Big feelings can arrive fast.

One moment you’re choosing a snack. The next there are tears, shouting, dropping to the floor, or total overwhelm.

For many parents, big emotions are the moments that feel most worrying, and the most personal.
Am I handling this right?
Is this normal?
Am I making it worse?

If your child’s emotions sometimes feel huge, unpredictable, or exhausting, it doesn’t mean something is wrong. It means your child’s emotional system is still under construction.

What the science tells us

The Royal Foundation Centre for Early Childhood explains that the ability to recognise, manage, and calm emotions develops gradually across the early years. Young children are not born with the ability to regulate big feelings on their own.

Instead, they rely on adults to help them return to a state of calm, a process known as co-regulation. 

When emotions become intense, the brain shifts into a state of high alert. In this state, it becomes much harder for a child to:

• listen

• reason

• communicate clearly

• or control behaviour

This is not defiance.
It is a nervous system asking for support.

Over time, through repeated experiences of being supported in big emotions, children gradually build the internal skills needed to regulate themselves.

Why adult support matters so much

The Royal Foundation’s work shows that children learn about emotions through relationships first. Two processes are especially important when big feelings show up:

1. Co-regulation

Co-regulation means an adult helping a child feel safe, soothed, and emotionally held until their body and brain settle. This might happen through tone of voice, physical closeness, empathy, or guiding a child to a calmer space

These repeated experiences teach a child that:

• their feelings matter

• they are not alone in them

• and emotions can be managed safely

2. Noticing and naming feelings

When adults notice emotions and respond with empathy, children begin to recognise, label, and understand what is happening inside them. This is how emotional awareness and communication grow. 

Talking about feelings, in the moment and afterwards, builds the foundations for emotional understanding and self-awareness.

What this means in real life

Supporting big emotions is not about stopping feelings.

It’s about helping your child move through them safely.

That often means:

• staying emotionally present

• slowing the moment down

• offering reassurance before instruction

• helping your child feel seen before they are guided

When children feel emotionally safe, their nervous system can settle.
When their nervous system settles, learning and cooperation become possible.

Gentle ways to support big emotions

Grounded in the Royal Foundation’s guidance, these principles support emotional growth over time.

1. Start with safety, not solutions

Before teaching or correcting, help your child feel emotionally held.

“I’m here.”
“I can see this is really hard.”

Feeling safe is the first step toward calming.

2. Acknowledge the feeling before the behaviour

Naming what you see helps children make sense of their inner world.

“You’re feeling really angry.”
“That was disappointing.”

This supports emotional awareness and communication

3. Be the calm your child can borrow

Children regulate through adults before they regulate themselves.

Your voice, pace, posture, and emotional steadiness all communicate safety to a child’s nervous system.

4. Offer support, not suppression

Big emotions are not something to get rid of. They are something to move through, with help. Repeated experiences of co-regulation gradually build a child’s capacity for self-regulation.

The bigger picture

The Royal Foundation’s Shaping Us Framework highlights that early emotional skills underpin wellbeing, learning, relationships, and long-term mental health.

Big emotions are not detours from development. They are development.

When children are supported through these moments with connection, empathy, and calm, they are not just getting through today. They are learning how to live inside their feelings for life.

References and evidence

• Royal Foundation Centre for Early Childhood (2023). Shaping Us Framework: Main Report.

• Royal Foundation Centre for Early Childhood (2023). Shaping Us Framework: Technical Report.

• Royal Foundation Centre for Early Childhood. Managing big feelings together.

• Royal Foundation Centre for Early Childhood. Noticing and navigating feelings.

• Royal Foundation Centre for Early Childhood. How we grow an emotionally healthy brain.

• Royal Foundation Centre for Early Childhood. Back-and-forth interactions.