More Than Meltdowns: Why Some Children Struggle to Regulate Their Emotions

One of the most common goals young people have in therapy is learning to regulate their emotions. It’s a phrasing you might’ve heard when discussing your child’s outbursts, meltdowns, or behavioural incidents with psychologists, paediatricians, occupational therapists, or other professionals. It’s regularly outlined as a primary goal in a child’s NDIS or GP mental health plan. You’ll read it in correspondence from school after a behavioural incident, and in books and parenting programs about child development.

When children start to struggle with regulating their emotions, we often instinctively jump to the simple and intuitive solutions. Take a few deep breaths. Walk away next time. Come and get an adult and we’ll handle it. All reasonable pieces of advice, and yet regularly they lead to very little change next time that child’s emotions escalate (much to the frustration of parents, teachers, and therapists alike).

In many cases, a child’s inability to action the advice and strategies given to them by parents, teachers and professionals reflects a more foundational truth that is often overlooked; emotional regulation is not a skill in itself, but rather is an outcome of many skills.

These are skills that develop not in a strict sequence, but instead build and integrate as a child develops. When we understand emotional regulation in this way, we can see our role as adults shift away from trying to ‘fix’ a challenging behaviour, and instead focus on strengthening the underlying skills that make regulation possible in the first place.

This article outlines a practical approach for parents and adult supports to shift their focus towards building these skills in kids through the way we approach them and reflect with them after they’ve lashed out, lost control, or experienced significant emotional dysregulation.

Skill #1: Emotional Awareness

At the core of emotional regulation is emotional awareness, the ability to notice and recognise internal experiences, moment-to-moment, as they happen. This includes the ability to notice thoughts, body sensations, and impulses or urges, all of which serve as the early signals that an emotional response is building.

For some children, this awareness (commonly called interoceptive awareness) develops naturally from early childhood. For others, and particularly those with neurodevelopmental differences, it can develop more slowly and less innately, reflecting a difference that contributes significantly to the emotional regulation challenges experienced by young people with autism and/or ADHD.

These signals that children learn to notice as emotions start to build include their thoughts (“this isn’t fair”), the physical sensations in their body (tightness, heat, restlessness), and their impulses to act (yell, withdraw, push away). When children can notice these signals, they have a window of opportunity to use their other skills and respond in ways that align with their goals. Without this awareness, emotions are more likely to feel sudden and overwhelming, with reactions occurring before the child has had a chance to recognise what is happening. The window of time where just walking away, or going to get a teacher for help, has closed before the chance to think of the strategy was even there in the first place.

For adults, understanding that emotional awareness is an emerging skill in the broader development of emotional regulation can help us to see that we can actively scaffold and build this skill in children when we reflect on their challenges later on, after the storm has passed. Using a curious, inquisitive and kind tone, we can prompt this development through questions like:

“I can see you must’ve been so overwhelmed. Where did you feel that in your body?”

“What was your mind saying when that happened?”

“What was your mind telling you to do when you were feeling that?”

For children who need more support, we can provide additional guidance:

“Sometimes when I feel frustrated, my body gets hot and tense. Does that happen for you?”

“When my mind says ‘that’s not fair’, I know I might make a choice I regret. Does your mind say things like that too?”

We often rely too heavily on consequences to express to a child not to repeat their behaviour, and too little on using these moments to learn the skills needed to handle things differently next time.

Once a child can notice what they are feeling, the next developmental task is learning how to communicate that experience to others.

Skill #2: Emotional Expression

A child who can notice the early signs of building emotions may be better positioned to respond, but the child who can then assign language to their experience and communicate it effectively to others is the one who will feel more seen, heard and supported. When a child lashes out, we can understand this, at its core, as an attempt to communicate something about their internal experience that they didn’t have more effective means of expressing.

When a child can label their feelings and articulate them to the peer that just broke one of their belongings, or express to their friend that they were upset when that joke was made at their expense, they feel understood. This sense of being understood lays the foundation for them to work through their feelings and move past them effectively. When a child struggles with this, emotions are bottled up, and they rely on behaviour, intensity and outbursts as their only way of expressing themselves. When thought of in this way, behaviour can be seen as a substitute for language when language is not yet available.

Adults can support the development of emotional expression by helping children build the language and confidence to communicate their internal experiences. When children are able to express what they are feeling, it creates opportunities for them to solve their own challenges, and also for adults to step in and support them when needed. When reflecting, we can ask questions like:

"What words would best describe how you felt in that moment?"

“What do you think you could’ve said instead for them to have understood you better?”

“If you’d felt more in control and could’ve spoken to me in the moment, what might you have said?"

Again, for children who need more support, we can model and guide:

“It sounds like you maybe felt frustrated when that happened - is that a good word for it?”

“If you’d told your teacher that you were frustrated when your friend said that, do you think they would’ve understood and helped?”

