We know that raising emotionally intelligent kids sets them up for future success. The challenge is that many of us were never taught those skills ourselves.

Growing up, many of us heard phrases like “stop crying,” “calm down,” or “be good.” Over time, those messages taught us to suppress feelings rather than understand them. As adults and parents, we often find ourselves trying to teach emotional skills we never had the chance to learn.

But children today can develop emotional intelligence through everyday interactions with the adults around them. The conversations we have, the questions we ask, and the sense of safety they feel at home all shape how they understand emotions.

After years studying more than 200 parent-child relationships, I’ve found that certain questions consistently help children build emotional awareness, resilience and empathy.

Here are 10 powerful questions parents can ask:

Children often experience emotions in their bodies before they have the language to describe them. Asking this question helps them begin noticing those signals.

A nervous child may mention a stomachache. Excitement might show up as a warm face or a fast heartbeat. Recognizing these sensations helps children build awareness of their emotional state.

Children start to see that emotions are connected to experiences. Feelings begin to make sense when they can link them to something that happened.

A child might explain that they felt proud after finishing a project or frustrated during a disagreement with a friend. These connections help them understand their emotions and respond to them more effectively.

Empathy grows when children pay attention to the emotions of others. This question encourages them to notice facial expressions, tone of voice and behavior. The hope is that they become more aware that emotions exist not only within themselves but also in the people around them.

Many children associate pride only with winning or performing well. This question helps shift their attention toward their personal qualities.

Children begin recognizing things like kindness, persistence or generosity as reasons to feel proud. That awareness supports a stronger sense of self-worth.

If they have trouble answering, gentle prompts can help:

• “Are you proud of how kind you were today?”
• “Are you proud of how hard you tried?”
• “Are you proud of helping your friend?”

This question encourages children to think about their needs during difficult moments.

A child might say they want a hug, someone to sit beside them or a little quiet space. Expressing these preferences helps them learn that their needs matter and can be communicated.

Emotional intelligence includes learning how to calm the body during stressful moments.

Children begin identifying what works best for them. Some feel better after taking deep breaths. Others feel calmer after talking with a parent, hugging a stuffed animal, moving their body or spending a few quiet minutes alone.

Recognizing these strategies helps children approach strong emotions with more confidence.

This question introduces children to the idea of an inner voice.

Young kids often benefit from hearing examples of supportive self-talk. Parents can model phrases like:

• “You can try again.”
• “Mistakes help you learn.”
• “You’re safe.”
• “You’re doing your best.”

With repetition, children begin using these phrases themselves, which strengthens resilience.

Children learn that empathy involves action. Caring for someone else’s feelings often appears in simple behaviors.

They might mention listening to a friend, asking “Are you okay?”, sharing a toy or sitting with someone who feels lonely. These everyday actions help children practice kindness in concrete ways.

This question helps children think about the qualities that define who they are.

Parents can mention traits like creativity, curiosity, humor, thoughtfulness or bravery and ask which ones feel true to them. Recognizing these qualities supports a healthy sense of identity that isn’t tied to comparison or achievement.

Reem Raouda is a leading voice in conscious parenting and the creator of the BOUND and FOUNDATIONS journals, now offered together as her Emotional Safety Bundle. She is widely recognized for her expertise in children’s emotional well-being and for redefining what it means to raise emotionally healthy kids. Find her on Instagram.

Want to give your kids the ultimate advantage? Sign up for CNBC’s new online course, How to Raise Financially Smart Kids. Learn how to build healthy financial habits today to set your children up for greater success in the future.

Neither of my parents had corporate jobs. I didn’t absorb the unwritten rules of the workplace at family dinners. But I did have a relentless curiosity about how influence actually works. 

That led me to become a licensed therapist and executive coach, research human behavior, and write my book, “Managing Up: How to Get What You Need From the People in Charge.” 

What I’ve discovered from coaching thousands of top performers is that you can be 10, 15 or even 20 years into your career and still feel like you’re missing the handbook on how to be taken seriously.  

If you want to be seen as operating at the next level, even before you have the title, here are the six things you need to do that 99% of people miss.

These principles of influence apply whether you’re navigating the office, family dynamics, or personal relationships. The ability to package your ideas and communicate decisively changes how people perceive and respond to you in every setting.

You might have the best insights. But if you don’t frame them in terms decision-makers care about most, your message will fall flat. 

