bored, which helped them become comfortable with stillness. This built creativity, self-regulation and problem-solving skills. Their child learned to enjoy their own company and find joy in simple moments, like staring out the car window instead of needing a screen.

• Modeling the behaviors you want to see: Express your emotions openly, apologize when you make mistakes, and show kindness and empathy in your interactions.
• Validate your child’s feelings, no matter how small they may seem, and give them the space to process those emotions without rushing to fix or dismiss them. 
• Encourage problem-solving by asking open-ended questions instead of providing all the answers.
• Let them experience moments of stillness or boredom to build creativity and self-regulation.

Most importantly, focus on building a relationship rooted in respect and trust — because emotional intelligence starts with feeling safe, valued, and understood.

Reem Raouda is a certified conscious parenting coach, mother, and creator of BOUND — the first and only parent-child connection journal designed to nurture emotional intelligence and self-worth in children. She has transformed hundreds of families through her courses, coaching and tools. Follow her on Instagram. 

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When Aron Olegnowicz-Cruz thinks about his future, he foresees getting his MBA and working in business. But for now, the 22-year-old works as a special education teacher at an elementary charter school in Columbus, Ohio.

Olegnowicz-Cruz is in his first of two years teaching with Teach for America , the nonprofit that recruits recent college grads to teach in underserved schools across the U.S.

Olegnowicz-Cruz, who studied political science and psychology at the Ohio State University and took a pre-MBA summer fellowship at Harvard Business School, hadn’t planned to teach. Then he learned about TFA from through the Association of Latino Professionals for America.

He learned that taking a teaching job today could help him achieve his personal and long-term career goals.

TFA has its fair share of critics, including those who say it fails to help low-income students access qualified teachers, and that corp members’ two-year commitments accelerate turnover in areas that need stability. Meanwhile, supporters say the program brings people from elite backgrounds into the classroom and can encourage a new wave of leaders to join the education system overall.

Teaching isn’t exactly a low-stakes profession: It’s notorious for its low pay, burnout rates and staff shortages.

For its part, TFA has worked to address common challenges and appeal to Gen Z college grads, who like Olegnowicz-Cruz are increasingly concerned about their post-college financial stability and work-life balance while making a meaningful, positive impact early in their careers.

Though he had the option to teach in Miami or New York, Olegnowicz-Cruz was happy to learn that he could stay and teach in Columbus, where he says having friends and family nearby have helped him avoid the post-college isolation of moving to a new community.

Plus, he says his $49,000 yearly starting salary helps him live comfortably there, whereas he felt the local pay in pricier cities wouldn’t have stretched as far.

“I am a big advocate of diving into the unknown and the thrill of meeting new people in a new chapter,” he says. “But I also understand that in the undertaking of a job as emotionally demanding as teaching, especially in an underserved school, I wanted to make those factors a little bit easier on myself and stick with something that would bring me comfort.”

Olegnowicz-Cruz began TFA training last summer to develop instructional skills and completed an onboarding intensive at his placement school prior to working with students. He meets the requirements set by the Ohio State Board of Education and is licensed to teach special education.

Olegnowicz-Cruz gets to school by 7:30 a.m. every day to prepare for classes starting at 9. Throughout the day, students visit his classroom for one-on-one specialized sessions to work toward their learning goals, whether it’s learning how to read or better understanding the math lessons their general education classroom is learning.

Olegnowicz-Cruz also visits some students in their classrooms throughout the day to provide individualized instruction to students alongside their general education teacher.

He sees a handful of students every day, with breaks to supervise recess, until class dismisses at 4:15 p.m. He spends the rest of his afternoon lesson-planning, holding meetings with teachers, reaching out to students’ families, and overall keeping track of the progress his students are making. It’s a “lucky” day when he can leave school by 6 p.m., when he says a visit to the gym helps him physically and mentally decompress.

The biggest challenges of his job are things beyond his control, like when students arrive late to school because of unreliable transportation issues. His schedule, while blocked out for every minute, must also be flexible to fit in students who arrive late or have to move their session with him to another time.

