Children are not born knowing how to manage emotions, and learning emotional regulation takes time, support and practice. Parents can help by teaching children to identify feelings, validating emotions, modelling calm behaviour, setting healthy boundaries and encouraging coping strategies that build resilience, communication skills and emotional self-control.
Is Your Child Experiencing ‘Big Feelings’?
From joy and excitement to anger and sadness, like adults, children experience a wide range of emotions. They may be little, but as children grow up, they can struggle with managing these big emotions.
As a parent, it can be difficult to know how to help your child through tantrums, outbursts, or withdrawal and to recognise when their emotions start to overwhelm them. The good news is that regulating emotions is a skill that can be taught and nurtured.
Working with a local child therapist can make a huge difference. For instance, if you live in Bromley and are looking for child therapy in Bromley or the surrounding areas, help is always at hand.
Child therapists can help your child recognise, respond to and process emotions in a healthier manner. In this article, explore five simple strategies to help children manage their emotions while strengthening your bond with them.
Why Do Children Struggle To Regulate Emotions?
As your child grows up, you may expect them to start managing their feelings on their own, without meltdowns or tantrums. But in reality, learning to regulate emotions is a complex process, and children are not born with this ability. It’s a skill they develop over time, with practice and support.
When Your Child Struggles with Managing Big Emotions You May Notice Them:
- Struggling to calm down after getting upset
- Finding it difficult to express feelings in words
- Going into full-blown tantrums or meltdowns often
- Withdrawing or shutting down emotionally
- Reacting aggressively, like hitting and yelling
Teaching children how to regulate their emotions helps them have greater self-control and resilience, communicate better and have healthier relationships with family and friends.
Five Healthy Ways To Help Your Child Regulate Emotions
1. Teach Them To Name Their Feelings
Before children can manage their emotions, they first need to identify and name them. This is the first step in emotional regulation. Children who recognise and label their emotions clearly are more likely to express and manage them constructively.
When you teach them about emotions, they can express what they’re feeling instead of acting out. For younger children, use feeling charts with pictures of faces expressing different emotions. Reading books about emotions also helps your child recognise feelings. You can also indulge in role play or storytelling
Instead of asking, “What’s wrong?” ask, “What are you feeling right now?” to help them become more emotionally aware.
2. Validate Their Feelings (Even If You Disagree)
Many parents may unintentionally dismiss their child’s feelings by saying, “It is not a big deal” or “you are overreacting”. These statements can make them feel unheard and unseen.
Validating your child’s emotions means acknowledging how they are feeling (“I can see that you are really upset right now”) and showing empathy (“I understand why you are feeling angry”). Avoid minimising. Instead of “It is no big deal” or “You are fine”, try “I see that it was really hard for you”.
3. Teach Healthy Ways To Cope
After identifying and naming their big feelings, children need simple tools to calm themselves when emotions become overwhelming. Train them with techniques to self-soothe and manage big emotions like frustration, anger or sadness.
Effective self-soothing techniques for children include:
- Deep or belly breathing, where they inhale through their nose and exhale slowly
- Counting to 10, which helps them pause before reacting
- Squeezing a stress ball, which is a physical way to release tension
- Expressing feelings on paper, where you allow them to draw or colour their emotions creatively
- Create calm-down jars, where you fill a jar with glitter and water, shake it and watch the glitter settle as a calming-down exercise
4. Set Clear Emotional Boundaries
It is important to validate and cope with big emotions, but it is equally important to express them appropriately.
By setting clear emotional boundaries, you teach children safe ways to express big feelings, like anger. Try “It is okay to be angry, but it is not okay to hit or yell”. You can also offer alternative behaviours by saying, “Instead of yelling, you can use your words or take a break”.
When parents set boundaries consistently, it helps children understand expectations and feel secure.
5. Model Good Emotional Behaviour
The old saying, ‘Do as I say, not as I do,’ does not work when raising children. In reality, children learn by modelling what their parents do, not what they say.
Losing your cool at your child when they are throwing tantrums is, in fact, teaching them that it is okay to react this way. But when you show a calm response to a tantrum or walk to another room and come back when you are calmer, it speaks volumes about acceptable emotional behaviour.
You need to start with yourself if you are struggling to manage your emotions, because your children are watching you.
In Summary
Teaching children how to manage their emotions, no matter how big or small, is a precious life skill that takes time and practice to develop. These simple but effective tips don’t eliminate the strong feelings your child experiences, but they help them learn to manage them in a healthy way.
But even if your child is struggling to manage emotions and it is interfering with school, health, family and friendships, it is helpful to seek guidance from a child therapist or behavioural health professional.