Stop communicating about the tasks you’ve accomplished and instead focus on outcomes. For instance, “We analyzed the data and updated the slides,” can become, “The numbers show that if we go with option B, we’ll see a 15% return on investment.” 

When you over-explain, you think you’re being thorough, but to everyone else, it sounds like rambling. More information doesn’t always add value. 

Being concise shows command of the topic. If you can’t boil a topic down to its essence, then you don’t understand it well enough. 

Saying, “We have three key areas to cover: customer engagement, product positioning, and go-to-market strategy,” and encapsulating each in a few crisp sentences sounds more credible than a 15-minute explanation that buries your point. 

The time to get buy-in is in the days leading up to an important conversation, not during it.

Savvy professionals preview their ideas one-on-one beforehand. They reach out privately and say, “I’m thinking about proposing [X] during Friday’s check-in. What concerns do you have?” Or: “Before I bring this to the group, I want to answer your questions first.” 

By the time the formal meeting happens, you’ve cleared objections, built trust, and turned potentially adversaries into advocates. 

Waffling kills credibility faster than being wrong.

An executive told me recently that she’d let go of three very smart, capable people. “Every time I asked for their input, I got, ‘It depends,’ or, ‘There are many factors,’” she said. “I needed them to tell me what they thought we should do, not hand decisions back to me.”

Leaders would rather get a clear recommendation they can debate than hear you hedge. Give them something to react to, even if it’s not “right.”

When you’re the only one who can execute certain responsibilities, your manager panics at the thought of you leaving or advancing. You’ve accidentally locked yourself into your current role by being too good at it. 

Make yourself promotable by making yourself replaceable. Document your processes. Train a second-in-command. Show you can build systems so the team can operate without you. 

You’re absolutely entitled to set boundaries and protect your time. But if all your colleagues hear is, “No, that isn’t possible,” you’ll quickly get labeled as “difficult” or “not a team player.” 

Focus on what you can do instead. For instance: 

• Don’t say: “I’m not able to meet at that time” 
  Instead try: “I’m available at 2 p.m. or 4 p.m. What works for you?”

• Don’t say: “I can’t stay late to finish this.“
  Instead try: “I can give this another hour today and pick back up in the morning.” 

You teach people how to treat you in the workplace and beyond. Start communicating like someone who deserves to be taken seriously and others will follow suit. 

Melody Wilding, LMSW is an executive coach, human behavior professor, and author of ”Managing Up: How to Get What You Need from the People in Charge.” Get her free training, 5 Steps to Speak Like a Senior Leader, here. 

Want to give your kids the ultimate advantage? Sign up for CNBC’s new online course, How to Raise Financially Smart Kids. Learn how to build healthy financial habits today to set your children up for greater success in the future. Use coupon code EARLYBIRD for 30% off. Offer valid from Dec. 8 to Dec. 22, 2025. Terms apply.

It’s difficult to describe the U.S. economy in black and white terms like “good” or “bad.” On several fronts, the data says the economy is healthy. But surveys show American consumers don’t feel that way.

“There’s no doubt right now that different data can show slightly different narratives,” says Heather Long, chief economist at Navy Federal Credit Union.

Depending on which measure you look at, inflation is falling or staying flat in recent months, Long points out. The consumer price index has dropped from its 9% peak in June 2022 and hovered around 3% since June 2023, according to U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data. Personal consumption expenditures has remained relatively flat for the last year, coming in at 2.9% in December 2025, the latest reading from the Bureau of Economic Analysis.

But prices for many consumer goods remain far above what they were in 2020, and wages have roughly plateaued over that time when adjusted for inflation, according to nonpartisan economic research group, The Hamilton Project. That disparity could be contributing to Americans feeling bad about the economy. Consumer sentiment is down nearly 13% year-over-year as of February, according to the University of Michigan Survey of Consumers, which is released monthly.

DON’T MISS: How to read people and master your body language to be more influential at work

Many economists referenced the U.S. economy as “K-shaped” in 2025, illustrating how higher earners were doing alright — continuing to spend and driving economic growth — while lower-income Americans pulled back.

Long, who was among the economists using the phrase “K-shaped,” says the economy is taking more of an “E-shape” in 2026, with three tiers of consumer behavior instead of two. A middle group is distinguishing itself, and those people’s behavior is starting to show that they’re experiencing growing signs of strain, she says.

Here’s what she’s seeing.

