By: Kristen Beeck, MA, LPC
Watching your child struggle with difficult emotions can be challenging. When they’re upset, your first instinct may be to help them feel better. While this response is understandable, learning how to manage emotions involves more than finding a way to make an uncomfortable feeling go away.
Children need opportunities to experience difficult emotions and learn that they can handle them. This is where emotional regulation comes in. Rather than teaching children to avoid discomfort, emotional regulation helps them develop the skills to work through it.
These skills take time to develop, and parents play an important role in that process.
What Is Emotional Regulation?
Emotional regulation refers to how we manage and respond to our emotional experiences. It is not about remaining calm at all times or preventing ourselves from feeling upset. Instead, it
involves recognizing what we are feeling and learning how to respond appropriately, even when those feelings are uncomfortable (McRae & Gross, 2020).
Emotions serve a purpose. Anxiety, for example, can alert us to potential danger, but it can also appear when we encounter something unfamiliar. Although the emotion itself is real, it does not necessarily mean the situation is dangerous.
This is an important distinction for children to understand. Emotions provide information, but they do not always tell us the whole story.
Consider a child who isn’t invited to a friend’s birthday party. They may feel rejected and begin believing that nobody likes them. While their sadness is understandable, there may be other explanations. Perhaps the family had a limited number of invitations, or the friend was only able to invite a few classmates. Helping children consider alternative explanations allows them to
recognize that their feelings are valid, even when their initial interpretation may not tell the whole story.
It’s also important to recognize that experiencing an uncomfortable emotion does not automatically mean a child is struggling to regulate it. A child can feel frustrated, cry after a disappointment, or become nervous about trying something new and still demonstrate healthy emotional regulation.
The goal is not to eliminate these feelings. It is to help children understand that they can experience discomfort without allowing it to determine how they respond.
Why Do Some Children Struggle More Than Others?
Emotional regulation is a skill that develops throughout childhood. Young children depend heavily on adults to help them navigate overwhelming emotions because they are still developing the abilities needed to manage those experiences independently.
As children grow, they become increasingly capable of understanding their feelings and making decisions about how to respond. However, knowing what to do and being able to do it during an emotionally intense moment are not always the same thing.
Think about a child who knows they should take a break when they’re frustrated. During a calm conversation, they may be able to explain exactly how that strategy works. Yet, when they’re in the middle of an argument, they might struggle to remember or use it.
Children also develop these abilities at different rates. Some naturally experience emotions more intensely, while others may find it easier to adjust when things don’t go as expected.
Children with ADHD or autism may also experience additional challenges with emotional regulation. For some children, difficulties with impulse control or sensory processing can make certain situations more overwhelming. Research has identified emotional regulation difficulties among children with ADHD and autism, although these experiences vary considerably between individuals (Hernandez et al., 2024; Restoy et al., 2024).
A child’s environment can also influence their ability to regulate emotions. Even a child who typically handles frustration well may struggle more when they’re exhausted or dealing with significant stress.
Recognizing these differences can help parents approach challenging behavior with greater understanding. Rather than assuming a child is choosing not to manage their emotions, it may be worth considering whether they have the skills needed to navigate that particular situation.
Understanding why a behavior occurs does not mean excusing it. It helps parents determine what kind of guidance their child may need.
The Parent’s Role in Emotional Regulation
Parents are among children’s earliest teachers when it comes to understanding emotions. Much of this learning happens through everyday interactions, often without anyone realizing a lesson is taking place.
Research suggests that how parents respond to their children’s emotions can influence the development of emotional regulation skills (De Raeymaecker & Dhar, 2022).
One important part of this process is co-regulation, which occurs when an adult helps a child manage an emotional experience that they may not yet be able to navigate independently.
Imagine your child becomes angry because you’ve told them it’s time to turn off their video game. Rather than immediately telling them to calm down, you might acknowledge their frustration while still maintaining the expectation that the game needs to end.
This approach allows parents to communicate an important message: Your feelings are understandable, but they do not determine what happens next.
Validation is often misunderstood as agreeing with a child’s perspective or allowing them to
behave however they want. In reality, parents can acknowledge an emotion while maintaining firm boundaries. A child is allowed to feel angry when they don’t get their way, but that anger does not make it acceptable to hit someone.
Children also learn by watching how their parents respond to their own emotions. When a parent becomes frustrated and chooses to step away before responding, they demonstrate that emotions do not have to lead to impulsive actions.
Of course, parents will not handle every situation perfectly. What matters is being willing to acknowledge mistakes and demonstrate how to respond differently in the future.
As children become more independent, parents can gradually shift from actively guiding them through emotional experiences to helping them find their own solutions. This allows children to build confidence while knowing that support remains available when they need it.
Helping Children Build Emotional Regulation Skills
Understanding emotions is an important first step, but children also need opportunities to practice responding to them.
A meta-analysis examining psychological interventions for children and young people found that structured approaches targeting emotional regulation can lead to improvements in these skills
(Espenes et al., 2025). While parents are not expected to act as therapists, the principles behind many emotional regulation strategies can be applied at home.
