How Children’s Emotions Really Work and What Adults Can Do to Help

Children are not born knowing how to handle their feelings. They learn it slowly through the adults around them. When parents and caregivers understand how emotional development works, everything becomes easier. Behaviour makes more sense, outbursts feel less personal and supporting a child becomes far more effective.

Why Children Feel Everything So Strongly

A child’s brain is still developing. The part that reacts quickly to danger becomes active very early in life. The part that helps them calm down and think clearly develops much more slowly.

This is why children:

• get overwhelmed easily

• cry or shout suddenly

• find it hard to explain what they feel

• need adults to help them calm their bodies

This is not a child trying to be difficult. It is simply how a young brain works.

Your Response Shapes Their Emotional Skills

Research in developmental psychology shows something important. Children build emotional skills through relationships. When a child feels safe with you, they learn to feel safe inside themselves.

What truly helps is:

• staying close when they struggle

• naming feelings gently

• showing you understand their experience

• helping them breathe or take a break

Children do not learn by being told to stop feeling something. They learn by seeing and experiencing what support looks like.

Naming Emotions Helps the Brain Settle

Studies show that when children learn emotion words, their brains calm down faster. Naming an emotion helps the body shift out of a survival state and into a more regulated one.

For example:

“You are feeling angry because your tower fell. I am here. You are safe.”

Short, simple and grounding. Over time this builds strong emotional intelligence.

Why Visual and Repetitive Tools Work

Young children learn best through pictures, rhythm and repetition. Visual tools, stories and characters help them recognise feelings much more easily than verbal explanations alone.

This is why emotion books, picture charts or rhyming stories are so effective. They create a familiar pathway. With repetition, children eventually begin using the steps on their own without prompting.

What Happens When Children Do Not Learn These Skills

Avoiding feelings never makes them disappear. It pushes them deeper. Research shows that children who are not supported to understand emotions often:

• react with bigger outbursts

• hold feelings inside until they become anxiety

• struggle to make sense of frustration

• have difficulty with friendships

• become fearful of their own feelings

Supporting emotions early gives children the tools they will use for the rest of their lives.

What Parents and Carers Can Start Doing Today

You do not need to be perfect. You simply need to be present. These small steps make a real difference:

• slow your own body down before reacting

• validate the feeling even while setting limits

• describe what you see

• Stay close until the child settles

• Use the same calming steps each time

Consistency shows children that emotions are not dangerous and that they never have to handle them alone.

Helping Children Understand Fear: A Guide for Parents and Carers

Fear is part of being human. For children, it is not simply an uncomfortable feeling but a powerful signal that shapes how they explore, learn and relate to the world. Yet many adults misunderstand fear, treating it as something to quieten or outgrow. The truth is very different. Fear is a developmental tool, not a flaw, and the way adults respond to it influences a child far more than most people realise.

Why Children Feel Fear So Intensely

A child’s brain is still under construction. The amygdala, which detects danger, is active early in life, while the prefrontal cortex, which regulates emotion, develops much more slowly. This means children often feel fear strongly but lack the internal skills to calm themselves. They rely on the adults around them to interpret the experience and help them make sense of it.

Fear is also tied to how a child connects with caregivers. Research in attachment theory has shown that when adults respond with warmth, consistency and emotional availability, children develop the ability to regulate fear more effectively. A child who feels safe learns to explore confidently.

What Children Are Really Afraid Of

Fear does not always come from dramatic events. Common triggers include:

• being separated from a caregiver

• unfamiliar people or places

• darkness or loud sounds

• fear of failure or making mistakes

• imaginary threats such as monsters or shadows

To an adult, these may seem minor. To a child, they are meaningful because the child’s internal world has not yet learnt to distinguish possibility from reality. Minimising that fear does not strengthen the child. It leaves them alone with a feeling they cannot yet organise.

What Happens When Fear Is Ignored

When adults dismiss or rush a child’s fear, the emotion does not disappear. It shifts inward and becomes something more difficult to manage.

Anxiety increases

Children who feel their fear is unwelcome tend to internalise it. This often appears as stomach aches, sleep problems, clinginess or emotional outbursts.

Avoidance grows

Avoiding feared situations temporarily feels easier. Over time, avoidance teaches the brain that the situation is genuinely dangerous, which strengthens the fear.

Reactions become stronger

Children who cannot process fear may cry, shut down or lash out. These behaviours are signs of overwhelm, not manipulation.

