How to Practice Emotional Regulation Skills With Kids Before They’re Upset
by Michael R Kiel, MA, LPC
It can be hard to practice an emotional skill for the first time when a child is already upset.
Imagine trying to learn how to ride a bike for the first time while someone is shouting, “Hurry! You need to get somewhere!”
That probably wouldn’t be the easiest time to figure out the pedals.
Emotional skills can be a little like that too.
We often introduce breathing, noticing feelings, taking a smaller step, or trying something different because a child is already having a hard time.
Sometimes that’s necessary. Real life doesn’t wait for us to finish practicing.
But those don’t have to be the only moments when kids encounter these ideas.
We can also practice when nobody needs fixing.
Practice Emotional Regulation With Kids
When the Skill Isn’t Needed Yet
So how can we practice emotional regulation with kids before those harder moments arrive?
Think about something simple like noticing.
You don’t have to wait until your child is overwhelmed to ask:
“What do you notice right now?”
You could practice while walking outside.
Maybe your child notices a bird.
Maybe they notice that the wind feels cold.
Maybe they notice their legs are tired.
Maybe they notice that they really, really want to stop talking about what they notice. 😂
That most definitely counts too!
The goal isn’t to manufacture an emotional lesson out of an ordinary afternoon.
It’s simply to give kids opportunities to experience skills before we ask them to use those skills during something difficult.
Research on children’s emotion regulation supports the broader value of skill-building interventions. A recent meta-analysis of 40 interventions found small-to-moderate improvements in emotion regulation across children and young people, with approaches including ACT, CBT, DBT, and behavioral parent training represented among effective interventions (Espenes et al., 2025).
Research also points to the important role parents can play in children’s developing relationship with emotions. Reviews of parent emotion-socialization research suggest that what helps is not simply teaching children the “right” response. Parents’ own emotional skills, their responses to children’s emotions, the family’s emotional environment, and their ability to respond flexibly to the particular child and situation can all matter (De Raeymaecker & Dhar, 2022; England-Mason & Gonzalez, 2020).
That gives us a useful place to start:
Practice together. Pay attention to what happens. Learn about your child.
1. Practice During Ordinary Moments
Emotional regulation practice doesn’t always need to begin with a big feeling.
Try starting somewhere much less exciting.
While drawing, your child can notice what their hand is doing.
While playing outside, they can give words to something they hear or feel.
While building something, they can experiment with making one difficult part smaller.
While playing a game, they can guess what might happen and then see what actually happens.
These moments may not look like “coping.”
That’s okay.
Your child is getting experience with an idea without also having to manage a difficult moment at the same time.
2. Do It With Them
There can be a big difference between:
“Tell me three things you notice.”
and:
“Let’s each find three things we notice.”
The second version turns practice into something you’re exploring together.
You might notice something your child completely missed.
Your child might notice something you never would have noticed.
You might even discover that the way you approach the activity is different from the way your child approaches it.
That information matters.
Parent-child research on emotion regulation repeatedly points toward the importance of the interactions surrounding children’s emotions—not simply the possession of a particular technique (De Raeymaecker & Dhar, 2022).
We aren’t just teaching skills.
We’re learning about the child who may someday use them, and creating a stronger bond with our child along the way.
3. Let Your Child Show You Their Version
Suppose you practice naming an experience.
You expect your child to say:
“I feel nervous.”
Instead, they say:
“My stomach feels weird.”
Great.
Or perhaps you practice making something smaller and your child comes up with a much smaller first step than you expected.
Also useful.
Or you try an activity that sounded fantastic when you read about it online, and your child thinks it is completely ridiculous.
That is information too.
Practicing together gives us a chance to learn how this particular child experiences an idea.
That can be more useful than trying to get every child to perform the same strategy in the same way.
4. Notice What Happens
Instead of Grading the Practice
It is tempting to finish an activity and immediately ask:
Did it work?
But there are many other things we can notice.
Did your child understand the idea?
Did they change it?
Did they seem curious?
Did they rush through it?
Did something unexpected make more sense to them?
Would they ever want to do it again?
Practice doesn’t have to produce a calm child to give us useful information.
Sometimes we learn what fits.
Sometimes we learn what doesn’t.
Sometimes we learn what we might change next time.
All of the above is still learning.
5. Later, Try Something Familiar in Real Life
Eventually, a small difficult moment will show up.
Maybe homework feels harder than expected.
Maybe plans change.
Maybe your child makes a mistake.
Maybe something they wanted doesn’t happen.
Now you have something you didn’t have before:
a shared experience to return to.
Instead of introducing a brand-new strategy in the middle of the difficult moment, you may be able to reconnect with something familiar.
“Remember when we practiced making something smaller?”
“What are you noticing right now?”
“Want to try what we did the other day?”
Of course, your child still might say no.
The familiar practice might not help this time.
You may discover that something needs to be changed.
That doesn’t erase the practice.
You and your child are continuing to learn what helps, what doesn’t, and what might be worth trying next.
Practice Is Not About Preparing a Perfect Response
We can’t rehearse childhood until kids become perfectly prepared for every difficult feeling.
And emotional regulation isn’t about eliminating uncomfortable emotions.
Children will still get frustrated.
They’ll still worry.
They’ll still become disappointed, angry, embarrassed, impatient, and overwhelmed sometimes.
The purpose of practicing emotional skills is not to make those experiences disappear.
It is to give children (and their grown-ups) more familiar ways to meet what shows up—and more opportunities to discover what is actually useful for this particular child.
That learning can begin long before the next big feeling arrives.
Want Five Activities to Practice Together?
Let’s Practice Steady Steps! is a 13-page printable resource for kids ages 5–10 and their grown-ups.
It includes five everyday emotional regulation activities to practice Notice, Name, Make Room, Shrink, and Try together—plus opportunities to personalize the ideas and eventually use a familiar practice in a real-life moment.
The goal isn’t to find the one strategy that always works.
It’s to practice together, notice what happens, and use what you learn.
Explore Let’s Practice Steady Steps! — Emotional Regulation Activities for Kids — $5.99 instant PDF download
Michael Kiel, MA
Licensed Professional Counselor
Founder, Mindful Living Resources™
One steady step at a time. 🐾
References
De Raeymaecker, K., & Dhar, M. (2022). The influence of parents on emotion regulation in middle childhood: A systematic review. Children, 9(8), 1200. https://doi.org/10.3390/children9081200
England-Mason, G., & Gonzalez, A. (2020). Intervening to shape children’s emotion regulation: A review of emotion socialization parenting programs for young children. Emotion, 20(1), 98–104. https://doi.org/10.1037/emo0000638
Espenes, K., Tørmoen, A. J., Rognstad, K., Nilsen, K. H., Waaler, P. M., Wentzel-Larsen, T., & Kjøbli, J. (2025). Effect of psychosocial interventions on children and youth emotion regulation: A meta-analysis. Administration and Policy in Mental Health and Mental Health Services Research, 52(5), 833–852. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10488-024-01373-3
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