Emotional Regulation for Kids: How Parents Can Support Healthy Development
Children experience feelings in a big way as they learn to regulate their emotions. Unwanted behaviors like tantrums, yelling, and public outbursts can happen as a result of these unregulated emotions, which can impact children’s social skills, child and adult relationships, and academic performances. CCRC has a number of different resources designed to help parents and caregivers address the emotional and behavioral health of their children.
What is Emotional Regulation?
The ability to control their feelings and resist impulses is an important component of a child’s emotional and social development. There are three core aspects of emotional regulation:
Self-regulation
It’s typical for children under the age of 2 to throw tantrums when they are upset or unhappy. But a 5-year-old who experiences frequent meltdowns may be having trouble with self-regulation. This is a term used for describing a child’s ability to self-soothe and regulate when faced with a challenge or upsetting situation.
Co-regulation
Parents and caregivers can offer a sense of safety and comfort to a child who may be experiencing difficult emotions. Co-regulation is a process of two or more people working together to regulate emotions. As their caregiver, you can help your child better understand how they’re feeling and how to help alleviate stressors that activate these emotions.
Dysregulation
A child’s inability to control their emotions or impulses is called dysregulation. This may be represented as a tantrum, outburst or unusual behavior. Emotional dysregulation is characterized by the child not being able to flexibly respond to and manage emotional states, which results in prolonged feelings of frustration, anger and sadness.
Emotional Regulation in Preschoolers
As children mature, they begin to better understand, identify and respond to their emotions. Children’s brains are rapidly making new connections from birth and these connections wire their brains for emotions, among other important social experiences. As newborns, babies may show discomfort, unhappiness or a need for something by crying. They can smile to show happiness or contentedness. Once they approach the 1-year mark, many babies begin to develop more complex emotions, like fear of strangers. By age 2, the feeling of fear may present itself as difficulty separating from a parent or unease around strangers. They are likely to show their emotions more through body language than words. Toddlers may begin to comfort themselves by snuggling their favorite blanket or toy, according to clinical experts.
As a preschool age child, they may be able to use simple words to describe their feelings – sad, mad, happy. They are likely to react on impulse to bad feelings by running off, hitting, or screaming. On the other hand, children at this age may begin to offer comfort to others with a hug.
Visit CCRC’s Ages & Stages Developmental Resources for further support.
Here are three evidence-based strategies to help preschoolers regulate emotions:
- Labeling emotions: When children can label their emotions, they can more easily communicate to a caregiver how they’re feeling and understand the feeling itself. When a child displays a strong emotion, offer to help them verbalize the feeling. “With children, you want to use their words, like ‘I can see you’re having big feelings right now. When I have big feelings, I take a big breath or count to 10.’ So, you’re not identifying the feeling for them, because if you’re giving them a feeling, you’re taking independence away from them and their ability to identify,” CCRC Mental Health Consultant Denise Torres said. “When you acknowledge they’re having a big feeling, they can say ‘I am having a big feeling,’ and then you can work through that.”
Because a child’s brain is still developing, they don’t yet have the tools to manage their feelings. This can lead to aggressive or excited behavior. CCRC offers mental health consultations for families and child care providers so they can better understand what’s causing their child’s behavior.
“We have the mental health consultation in the centers that provide parents three sessions of consultation and in those sessions, we talk about what’s going on in their lives and we provide a lot of resources, information – trauma, depression, anxiety, ADHD, whatever it may be,” said Torres. “We try to ensure they’re linked with someone like a mental health specialist or therapist. We also go provide that support to all the providers, too.”
Children who are able to label their emotions are on their way to becoming emotionally competent.
- Visual emotion charts: Caregivers can create and use an emotions chart as a tool to help kids recognize emotions. When a child can’t yet explain how they feel with words, they can more easily see a similar feeling represented on an emotions chart and point to it. Try making or printing this chart.
Best Emotional Regulation Activities for Kids
Breathing exercises
The balloon breathing technique helps a child with calming themselves through visualizing a balloon. Children can use their imaginations to visualize a balloon that’s big or small, red or blue.
- Find a comfortable position: Sit or lie down with your back supported.
- Imagine a balloon: Visualize a balloon in your lower abdomen or chest.
- Inhale: Take a deep, slow breath through your nose, imagining the balloon filling with air.
- Hold: Hold your breath for a few seconds.
- Exhale: Slowly release your breath through your mouth, imagining the balloon deflating.
- Repeat: Repeat steps 3-5 for several minutes, focusing on the sensation of the balloon expanding and contracting with each breath.
