Emotional self-regulation is the ability to recognize, manage, and appropriately display emotions. Children begin learning it in infancy with help from caregivers, and by ages two to five they learn to regulate their feelings and expressions on their own.
Infants and toddlers often have outbursts and tantrums because they haven’t learned to regulate their emotions independently. However, as they grow, children reach an essential developmental milestone and gain the ability to recognize and appropriately display their emotions without help from their caregivers. This is known as emotional self-regulation. This guide explains how the skill develops and gives educators and parents seven activities that build it.
In this guide
- What is emotional self-regulation?
- What is emotional dysregulation?
- Why are emotional self-regulation skills important for young children?
- How do you build emotional self-regulation skills in young children?
- Seven emotional self-regulation activities for young children
- Frequently asked questions
- Learn more from trusted organizations
- Bottom line
What is emotional self-regulation?
Emotional self-regulation is the process of recognizing, managing, and appropriately displaying your emotions. Children start to learn to regulate their emotions when they’re infants. Co-regulation begins at nine months, when infants look to their caregivers for help regulating their emotions. When co-regulating, infants interpret their caregivers’ facial expressions in unfamiliar situations and adjust their behavior accordingly.
By ages two to five, children learn to regulate their feelings and expressions independently and adapt them to meet social expectations, according to a ResearchGate publication on emotion regulation in early childhood education.
Four key factors influence children’s emotional self-regulation:
| Factor | What it includes |
|---|---|
| Physical | Children’s genetics, temperament, and physical abilities |
| Emotional | Children’s personalities, their exposure to trauma, and their ability to manage impulse responses |
| Cognitive | Children’s ability to focus and manage distractions |
| Social and environmental | Interpersonal interactions, empathy levels, and values |
What is emotional dysregulation?
Some children have difficulty managing their emotional responses as they learn to regulate their emotions. This is known as emotional dysregulation.
Emotional dysregulation can cause children to:
- Feel emotions more intensely than they should
- Experience certain emotions for longer than they should
- Feel certain emotions at inappropriate times
- Respond to emotions in extreme ways
- Have severe mood swings or volatile emotions
Some children diagnosed with ADHD, depression, anxiety, PTSD, schizoaffective disorder, or other disorders may experience emotional dysregulation as a symptom of their condition.
Emotional dysregulation may continue to affect children into adolescence and adulthood. Adolescents and adults who struggle with emotional dysregulation may also struggle with their careers and relationships as well as their physical and mental health.
Why are emotional self-regulation skills important for young children?
Teaching young children to recognize and regulate their emotions has many benefits. Emotional self-regulation helps children ground themselves when they experience big emotions. It also helps them feel good about themselves, decreases feelings of shame and anxiety tied to uncontrollable emotions, and helps them cope and thrive within social settings and relationships.
Emotional self-regulation is an indicator of academic readiness. Young children who know how to regulate their emotions experience fewer emotional distractions. In academic settings, emotional self-regulation helps children stay positive when they face academic challenges, which supports learning.
To regulate their emotions, children must learn the following skills:
- Sensory processing
- Attention and concentration
- Executive functioning skills
- Planning and sequencing
- Receptive language skills
- Social skills
- Working memory
These skills help children learn to recognize new emotions, learn to recognize how their bodies respond to different emotions, and learn to communicate their feelings.
How do you build emotional self-regulation skills in young children?
Children can develop emotional self-regulation skills with consistent routines, calm-down strategies, practice expressing their feelings, and positive and supportive adult interactions.
Seven emotional self-regulation activities for young children
Educators and parents can help young children learn to self-regulate their emotions with these engaging activities and crafts.
| Activity | Skill it builds | What you need |
|---|---|---|
| Sensory bottles | Calming the body and slowing breathing | Clear plastic bottle, mineral oil, blue candy dye, star confetti, glitter (optional) |
| Music-inspired art | Identifying emotions and expressing them creatively | Music without lyrics, paper, markers, colored pencils, crayons, pastels, or watercolor paints |
| Dragon breathing | Deep belly breathing to manage anger | None |
| Identifying character emotions | Naming emotions and brainstorming calming strategies | A movie or cartoon clip |
| Blowing bubbles | Slowing breathing to calm down | Bubble solution and a bubble wand |
| Mindfulness | Staying present and reducing stress | A mindfulness book or song |
| Toilet paper roll puppets | Expressing and checking in on emotions | Toilet paper rolls, markers, googly eyes, glue stick |
1. Sensory bottles
A sensory bottle is a sealed bottle filled with liquid, glitter, and small items such as star confetti. The glitter and confetti move around as children move and shake the bottle, creating a fun visual experience.