For every challenge is also a bright spot, especially one-on-one reading sessions with his students, who range from 4 to 10 years old, Olegnowicz-Cruz says: “That’s got to be the most emotionally rewarding part of the job, is teaching kids how to read.”

Ultimately, Olegnowicz-Cruz says he’s inspired to teach thinking about how supportive teachers shaped his own life. Olegnowicz-Cruz was born in Mexico and moved to Ohio when he was young; he learned English through public school and was encouraged to take on leadership roles through extra-curriculars, eventually acting as president and founder of multiple student groups in college.

In the same way, Olegnowicz-Cruz hopes to inspire his students to work hard and hold high expectations for themselves to set and achieve their own goals.

By the end of his time as a corp member, Olegnowicz-Cruz will receive a $13,000 education stipend from AmeriCorp and TFA, which he’ll apply toward earning his MBA or pursuing a year-long masters degree in leadership through program in China. He’s also been offered a business consulting internship in Washington, D.C., for the summer.

As for his future in business, Olegnowicz-Cruz is most interested in economic development and supporting access to high-quality education across the global south, including across Africa, Asia and Latin America.

“The job that I have right now is super rewarding,” he says, “and I know that everything that I’m learning, not just in terms of organizing my day-to-day, but stakeholder management, working with data, all these transferable skills are a big asset to where I want to go and the impact that I want to drive on a systemic level.”

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The foods you eat every day impact your mood, your weight and even your sleep. And as you’re setting New Year’s resolutions, you may be considering the changes you can make to your diet to better your health and wellness.

The U.S. News & World Report aims to make that easier by ranking the healthiest ways to eat at the top of each year. “If your goal is to manage your weight long term and eat healthfully, try one of these science-backed diets that work,” they state in their Best Diets of 2025 report.

A panel of 69 diet and nutrition experts, ranked 38 diets based on these criteria:

• Nutritional completeness
• Health risks and benefits
• Long-term sustainability
• Evidence-based effectiveness

Here are the diets that landed in the top 10, and why No. 1 is often recommended by health experts.

The Mediterranean diet finds its way in the top spot of the U.S. News & World Report’s best diets’ lists often. That has everything to do with how great following the diet can be for your health.

The diet is mostly plant-based, diabetes-friendly and heart-healthy, according to the report. And it is known to help reduce the likelihood of developing conditions like heart disease and Type 2 diabetes.

Here’s what to reach for, and what to avoid, when following the Mediterranean diet.

Eat:

• Fruits
• Vegetables
• Whole grains
• Beans
• Nuts
• Healthy fats
• Fish
• Poultry

Limit:

• Sweets
• Processed foods
• Red meat

But the Mediterranean diet isn’t the only one that experts suggest. Here are the top 10 best diets for 2025, according to the U.S. News & World Report.

1. Mediterranean diet
2. DASH diet
3. Flexitarian diet
4. MIND diet
5. Mayo Clinic diet
6. TLC diet
7. Menopause diet
8. Dr. Weil’s Anti-Inflammatory diet
9. Volumetrics diet
10. Cleveland Clinic diet

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This story is part of CNBC Make It’s Ditching the Degree series, where women who have built six-figure careers without a bachelor’s degree reveal the secrets of their success. Got a story to tell? Let us know! Email us at AskMakeIt@cnbc.com.

Ten years ago, Shanelle Gibson was working 12-hour shifts sorting and folding clothes in a warehouse. She almost gave up on finding her dream job.

Gibson, then 23, watched online as her friends celebrated graduating from college, landing their first corporate jobs and moving to new cities. 

Gibson nearly joined them. She spent one year studying at Valdosta State University in Valdosta, Georgia before dropping out, as she couldn’t stomach the debt she’d accrue pursuing a bachelor’s degree. 

That decision marked the start of what Gibson calls her “soul-searching years,” a period in her early 20s filled with “hard, unfulfilling” jobs after leaving school and moving to Atlanta. 