The ability to express emotions clearly is a key pathway to regulation, as once an experience or problem is communicated, it can be responded to, supported, and resolved. Language, however, sits as just one part of a broader set of problem-solving skills that emerge in childhood and strengthen in adolescence, forming a critical element of the interconnected web of skills underlying emotional regulation.

Skill #3: Social Problem-Solving

While language and communication allow children to feel understood and heard, additional skills allow them to build on this and more effectively navigate the day-to-day challenges they face in the classroom, at home and on the playground. A child’s confidence in solving problems grows as they develop the ability to generate and evaluate possible solutions.

Effective problem-solving is an ability kids gradually develop by learning to separate their emotions about a situation from their response, and instead see emotions as a source of information considered alongside other important considerations, including what their goals are, what others might be feeling, what consequences different solutions will lead to, and so on. For example, a child who recognises that an emotion-driven outburst at their brother for taking the remote may communicate how frustrated they are, but is unlikely to help them achieve their goal of getting the remote back once mum and dad get involved, is better able to consider alternative responses that both express their feelings and increase the likelihood of achieving that outcome.

Developing social problem-solving skills involves helping children move away from immediate and impulsive reactions and towards pausing, reflecting, and considering what they are trying to achieve in a given situation. This shift allows for a more considered evaluation of behaviours that will move them towards their goals.

Adults can support this process by helping children think more broadly about both the situation and their emotionally driven reaction. Questions I often use when exploring situations like this with kids to foster and nurture their independent problem-solving skills are:

“What were you hoping would happen in that situation?”
“What are some other ways you could’ve handled it?”
“What do you think might have worked better for what you were trying to achieve?”

For children who need more support, this process can involve more active scaffolding, where adults help generate and walk through different options together, weighing up what each approach might lead to and how well it aligns with the child’s goals. Over time, these guided conversations support children to develop a more flexible and considered approach to problem-solving, rather than relying on instinctive or emotionally driven reactions.

Skill #4: Perspective Taking

A key part of this social problem-solving skill is the ability to interpret and understand how others are thinking and feeling, and how their actions and problem-solving approaches will shape those thoughts and feelings. Perspective-taking builds on emerging social problem-solving skills by helping children recognise that their own experience is only one part of a broader social interaction, and that others’ responses are shaped by their own thoughts, feelings, and interpretations.

Children who are able to read social cues more accurately and consider others' perspectives are better positioned to predict how their words and actions might be received and to adjust their behaviour accordingly. Children can then begin to take into account not just what they want but also how to achieve it in a way more likely to lead to a positive outcome within the context of their relationships.

When this skill is still developing, children may misinterpret others’ intentions, overlook important social cues, or respond in ways that escalate situations unintentionally. In these moments, behaviour is often guided by a limited or incomplete understanding of what is happening around them. As an example, this difficulty is apparent in the common complaint of children that situations are ‘unfair’, which often reflects their inability to read the intentions of others and integrate this into their understanding of the situation and their goals.

Adults can support the development of perspective-taking by gently guiding children to reflect on the thoughts and feelings of their peers, teachers or siblings in a given situation. Questions that support this might look like:

“What do you think they were thinking about when that happened?”
“How do you think they felt when you said that?”
“Is there anything you might have missed about what was going on for them?"

For children who need more support, adults can model this process by offering possible interpretations and checking them with the child, helping to build their capacity to consider multiple perspectives over time. As this skill develops, children become more effective in navigating social situations, as their responses are increasingly informed by a broader understanding of the people around them.

Skill #5: Active Self-Regulation

When we think about emotional regulation, the strategies that often come to mind are the ones most commonly suggested to children in the moment. Taking deep breaths, walking away, asking for help, or using the range of other self-regulation tools we encourage to young people, are all important and, at times, essential tools for managing their strong emotions.

However, these strategies are most effective when they sit within a broader toolkit of underlying skills. Without the ability to notice internal experiences, communicate them, reflect on goals, consider possible solutions, and take into account others’ perspectives, these strategies can be difficult for children to access, and can lead to frustration when it feels as though children aren’t using the strategies we’re asking them to. A helpful reframe of this is to see this inability as a misalignment between the development of internal skills within the child and the skills required to use the strategies we’re encouraging.

When these internal skills are being actively developed and supported through moments of co-regulation and reflection, self-regulation strategies become more accessible, and can be used more skilfully across situations and contexts.

Adults can continue to support this skill by practising and reinforcing strategies in calm moments, while also recognising that their effectiveness is closely tied to the development of the broader system of skills that underpin emotional regulation. In this way, self-regulation is not simply taught, but emerges as children build the capacity to understand themselves, communicate with others, and navigate the challenges they encounter. They do this through their own experiences, guided by kind, gentle and safe reflections with trusted adults.