This galaxy-themed sensory bottle craft is a fun tool that you can use to help children relax when they’re feeling heightened emotions.
To create a galaxy-themed sensory bottle, you’ll need:
- A clean, clear plastic bottle
- Mineral oil (baby oil also works)
- Blue candy dye (oil-based; food coloring and liquid watercolor will not work)
- Star confetti
- Glitter (optional)
- Strong glue to seal the lid
How to make galaxy-themed sensory bottles:
- Pour the mineral oil into the empty bottle, leaving a little space at the top so the contents can move around easily. A funnel can help.
- Add about 1/2 teaspoon of blue candy dye, or more until you get the color you want. An adult should handle this step because the dye is messy and stains.
- Add the star confetti.
- Add glitter if you like. Because the bottle is filled with oil, any type of glitter will work.
- Glue the lid on securely, and check it every few months so the oil doesn’t leak.
- Shake the bottle, then encourage children to breathe slowly as they watch the glitter and stars slowly sink. This can help them focus on their bodies, regulate their breathing, and relax.
2. Music-inspired art
This art activity encourages children to paint or draw pictures inspired by the emotions they feel when listening to music. This activity helps children learn to identify their emotions and express them creatively.
To create music-inspired art with your children, you’ll need:
- Classical music or a piece of music without lyrics
- Paper
- Markers
- Colored pencils
- Crayons
- Pastels
- Watercolor paints
How to make music-inspired art:
- Have your child sit or lay comfortably and breathe deeply with their eyes covered for a full minute.
- At the end of a minute, ask your child to open their eyes and tell you what sounds they heard.
- Have them repeat step one while silently listening to a few minutes of classical or instrumental music.
- After listening to the music silently, have them listen to it a second time. At the end of the second time, ask your child what they noticed about the music.
- When you’re ready to move on to the art portion of the activity, have your child listen to the music again and ask them to respond to it with a drawing or painting.
- Ask your child what colors the music made them think of, how it made them feel, and whether it seemed loud or soft, fast or slow. You can use this time to teach your child that colors can be associated with emotions (e.g., yellow for happiness, blue for sadness, and red for anger).
3. Dragon breathing
This deep breathing exercise is a great way to teach young children to use deep belly breathing to control their anger.
How to do dragon breathing:
- Introduce this activity by talking about anger. It can feel like a fire growing in our tummies.
- Sit down and put your hand on your belly.
- Breathe in through your nose and blow out hard through your nose to get all the fire out from your tummy.
- Repeat steps 2 and 3 until you feel calm.
4. Identifying character emotions
This activity uses movies and TV shows to teach young children to identify emotions and develop calming strategies. It encourages children to observe how characters react to situations, identify the emotions the characters may be feeling, and brainstorm ways that the characters can regulate their emotions.
How to teach children to identify character emotions:
- Show your child a clip of a movie or cartoon. For example, you could show them the “It’s Okay to Like Different Things” scene from Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood.
- Have your child identify the emotions that the characters are feeling. For example, in the “It’s Okay to Like Different Things” scene from the episode “Daniel’s Lunch,” Daniel feels excited to eat his egg salad sandwich, but he feels sad when Miss Elaina says she doesn’t like egg salad.
- Have your child brainstorm strategies the characters could implement to feel better, such as taking deep breaths or talking to someone they trust about how they feel.
-
By identifying characters’ emotions, young children learn to recognize their own emotions and brainstorm strategies they can use to feel better.
5. Blowing bubbles
Blowing bubbles is a fun way for children to regulate their breathing. It can also help children calm down when they’re experiencing big emotions. All you need is a bubble solution and a bubble wand. If you don’t have a bubble solution, you can make your own using water, sugar, and dish soap.