She worked in a warehouse, a pizza kitchen, a day care, and even spent six months in the Air Force before being discharged for medical reasons. Yet nothing clicked.

Looking back, Gibson says she doesn’t regret those years. They ultimately led her to a career she loves in tech and product development.

Gibson has been working in tech since 2016. Now 33, she’s a lead scrum master at a small health-care firm, working full time from her home in Loganville, Georgia. 

She earns about $132,000 in her role, according to financial documents reviewed by CNBC Make It — a salary that Gibson says would have been “unimaginable” at this point in her career, had she continued working in the jobs she had in her 20s, which paid no more than $15 an hour. 

Here’s how Gibson pivoted her career and earns six figures without a bachelor’s degree:

One morning in 2015, during yet another long shift at the warehouse, Gibson says she looked up from the pair of chinos she was folding and had a sudden realization: She’d been approaching her career all wrong.

“I just had this ‘aha moment’ where I looked around at these mountains of boxes and tired people working alongside me and thought, ’I shouldn’t be here, I feel like I’m destined for more than this minimum wage job I’m not happy in,” Gibson recalls. “That propelled me to quit and just start applying everywhere.”

Desperate for a change, she posted her resume on Craigslist. A manager at ParkingSoft, a parking management software startup, saw her resume and invited her to interview for an open phone dispatcher role at their Atlanta office.

Gibson landed the job and quickly stood out. Within weeks, she was promoted to customer support analyst after her boss noticed how she proactively solved customer problems instead of merely forwarding calls to the service team.

“That job started my tech career,” she says. “All of the technical skills I learned doing that job – from SQL [a programming language] to JIRA [project tracking software] made me a more confident, competitive candidate for higher-paying tech jobs, even without a degree.” 

After leaving ParkingSoft in 2019, Gibson spent the next two years in various technical support and project management roles at companies like Ceredian Dayforce and United Healthcare. 

But over time, she grew restless with the monotony of customer support tasks.

A friend suggested she explore becoming a scrum master, a role focused on coaching product development teams and guiding Agile processes — a framework for flexible, iterative project management. 

The idea appealed to Gibson, who wanted more challenging work that leveraged her problem-solving skills. In 2021, Gibson earned her scrum master certification through Scrum Alliance, completing a two-day course that cost about $400. 

Shortly after, she landed her first scrum master role at UnitedHealthcare. In 2022, she joined her current company as a lead scrum master.

Gibson maintains a typical 9-to-5 schedule while working from home, sometimes logging on earlier or later, depending on her workload.

“It’s honestly the perfect job for an introvert like me,” she says. “I concentrate better in quiet spaces, it allows me to be more creative; I don’t need to be the most outspoken or energetic person to be a great scrum master.”

It’s also the first job where Gibson earns more than $100,000 a year. For her, crossing the six-figure threshold was “pretty shocking,” she says. 

“I knew that I was capable and hardworking, but society tells us that you need a college degree to land a high-paying job,” she continues. “Hitting that milestone helped me realize that there’s no special formula to earning six figures; it’s up to you to decide how hard you’re willing to work toward that goal and not let something like a degree requirement limit you.”

The technical skills Gibson learned in the scrum master course — working in different Agile software, and online project management — played a big role in her ability to transition into this field without a bachelor’s degree. Equally important, however, were the soft skills she developed in retail and customer service, including problem-solving and time management.

Gibson’s biggest piece of advice for others hoping to land a high-paying job without a bachelor’s degree? Don’t underestimate the value of your transferable skills, and the power of a positive mindset in chasing your career goals. 

“Whether you succeed in college or not doesn’t define who you are as a person,” she says. “You can read books, and take boot camps online, there are so many ways to improve your skills. Whatever it is that you want to do, if you have the right attitude and put the work in, you’ll achieve it.”

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In 2020, Isaac French, 27, and his family purchased a train car that had been sitting abandoned on a neighbor’s farm in Deary, Idaho. They paid just $3,000.

Train car number 306 was built in the 1900s and originally ran on the Washington Idaho & Montana Railway from 1909 until the 1950s. When the family got their hands on it, the wood was rotting, algae was growing and about 20 cats were living inside, French tells CNBC Make It.

″[My dad] had the faith and the vision for it and I’m so glad he did,” he says. “There’s something so rewarding about taking an old structure that was so lovingly built, and breathing life back into it.”

The family took out a $150,000 loan, including $3,000 to purchase the train car and $10,000 to move the 61-feet-long structure onto their 145-acre property.

“It’s just a beautiful, secluded place in nature,” French says. “We chose the highest point on our property so that we could capture these epic views.”

French and his family spent the rest of the loan, $137,000, and six months renovating the structure with the goal of turning it into an Airbnb.

“I believe that travelers today are seeking experiences and you want to have a story. The more rich a story you can tell through a stay, through a property, the better the experience will be,” he says.

The French family didn’t list the train car on Airbnb just because they wanted to make some money, but because it was a passion project.

“We just felt like this is the right thing to do. This is what excites us and we think it’s going to excite other people too,” French says.

The renovation included turning the old passenger room into a sitting area and the mailroom into a bedroom. “Our guests absolutely love it,” French says.

“They wake up in the morning and look straight out onto these beautiful panoramic views of the countryside. It’s a really epic place to sleep.”

They also added a kitchenette with a gas potbelly stove and a bathroom, and refurbished the floors and furniture.

Guests also have access to a mirrored sauna, hot tub, and firepit right on the grounds.

“The idea is to reflect the nature surroundings,” French says. “Since we had these beautiful pine trees and this spectacular view, we thought it would be a cool juxtaposition of new and old.”

When French opened up reservations on Airbnb, it was an instant success. Within the first week, the Restored 1909 Train Carriage was booked out for several months. Stays range from $325 to $350 a night.

“I think all of our dreams were surpassed with the reception of it and how fun it was for us to do as a family,” French says. “It was rewarding to see all of that hard work and that investment be validated so quickly.”

In its first year, the train car had 90% occupancy and $14,179 in revenue. Since then, revenue has increased to between $75,000 and $110,000 a year, according to documents reviewed by CNBC Make It.

In 2024, the train car generated $110,172 in revenue from Airbnb and was booked for 140 nights on the platform.

It has a profit margin of about 65%, with 30 to 35% of overall revenue going to cleaning costs, ongoing small maintenance and repairs, property taxes, and insurance.

In addition to Airbnb, French and his family take reservations for the train car online. “We can have more of a relationship with the guests,” French says. “With Airbnb, it feels more like a transaction, whereas [the direct booking] allows for more of a relationship that we can build.”

Despite the popularity, French says they don’t plan on raising the price per night any time soon. They find it fulfilling to host people from all over who want to experience a piece of history.

“Our best experience in hosting has been the thanks that almost every other guest sends to us for taking care of this piece of history,” French’s father, Webb, tells CNBC Make It.

With the revenue from the train car, French says they recently paid off the loan they took out to finance the train car project.

Instead of paying themselves, the family are investing the money into the train car and the overall guest experience. “It’s hard to overestimate how hungry the general public is for story-driven, one-of-a-kind stays, and restoration projections are one of the best ways to get here,” French says.

“Even if you don’t have a background in restoration or hospitality, if you have a passion to host other people, to delight them, to surprise them, then you can create one of these because that’s what hospitality is all about.”

French’s best advice for those looking to emulate what he and his family have done with this rental property is to open your eyes and make connections: “There are a lot of opportunities right under people that they don’t even realize because they’ve always been there and are out of the box.”

He says to “talk to your neighbor. Your neighbor may be the person to partner with if you don’t have any money or if you don’t have the experience your neighbor might.”

Though the 1909 Train Carriage was a pretty unique find for the family, French advises that you just never know what’s out there and what you might feel drawn to creatively: “How many old buildings and old stories and old train cars are just sitting out there waiting to be discovered and loved?”

’I think that’s the key,” he says. “You have to have some love and some inspiration to participate in a project like this and breathe new life into it.”

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