Like the top of the K-shape, the top tier of the E-shaped economy is comprised of high earners — the consumers who continue to spend money despite elevated prices. The top 20% of earners account for nearly 60% of all U.S. consumer spending, a recent analysis from Moody’s Analytics found.

“This top tier [of earners] that’s doing really well, that’s driving a lot of the consumption,” Long says.

The difference between the K-shape and the E-shape: Middle-earners’ spending growth was closely aligned with higher-earners until it started diverging toward the end of 2025, according to Bank of America Institute data released in February. As of January, the gap between high-income households and all other households’ annual spending growth reached its highest level since mid-2022, the bank reported.

Wealthy consumers aren’t just continuing to buy what they always have, despite higher prices. Some retailers and brands, especially in the food and hospitality industries, are increasingly boosting their premium offerings to attract those big spenders, Long says.

Premium credit cards like the Chase Sapphire Reserve and AmEx Platinum recently upped their annual fees to $795 and $895, respectively, betting that additional perks will lure in more high-earning cardholders. “Look at all of these exclusive platinum credit cards,” Long says. “Almost every company is trying to move up the value chain, and you can see that in the earnings calls.”

The strategy has paid off for the airlines, hotel brands, and food and beverage companies that have reported strong demand for their extant and newer premium offerings since fall 2025 — even as sales for their standard and discount products slow down.

Spending behaviors among middle class Americans is where you start to see signs of the affordability crisis, Long says. They’re still spending on their necessities and some discretionary categories, but “the middle class is treading water so they can still pay their bills,” she says.

Long calls this tier the “Costco economy,” referencing consumers who aren’t necessarily in a full-blown panic yet, but are increasingly shopping at discount and wholesale retailers like Costco and Walmart to get the most bang for their buck. 

“They’re obviously spending in a nervous way,” she says, “They feel they need to stretch every dollar they feel they need to buy in bulk, to do whatever they can [to save].”

Regardless of where they’re shopping, a growing number of American households are living paycheck to paycheck. Nearly 24% of households had expenses eating up the bulk of their earnings in 2025, according to data from Bank of America Institute published on Nov. 10. The bank’s report defines “paycheck to paycheck” as having costs for essentials like housing, groceries, utilities, gas, child care and more that exceed 95% of income.

The share of paycheck-to-paycheck households has been on the rise since at least 2023, the bank’s researchers found.

Middle-class households may be getting by for now, but Long says they’re experiencing stress in waves. “Not only are they facing high prices, but it’s every couple of months, something else surges,” she says. Eggs, for example aren’t nearly as expensive in 2026 as they were in 2025, but in January, beef prices were up 22% from the previous year, per the Labor Department.

“It’s just whack-a-mole inflation,” says Long.

The bottom tier of the E-shaped economy is characterized by high credit card usage and Buy Now, Pay Later usage, Long says.

While middle and higher-earners certainly use credit cards and sometimes carry balances on them, lower-earners are more likely to report carrying a balance. Among card holders, 59% of those earning between $25,000 and $49,999 say they’ve carried a balance from month to month at least once in the last year, according to the Federal Reserve’s latest Survey of Consumer Finances which was conducted in October 2024 and released in May 2025.

Half of cardholders earning between $50,000 and  $99,999 say they’ve carried a balance at least once in the last year, compared to just 38% of those earning $100,000 or more.

As for Buy Now, Pay Later plans, adults earning between $25,000 and $49,999 are mostly likely to have used the installment loans in the last year, the Fed reports. Lower earners, households earning less than $25,000, were the most likely survey respondents to report being paying late on a Buy Now, Pay Later plan, data shows.

A quarter of Buy Now, Pay Later users reported using the loans to pay for groceries in 2025, up from 14% in 2024, found a February 2025 LendingTree survey.

The 2026 tax season may come as a lifeline for Americans in the middle and bottom tiers, Long says. Over a third — 35% — of Americans expecting a tax refund say they’ll use at least a portion of it to pay down debt, a Feb. 23 Intuit TurboTax survey found. But even large refunds are only a temporary fix for an ongoing affordability problem, Long says.

Want to stop worrying about money? Sign up for CNBC’s online course Master Your Money: Practical Strategies to Grow Your Wealth. We’ll teach you the psychology of money, how to manage your stress and create healthy habits, and simple ways to boost your savings, get out of debt and invest for the future. 

Sarah and Jamie McCauley are landlords, YouTubers, Walmart pallet flippers, eBay resellers and Amazon product reviewers — and those are just their active streams of income.

The McCauleys make their money by researching what makes side hustles profitable, testing them and teaching others how to do the same on YouTube. The Grand Rapids, Michigan-based couple earned nearly $140,000 from eight streams of income last year, according to documents reviewed by CNBC Make It.

They’re particularly good at two types of gigs, they say: anything involving real estate and their YouTube channel itself, where they share their side hustle exploits with at least 146,000 subscribers.

“If you’re looking to just make some extra money on the side, maybe pay off a credit card debt or pay for a vacation, I think that is doable for nearly everybody,” says Jamie.

DON’T MISS: The ultimate guide to earning passive income online

The McCauleys are part of a side hustle revolution, a growing number of Americans who supplement income with multiple jobs. More U.S adults — about 39%, according to Bankrate — have side hustles today than ever before, whether out of necessity, precaution or a desire to increase their earning power.

Ease of starting is at an all-time high: Platforms like Amazon, Airbnb and Fiverr offer instant access to paying customers. But with competition also rising, it’s hard to build a side hustle that regularly brings in revenue.

Make It spoke with a selection of Americans with successful side hustles to learn how they built their businesses, and used them to fund a wide variety of financial goals. Every respondent highlighted four common traits that helped drive their success:

No matter what you sell, you need people willing to buy it. Jenny Woo says her side hustle is successful for a simple reason: She researches her audiences intensely, and tailors her products specifically to them.

Woo is an adjunct lecturer at the University of California, Irvine, a freelance business consultant and the teacher of an online course about emotional intelligence. Her one-woman side hustle, called Mind Brain Emotion, sells 12 different emotional intelligence-themed card games.

It brought in $1.71 million on Amazon last year, according to documents reviewed by Make It.

Woo’s first deck of cards, “52 Essential Conversations,” was tailored toward parents who — like her — wanted to connect with their kids and build their emotional intelligence skills. She joined parenting Facebook groups and observed users’ posting, commenting and liking habits, she says.

After selling $10,000 worth of the game in a 2018 Kickstarter campaign, Woo kept researching. She conducted a survey of her consumers, and learned that “overwhelmed” teachers looking to support children’s social and emotional development made up a significant portion of her audience, she says.

Her second deck, “52 Essential Relationship Skills,” was built for those teachers. It didn’t sell as well as her first deck, but it taught Woo that she could broaden, and combine, her audiences.

Woo applied that lesson to her third game, “52 Coping Skills.” She started with her own experiences working with college students during the Covid-19 pandemic and combined it with her continued research on teachers and parents, she says.

It’s now Mind Brain Emotion’s top-selling game, says Woo.

Woo sells on Amazon, which has a broad reach, to collectively rope in Mind Brain Emotion’s hyper-specific audiences. Tim Riegel’s products have a more singular customer base, so he sells on Etsy, a marketplace known largely for homemade and handmade goods.

Riegel, a full-time general manager at a sheltered workshop, makes firepits from recycled tank ends in Lamar, Missouri, and sells them under the name Mozark Fire Pits. His average product weighs 225 pounds, and sells for $950.

Mozark Fire Pits brought in approximately $202,000 on Etsy last year, according to documents reviewed by Make It. Riegel maintains a 40% profit margin, he says.

Riegel chose Etsy over platforms like Amazon, Wayfair and Overstock because it felt more user-friendly, and a better fit for his personalized products, he says. He also sells on Facebook Marketplace, which costs him more in advertising — but less in shipping costs for customers within a 200-mile radius, he adds.

That kind of platform analysis is valuable, no matter what kind of side hustle you run.

If you sell a service, instead of a good, you might consider platforms like Fiverr and Upwork — popular among photo editors, marketing writers and voiceover artists — or Taskrabbit, known for labor-intensive side hustles like cleaning or repair work.

Or, opt out of those platforms entirely. If your gig is something that many other people also do, try finding marketplaces with more narrow niches like Contently, Skyword or ServiceScape, recommends side hustle expert Kathy Kristof.

“One of the problems I see with a lot of freelancers is that they go to the best-known online platforms … and those platforms are so saturated with people who have been there for, often, decades,” says Kristof, whose blog SideHusl has reviewed more than 500 different side gigs.

No matter your platform, you’ll need to stand out. A good listing can help: clear and concise, written for your intended audience, free of typos, with high-quality graphics and some search engine optimization (SEO).

Becky Powell, a kindergarten teacher based in Beaverton, Oregon, has a side hustle selling worksheets for other educators on an online platform called Teachers Pay Teachers. Many of her worksheets focus on her personal specialty, teaching children sight-reading skills.

Her side hustle didn’t take off until she embraced SEO. When she uploaded her first worksheets, she titled them, “Creating sight words with pattern blocks.” Sales slowly trickled in.

Her husband Jerome, who has a business background, suggested a simpler title, like “Hands-on sight words.” The sight-reading worksheets quickly became her bestselling products, Powell says.

Powell’s store brought in $125,500 in 2022 revenue, according to documents reviewed by Make It. Her husband also sells worksheets on the platform, and they’ve used their combined earnings to fund vacations and pay down their mortgage and student loans, Powell says.

“You have to have passion and knowledge,” she says. “You also have to have a business sense [and understand] SEO.”

Once you gain enough customers, work to turn your sales into positive reviews, so you appear higher in platforms’ search results, Kristof advises. Customer service, prompt shipping and quality control can usually earn you a good online reputation.

The McCauleys have a rule for their ever-changing collection of side hustles: “You either have to be one of the first to get there, or your approach has to be very unique and different to be successful,” Sarah says.

But being first or unique doesn’t guarantee long-term success. In 2020, the couple was early to a side hustle trend: pallet flipping. At local warehouses, they’d buy pallets of returned goods from Amazon, Walmart or Target. They’d unbox the pallets, discover their contents and resell the items for a hopeful profit.

From December 2020 to December 2022, the McCauleys made about $19,500 in pallet-flipping profits, they estimate. Their most popular unboxing YouTube video got 5.4 million viewers, translating to an additional $30,000 in advertising revenue, says Jamie.

Last year, more Americans hopped on the pallet-flipping trend. Pallet prices rose, resale values dropped and a slew of unboxing videos diluted the McCauleys’ viewership. “The pallets became not really worth our time … from the standpoint of time over money,” says Sarah.

Four years ago, the McCauleys would’ve simply moved onto their next side hustle. Now, they’re feeling the strain of constantly building new gigs from scratch, and starting to reorganize their income streams into a smaller number of longer-term projects.

Instead of flipping their current home renovation project in Northern Michigan for a profit, for example — something they’ve done multiple times — they’ll keep it as their own vacation house and part-time Airbnb rental, they say.

“We always knew [side hustling] was going to have an expiration date,” says Jamie. “It’s a young person’s game, to always be looking for what’s next.”

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Rosalyn Engelman was just 15 when she met her future husband, Irwin, she says. That was in 1953.

The two were set up by a mutual friend, and when Irwin, then 19, came to pick her up at her family’s home in the Bronx, “I certainly had not dated anyone like the tall, dark, handsome man in a navy-blue suit with a briefcase who came to my door,” she says.

“He looked like a movie star.” Irwin took her out for a movie and milkshake, and by the end of the night, they were falling in love, she says. After three years of dating, the two got married in November 1956.

In their nearly 70 years together, they had two daughters, stood side by side through life-threatening illnesses, traveled the world, and built their careers. Irwin worked as a CFO at companies like Xerox, and Engelman was a painter and mixed media artist whose work has been displayed all over the world, she says.

They now live at the Apsley, an assisted living facility in Manhattan.

For couples seeking tips on how to stay happily together for decades, here’s Engelman’s advice.

For Engelman, it really comes down to one piece of advice: “Try to understand the other person,” she says.

That can come into play in many ways.

If your spouse sometimes prioritizes their work, for example, put yourself in their shoes. “I never resented his time that he worked hard,” she says, “and I don’t think he resented the fact that I was covered in paint.”

Try to get interested in their hobbies as well. “He liked opera more, I learned to like opera,” she says. “I like classical music most, he learned to love classical music.”

Finally, understanding each other can also mean forgiving each other during mishaps, large or small. Engelman remembers the first time she tried to cook the two of them dinner. She decided on Brussels sprouts, hot dogs, and corn. And the dinner did not come out as she planned. The Brussels sprouts tasted like rubber, she says.

Irwin was not angry. Instead, “we just started laughing and went out for pizza,” she says. That’s the kind of mutual understanding that can keep a relationship strong.

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