Show your child how to blow softly to create bubbles, then show them that blowing too much air will make the bubble pop. If your child gets frustrated while trying to blow bubbles, encourage them to take slow breaths to calm down. Breathe slowly with them, then have them use the same slow breathing technique to blow bubbles.
6. Mindfulness
Mindfulness helps young children reduce stress and improve their attention and academic performance. You can teach young children mindfulness using books and exercises. For example, Susan Verde’s book I Am Peace: A Book of Mindfulness teaches young children the tenets of mindfulness and encourages them to breathe and be present in the moment. I Am Peace includes a guided meditation exercise that you can do with your children to help them regulate their emotions and practice mindfulness.
Emily Arrow, a children’s musician who teaches mindfulness, adapted I Am Peace: A Book of Mindfulness into an interactive children’s song titled “I Am Peace.”
7. Toilet paper roll puppets
This toilet paper roll craft encourages young children to practice expressing emotions by playing with puppets made from toilet paper rolls.
To create toilet paper roll puppets, you’ll need:
- Toilet paper rolls
- Markers
- Googly eyes
- A glue stick
- Felt balls (optional)
How to make toilet paper roll puppets:
- Glue two googly eyes on each of the toilet paper rolls.
- Use a marker to draw eyebrows and a mouth on each toilet paper roll to represent different emotions (e.g., happy, sad, angry, scared, etc.).
- Have your child use the puppets to express how they’re feeling.
-
You can use toilet paper roll puppets to encourage your children to role-play or as an activity that allows them to check in and indicate how they are feeling throughout the day.
Frequently asked questions
What is emotional self-regulation in young children?
Emotional self-regulation is the process of recognizing, managing, and appropriately displaying emotions. Children begin learning it in infancy with help from caregivers, and by ages two to five they learn to regulate their feelings and expressions on their own.
What is co-regulation?
Co-regulation is when infants look to their caregivers for help regulating their emotions, beginning at nine months. When co-regulating, infants interpret their caregivers’ facial expressions in unfamiliar situations and adjust their behavior accordingly.
What is emotional dysregulation in children?
Emotional dysregulation is difficulty managing emotional responses while learning to regulate emotions. It can cause children to feel emotions more intensely or for longer than they should, feel emotions at inappropriate times, respond to emotions in extreme ways, or have severe mood swings.
Why is emotional self-regulation important for young children?
Emotional self-regulation helps children ground themselves during big emotions, feel good about themselves, and cope within social settings and relationships. It also decreases feelings of shame and anxiety tied to uncontrollable emotions and is an indicator of academic readiness.
How can you help a young child build emotional self-regulation skills?
Children can develop emotional self-regulation skills with consistent routines, calm-down strategies, practice expressing their feelings, and positive and supportive adult interactions. Activities such as sensory bottles, dragon breathing, blowing bubbles, and mindfulness exercises give children practice calming their bodies and naming their feelings.
What are some emotional self-regulation activities for young children?
Seven activities that build emotional self-regulation are sensory bottles, music-inspired art, dragon breathing, identifying character emotions, blowing bubbles, mindfulness, and toilet paper roll puppets.
Learn more from trusted organizations
- CDC’s Developmental Milestones: milestone checklists by age, from 2 months to 5 years.
- NAEYC: It Takes Two: The Role of Co-Regulation in Building Self-Regulation Skills
- ZERO TO THREE: It Takes Two: The Role of Co-Regulation in Building Self-Regulation Skills
- Harvard Center on the Developing Child: Activities Guide: Enhancing and Practicing Executive Function Skills with Children from Infancy to Adolescence
How can childcare programs share calming strategies with families?
Families reinforce what children practice in the classroom when programs share the strategies that work. Brightwheel is childcare management software that brings billing, family communication, curriculum, and admissions into one platform. 95% of admins and staff report that brightwheel improves communication with families, which makes it easier to send home the calming strategies children use at school.
Preschool Daily Sheet
Download our free preschool daily sheet to share each child’s day with families.
Bottom line
Emotional self-regulation is a skill that all young children need to develop with the help of their caregivers. Children who experience emotional dysregulation may require more support in learning to regulate their emotions than others. Crafts, activities, and breathing exercises are fun ways to teach all of your children emotional self-regulation skills that help them identify, manage, and appropriately display their emotions.
