Managing Meltdowns: How to Help Your Child Cope with Big Emotions

Kayla Fobian, B.S.
Practicum Trainee (2021-2022)

I’m sure you’re not surprised to hear that everyone experiences emotions. However, you may be surprised to learn that there is no such thing as a “bad” emotion. In fact, all emotions can be very helpful in navigating our daily lives. For example, anger can help motivate us to achieve a goal and fear can protect us from dangerous situations! In other words, the emotions themselves are not the problem. Rather, what we do with these emotions determines whether the outcome is productive or problematic. The same is true for your child’s emotions. However, children face an extra challenge, because they often understand even less about emotions than us adults. We can understand emotional meltdowns through this lens. Temper tantrums or meltdowns can occur when your child is experiencing really big emotions and just doesn’t know how to express them in a helpful way. Thankfully, you can help teach them!

The first step to managing emotions is being able to identify and name them. This is something that can be very difficult for kids. Children are still learning about the emotions they can have and how to identify those emotions. Many children can name the 6 big emotions: happiness, sadness, anger, fear, disgust, and surprise. However, even these basic emotions can get confusing, and children often have a hard time distinguishing what emotion they are experiencing (Rapee et al., 2008; Harvey & Penzo, 2015). For example, have you ever heard your child say they were sick because their stomach hurt, but they were actually experiencing worry about getting a shot or going to a new school? The first thing you can do to start improving your child’s ability to identify their emotions is name and model your own emotions (e.g., “I have a big presentation for work, and am I feeling nervous about talking in front of a lot of people” or “I am feeling frustrated because I can’t find my car keys”). This helps kids expand their emotional vocabulary and helps to normalize and validate emotional experiences. You can also help your child practice identifying their own emotions using the following tools:

• Feelings Charts: These are visual charts that include emotion names. For younger kids these emotion words can also be paired with images of emotional facial expressions. These charts can help children learn and identify a wider range of emotions. You can expand these charts to include more and more emotions as your child’s emotional vocabulary grows. 

• Body Scan: This tool requires your child to identify where on their body they are experiencing an emotion (e.g., clenching their fists when angry or sweating when nervous). Our bodies can react strongly to emotions, and these responses can act as cues to help your child identify what emotion they are feeling. 

• Feelings Thermometer: This tool requires your child to color in a blank thermometer to rate how strong a certain emotion is at any given time. The higher on the thermometer they color, the more intense their emotional experience. This exercise can help your child understand that we experience emotions on a spectrum and learn to identify how strong their emotion is at any given time. 

Once your child is able to identify emotions, they can begin managing their behavioral responses to these emotional experiences (Halloran, 2018). Again, there are many tools that you can teach your child to help them manage big emotions: 

• Deep breathing: This tool consists of a specific breathing technique, also called belly breathing. Your child is going to first take a big, slow breath in through their nose. On this inhale, you want to make sure that your child is breathing into their belly, not into their chest. In other words, their belly should be expanding, and their chest should remain still. You can help your child with this by having them envision a big balloon in their belly that is expanding with each breath in. Next, your child is going to slowly exhale as if they are blowing bubbles or blowing out candles on a cake. Repeat this cycle of slow inhale and slow exhale a few times. 

As we learned with the body scan tool, when children experience big emotions, their bodies can react in big ways (e.g., racing heart, sweating, etc). When their bodies become reactive, taking a few of these deep breaths allows a flood of oxygen to enter their brains, slowing down their body and calming their mind. 

• Physical coping skills: This tool consists of many different activities that allow your child to express behavioral responses to emotion in a more appropriate way. These can include things such as squeezing a stress ball, going for a walk, doing jumping jacks, or dancing to music. 

These activities allow your child to get out their emotional energy in a less disruptive and/or safer way.    

• Distraction: This tool consists of many different activities that allow children to shift their attention away from particularly distressing thoughts. This can include things such as playing a game, reading a book, cooking or baking, or playing with a pet. 

The goal of distraction skills is to redirect your child’s attention to a less distressing activity long enough for them to calm down. We know that the more attention we give to a thought the bigger and more distressing it can become. Distraction skills help children give their brain something else to do or focus on. However, we want to be careful that we are not dismissing the emotion, as this could teach children that their emotions aren’t important or valid. Once your child has had a chance to calm down, it may be helpful to briefly revisit the emotion. With younger children, simply naming the emotion and what seemed to cause the emotion may be enough. With older children, you may want to open up a conversation about their emotional experience. 

In summary, there are lots of ways that you can help your child manage big emotions. While those tantrum and emotional meltdowns may not completely disappear (remember your child is still learning and even adults don’t manage their emotions perfectly every time), you can provide your child with the tools they need to better understand their emotions and act upon those emotions in helpful and productive ways. If you feel these tips have been ineffective and your child is still struggling, you may want to check-in with a therapist for additional support and advice. 

If you are interested in initiating psychotherapy services for your child, please contact our Clinical Executive Director, Sarah Restori, at 702-508-9181 to schedule a teletherapy consultation or intake session.

References:

Halloran, J. (2018). Coping skills for kids workbook: Over 75 coping strategies to help kids deal with stress, anxiety and anger. PESI Publishing & Media. 

Harvey, P., & Penzo, J. A. (2015). Parenting a child who has intense emotions dialectical behavior therapy skills to help your child regulate emotional outbursts & aggressive behaviors. Tantor Audio. 

Rapee, R. M. (2008). Helping your anxious child: A step-by-step guide for parents. New Harbinger Publications.