Why Children Seem to Have Bigger Feelings

A seven-year-old bursts into tears because their favourite jumper is in the wash. This reaction appears exaggerated - the jumper will be clean tomorrow. Yet for children, these emotions often feel completely genuine and entirely proportionate.

So why do children's feelings sometimes seem so much bigger than adults'?

The answer may have less to do with the size of the emotion, and more to do with how emotions are managed.

Bigger Feelings or Fewer Tools?

It could well be that wrong that children experience emotions more strongly than adults. In reality, adults can experience emotions that are just as intense. The difference is often that adults have typically spent decades developing strategies for managing those emotions.

Most adults have learned, to varying degrees, how to:

• pause before reacting,

• put feelings into words,

• consider alternative viewpoints,

• tolerate frustration,

• recover from setbacks.

Children are still learning these skills.

Emotional development is not simply about experiencing feelings. It is also about developing the ability to understand, regulate and recover from them (Thompson, 1994).

Children often have the same emotional storms as adults, but fewer umbrellas.

Knowing Better Doesn't Always Mean Doing Better

Adults are often puzzled when children behave in ways they know are unhelpful. A child may know: shouting makes situations worse, hitting hurts people, calming down would be useful. Yet in the heat of the moment, that knowledge can seem to disappear. This is because understanding and regulation are not the same thing.

• Knowing what to do is a cognitive skill.

• Doing it when upset is a regulatory skill.

Psychologist Adele Diamond's work on executive functioning highlights how skills such as impulse control, emotional regulation and flexible thinking continue to develop throughout childhood (Diamond, 2013). A child may genuinely understand the rule and still struggle to apply it when emotions become overwhelming.

The Developing Control System

One reason for this lies in brain development. The systems involved in emotional responding develop earlier than some of the systems involved in planning, self-control and regulation. A useful analogy is to imagine a car. The emotional engine is running but the steering and brakes are still being refined. This explains why children can appear thoughtful and sensible one moment and emotionally overwhelmed the next. The issue is not usually a lack of intelligence. Often, it is a lack of regulation under pressure.

It's Not Just About Reacting

Children differ not only in how strongly they react, but also in how quickly they recover.

Some children seem to: become upset quickly but recover rapidly. Others: react intensely, remain upset for longer, need more support to regain emotional balance.

Psychologists sometimes refer to these differences as emotional reactivity and emotional recovery. And there are individual differences. Understanding this can prevent adults from assuming that a child who remains upset is choosing to stay upset. Sometimes recovery simply takes longer.

Temperament: A Starting Point

Not all children begin from the same starting point. Research on temperament suggests that children differ in their natural tendencies from an early age (Thomas & Chess, 1977; Rothbart, 2007). Some children: embrace novelty, enjoy risk, adapt quickly. Others: prefer familiarity, notice changes more readily, need greater predictability.

Neither style is right or wrong, nor is temperament destiny. However, it can influence how children experience the world. A busy classroom, for example, may feel exciting for one child and overwhelming for another. Recognising these differences helps shift the question from: "Why can't they cope?" to "What support helps this child cope best?"

Borrowing Calm

One of the most important ideas in emotional development is co-regulation. Children rarely learn emotional regulation completely on their own. Instead, they develop regulation through relationships. Before children can consistently calm themselves, they often need help from calm adults. Through: tone of voice, body language, reassurance, presence, predictable responses, adults help children return to a more balanced emotional state. This process - co-regulation - is widely recognised as an important part of emotional development (Gottman, Katz & Hooven, 1997). In simple terms: Children often borrow calm before they can create it themselves.

Why Emotions Feel So Important

Adults benefit from perspective. A missed chance in a football match is disappointing, but most adults know there will be other chances, other matches. A friendship argument is frustrating, but most adults understand that relationships often recover. Children have less life experience to draw upon. A ten-year-old who loses a friendship may genuinely feel truly devastated.

From an adult perspective, a situations may appear manageable that from a child's perspective feels enormous. Sometimes the challenge is not the emotion itself. It is the child's limited experience of similar situations.

Regulation Is a Skill, Not a Personality Trait

People sometimes talk about children as though some are simply "good" at emotions while others are not. The evidence suggests something more hopeful. Emotional regulation is a skill.

Like reading, writing or riding a bicycle, it develops through experience, support and practice (Thompson, 1994). Some children may find the process easier than others. Some may need more support. But emotional regulation remains something that can develop over time. This is important because it shifts the focus away from labels and towards learning.

What Does This Mean for Adults?

When children are emotionally overwhelmed, it can help to ask different questions. Instead of "Why are they overreacting?" we might ask "What feels so significant about this situation?" Instead of "Why can't they calm down?" we might ask "What support do they need right now?"

Instead of "Why aren't they listening?" we might ask "Are they currently in a state where problem-solving is possible?" Curiosity often leads to more helpful answers than frustration.

Try This

The next time a child becomes emotionally overwhelmed:

• Pause before correcting.

• Consider what the situation might feel like from their perspective.

• