Every year about this time, after it gets cold but before the first snow, preschool teacher Sabrina North asks parents to send in children's snow clothes. For the next few weeks, she helps 3-year-olds learn how to put on snowsuits, mittens, boots and hats. Again and again, she cheerfully deflects the complaints and frustration until all the children can do it themselves.

The practicing pays off once the snow comes, but for North, this isn't just about teaching independence. She's teaching emotional intelligence, or EQ.

Huh?

EQ refers to social and emotional skills, to a person's capacity for relationships and sensitivity to oneself and others. It's a bit of a buzzword these days, but the concept of emotional intelligence has been around for decades; anyone who has been in therapy undoubtedly has been exposed to it, and many of us promote it intuitively as parents.

That may not be enough, however. In our increasingly diverse, adversarial, and violent world, researchers, educators and psychologists say emotional intelligence is a survival skill, not something that can be left to chance. Indeed, they argue that EQ is more important than IQ, in fact that EQ promotes IQ, and that in the next millennium, people who are low on it will be miserable.

So North starts with 3-year-olds just as they are beginning to see themselves as part of a larger community.

"I help them make the connection that persistence leads to competence," she says. "I tell them, 'See what practice did! You can do things for yourself! Doesn't that make you feel good?'"

Therein lies the nub.

"Feeling good about yourself is the basis for EQ," says North. "It makes you feel empowered, and the more sure you are of yourself, the more you are capable of learning and of giving of yourself."