Mindfulness games
Another activity to help children achieve calm is the “5-4-3-2-1 grounding technique.” This mindfulness exercise helps ground a child by bringing them back to the present. By refocusing on the “now,” the problem isn’t so big and scary.
- See: Identify five things you can see around you.
- Touch: Focus on four things you can touch.
- Hear: Listen to three different sounds.
- Smell: Notice two things you can smell.
- Taste: Identify one thing you can taste.
Emotion charades
In this game of Emotion Charades for Kids, children learn how to communicate feelings and emotions using body language. Take turns offering an emotion and acting it out.
For example: Ask the child for an emotion. The child says “Happy.” The adult skips in place with a big smile on their face. For older children, the adult can privately select and emotion and demonstrate it for the child. Then ask the child “what feeling am I?” Go back and forth giving and acting out the emotion.
Calm-down corner
Children feel safe in a familiar space. Consider creating a “calm-down corner” somewhere in your home where your child can go when they’re feeling strong emotions. This area of the home should be somewhat private and stocked with comforting items like a blanket and toy that makes them feel better. This teaches children that it’s ok to feel emotions and that there is a safe place for them to calm down.
Art therapy techniques
Many children, especially those who are younger, don’t yet have the vocabulary to describe strong feelings. Art therapy invites children to share their emotions through drawing or storytelling, which not only helps caregivers understand the child’s feelings but helps children process emotions.
The activity should include a prompt:
- “Draw me a picture of a girl and her puppy – is she happy? Sad? Mad?”
- Draw a heart outline on the paper and ask your child to “show me what your heart looks like with these markers.” This may prompt a child to use colors that they’ve associated with certain feelings. Follow up by asking why they chose blue or red or black.
- Or try using sock puppets to initiate conversation about the emotions. When a child feels they are acting, they often express more freely what they are feeling.
- Check out these Early Start Tools for further developmental activities.
Recommended Books on Emotional Regulation for Kids
When it comes to regulating emotions, there are many books available for children.
- The Color Monster by Anna Llenas (ages 3-7)
- When Sophie Gets Angry – Really, Really Angry by Molly Bang (ages 4-8)
- Breathe Like a Bear by Kira Willey (ages 3-7)
Take turns reading with your child and spend time on each page, asking questions that help your child understand how the situations and interactions impact the characters’ emotions: “What do you think she’s feeling? Why do you think she feels that way? How would you feel if that happened to you?”
Consider role-playing and act out different emotions from the story. CCRC also offers free monthly story times, where families can join in for a virtual and in-person story time.
Check out these CCRC’s Parent Resources for additional support.
Leveraging Local Resources
CCRC’s Help Me Grow LA provides caregivers with a network of supports designed to connect you with developmental assessments and non-medical supports.
We have many free services available to parents, including:
- Developmental screenings for emotional and behavioral growth.
- Parenting workshops focused on managing emotional regulation challenges.
- Community support services for early childhood intervention.
Child care providers are encouraged to learn about our behavioral health training called Building Early Educations Strategies (BEES). When children act out or express strong, uncontrolled behaviors like throwing toys, tantrums or disobedience, certain tools can help the child cope and recover. Through CCRC’s free Building Early Education Strategies (BEES) program, a trained mental health consultant works with providers to assess the emotional and social needs of the children in their care.
We’re able to hone in on developmental milestones and if the children are meeting them or they’re delayed. We can recognize if it’s noncompliant behavior they’re experiencing from the children or if it’s trauma. We can also observe whether the provider is experiencing some type of trauma or triggers in the classroom and how to address it. You’re going to have an extra set of eyes in the classroom because you’re already that busy dealing with the kids’ behavior, the curriculum, sanitizing hands and toys, you’re dealing with all that. So, by offering an extra set of eyes in the classroom, I can share some insights you may not see because you’re so busy,” says Denise, who has a background in therapeutic services for children. “I watch for triggers and I take note of the strengths and weaknesses of the providers and children.”
Key Takeaways for Parents
Helping children learn to regulate their emotions is an essential component of their emotional development and overall wellbeing. Parent and caregivers play a key role in supporting this skill. Children learn from experience and will mirror emotional responses they witness. Help kids learn about their emotions by discussing their feelings and asking questions about their emotions. Consider games, story time and an emotions chart to support their self-identification of emotions. By empowering children to recognize and respond to their own feelings in a healthy way, parents and caregivers can help them develop self-regulating skills that they can use throughout their lifetimes.