Self-trust decreases

When a child is repeatedly told that their feelings are silly or exaggerated, they begin to doubt their own perceptions. This makes emotional regulation much harder in adolescence and adulthood.

These outcomes are predictable and well established in psychological research. Fear that is not understood becomes fear that controls.

How Children Learn to Understand Their Fear

The goal is not to remove fear but to teach a child how to navigate it. This requires calm, attuned adults who guide rather than shame or rush.

Name the emotion

Labelling fear reduces its intensity. When a child hears, “Your body feels scared and that is all right,” the brain shifts from panic to processing.

Validate the experience

Validation is not agreeing with the fear. It is acknowledging the feeling. This builds trust and teaches the child that emotions are manageable.

Help the child notice body cues

A tight tummy, shaky hands or a racing heart are normal fear responses. Children who understand their bodily sensations are less likely to panic.

Teach regulation skills

Slow breathing, grounding activities, gentle movement, and co-regulation with an adult help return the nervous system to balance.

Use gradual exposure

Facing a fear in small, supported steps is the most effective way to reduce it. This teaches the brain that the situation is safe and builds genuine resilience.

These skills become the foundation of emotional intelligence.

The Opportunity in Every Fearful Moment

Fear is not an obstacle to overcome. It is a moment of learning. It shows you what matters to the child, what they find unsafe and what they have not yet learnt to navigate. Approaching fear with curiosity and steadiness helps the child understand themselves rather than hide from their feelings.

Children who learn to process fear well become adults who can tolerate uncertainty, handle pressure and adapt to change without shutting down. They are more resilient, grounded and capable of facing challenges with clarity rather than avoidance.

When adults guide children through fear instead of dismissing it, they are not simply helping the child in that moment. They are shaping the child’s lifelong relationship with their inner world. That is the gift that lasts far beyond childhood.

What Happens When Children Don’t Learn About Anger?

When kids don’t learn what anger is or how to deal with it, the feeling doesn’t disappear. It slips beneath the surface like a shaken soda can waiting to burst. Sooner or later, it pops.

Below are some of the most common outcomes when children aren’t taught how to understand or manage anger.

1. Bigger Outbursts

Kids who can’t name anger or make sense of it often express it through loud reactions: tantrums, hitting, yelling, or shutting down. They aren’t “bad.” They’re overwhelmed and unequipped, trying to communicate with tools they don’t have yet.

2. Bottling Everything Up

Some children take a quieter route. They swallow their feelings to avoid trouble. On the outside, they seem calm, but inside, they carry emotional tension like a heavy backpack they never take off. Bottled-up anger doesn’t stay small; it slowly shapes how they see themselves and their relationships.

3. Trouble With Friends

When kids can’t explain what they feel, misunderstandings grow faster. They may push people away, react too strongly during conflicts, or feel constantly misunderstood. Healthy friendships rely on communication, and communication begins with knowing your own emotions.

4. Low Self-Control Later On

Managing anger in childhood helps build a sense of self-control that carries into adulthood. Without that early practice, teens and adults may struggle with impulsive reactions, emotional swings, or difficulty setting healthy boundaries.

5. Shame Instead of Understanding

When anger is never talked about, many kids begin to believe the emotion itself is “bad.” This turns a normal feeling into guilt, confusion, and fear of disappointing others. Instead of learning that anger is a signal, they learn to see it as a flaw.

What Helps?

Teaching children about anger isn’t about shutting the feeling down. It’s about helping them understand it and handle it safely. A few simple skills can make a huge difference:

• Naming feelings
• Noticing body signs like a fast heartbeat or temperature pathway. 
• Using calm-down tools such as breathing, taking space, or asking for help
• Seeing adults model healthy ways of expressing anger

When children learn these skills early, they grow into adults who can face tough emotions without being controlled by them. They become people who can feel anger, express it safely, and return to calm with confidence instead of shame.

Psychologist David Huffines and I created the “Willy Woo’s Feeling” series to help children understand their emotions, accept them, and develop effective strategies for managing them. 

Each book in the series guides children to notice the physical sensations that come with their feelings, identify what they are experiencing, and choose healthier ways to respond. 

The books are written in rhyme to make learning engaging and easy to revisit. When children feel angry, sad, etc., they can return to the relevant book in the series, follow the steps, and practice the calming pathways it teaches. 

You can now find the very first book in the series, Willy Woo’s Feeling Angry, available on Amazon!

You can find the link below.