Understanding and managing emotions is important for development and wellbeing during childhood and adolescence.
Children and teenagers who can understand and manage their emotions are more likely to:
- express emotions by speaking calmly or in appropriate ways
- bounce back after feeling strong emotions like disappointment, frustration or excitement
- control impulses
- behave appropriately – that is, in ways that don’t hurt other people, things or themselves.
And this is good for children because it helps them learn, make friends, become independent and more.
Your child’s ability to understand and manage emotions develops over time. When your child is young, they’ll need help with understanding emotions. This mostly involves recognising and naming emotions and lays the groundwork for managing emotions as your child gets older.
As your child grows, they’ll learn more strategies to manage their emotions without your help.
Understanding and managing emotions is also called emotional regulation. It’s an important part of your child’s development and growth.
Children under 3 years: developing language for emotions
Children experience emotions before they can use words to describe those emotions. Children also understand language before they can use it themselves. So you can help your child understand what they’re feeling by helping them develop ‘emotional language’.
It might feel strange to talk to your child about feelings while they’re still developing language skills. Here are some ideas to help:
- When you see your child showing a particular emotion, label it for them and talk about it. For example, ‘You have a big smile on your face. You must be happy to see me’, or ‘You’re crying. You’re frustrated because you can’t play with the fish’.
- Label the emotions your child sees in you and other people. For example, ‘Auntie’s sad because she misses Grandpa’.
- Help your child explore emotions through play. Play ideas to develop young children’s emotions include puppet play, singing, reading and messy play.