One place to begin is helping children develop awareness of what they’re feeling. When children can identify an emotion, they are better equipped to understand what may be contributing to it. Parents can encourage this through everyday conversations, especially when children are calm enough to reflect on their experiences.
However, recognizing an emotion is only part of the process. Children also need to learn what to do when that emotion becomes uncomfortable.
This is where distress tolerance becomes especially important.
Distress tolerance refers to our ability to experience uncomfortable emotions without immediately trying to escape them or reacting impulsively (Simons & Gaher, 2005). It involves learning that discomfort, while unpleasant, is not always something that needs to be fixed.
Instead of focusing solely on making an uncomfortable feeling disappear, children can gradually learn that they are capable of experiencing difficult emotions without allowing those feelings to control their behavior.
For example, imagine your child becomes frustrated while learning something new. You may be tempted to step in and complete the task for them. Although this might resolve their frustration in the moment, consistently removing challenges can limit opportunities to develop confidence in their own abilities.
Instead, consider acknowledging how difficult the task feels while encouraging them to continue at a manageable pace. This allows children to experience frustration without learning that frustration means they should give up.
The goal is not to push children beyond what they can handle. It is to help them gradually discover what they are capable of handling.
Coping strategies can support this process, but it’s important to understand their purpose. Deep breathing may help a child manage the physical sensations of anxiety, but it does not necessarily address what they’re anxious about.
A child who feels nervous about attending a new activity might benefit from practicing a calming strategy beforehand. However, if the child only uses coping skills to avoid attending, they may miss the opportunity to learn that they can handle unfamiliar situations.
Effective coping is not always about feeling better immediately. Sometimes, it means being willing to experience discomfort while continuing to do something meaningful.
Parents can also support emotional regulation by helping children reflect after difficult moments.
Once a child has had time to recover, a conversation about what happened can help them recognize patterns in their behavior and consider what they might try differently.
If a child reacted by yelling at a sibling, for example, the conversation can acknowledge their frustration while still addressing the impact of their behavior. Helping them take responsibility and repair the situation reinforces that emotions are acceptable, but harmful actions still have consequences.
These conversations should focus on learning rather than shame. Children are more likely to develop useful skills when they understand what happened and feel capable of making a different choice next time.
Raising Emotionally Resilient Children
Emotional resilience is not about raising children who are unaffected by challenges. It is about helping them develop the confidence to face difficult experiences and recognize that they can recover when things don’t go as expected.
This development takes time, and progress will not always be consistent. A child may successfully manage frustration one day and struggle with the same situation the next. These moments do not erase the progress they’ve made.
Parents can support this growth by offering guidance without immediately removing every obstacle. As children gain experience, they begin to recognize that uncomfortable emotions are a normal part of life and that they have some control over how they respond.
Ultimately, raising emotionally resilient children does not mean protecting them from every difficult feeling. It means giving them the opportunity to learn that those feelings can be understood and managed.
Children do not need to feel comfortable in every situation to learn that they are capable of handling discomfort.
References
De Raeymaecker, K., & Dhar, M. (2022). The influence of parents on emotion regulation in middle childhood: A systematic review. Children, 9(8), Article 1200. https://doi.org/10.3390/children9081200
Espenes, K., Tรธrmoen, A. J., Rognstad, K., Nilsen, K. H., Waaler, P. M., Wentzel-Larsen, T., & Kjรธbli, J. (2025). Effect of psychosocial interventions on children and youth emotion regulation: A meta-analysis. Administration and Policy in Mental Health and Mental Health Services Research, 52, 833โ852. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10488-024-01373-3
Hernandez, M. L., Garcia, A. M., Spiegel, J. A., Dick, A. S., & Graziano, P. A. (2024).
Multimodal assessment of emotion dysregulation in children with and without ADHD and disruptive behavior disorders. Journal of Clinical Child & Adolescent Psychology, 53(3), 444โ459. https://doi.org/10.1080/15374416.2024.2303706
McRae, K., & Gross, J. J. (2020). Emotion regulation. Emotion, 20(1), 1โ9. https://doi.org/10.1037/emo0000703
Restoy, D., Oriol-Escudรฉ, M., Alonzo-Castillo, T., Magรกn-Maganto, M., Canal-Bedia, R., Dรญez-Villoria, E., Gisbert-Gustemps, L., Setiรฉn-Ramos, I., Martรญnez-Ramรญrez, M.,
Ramos-Quiroga, J. A., & Lugo-Marรญn, J. (2024). Emotion regulation and emotion dysregulation in children and adolescents with autism spectrum disorder: A meta-analysis of evaluation and intervention studies. Clinical Psychology Review, 109, Article 102410. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cpr.2024.102410
Simons, J. S., & Gaher, R. M. (2005). The distress tolerance scale: Development and validation of a self-report measure. Motivation and Emotion, 29(2), 83โ102. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11031-005-7955-3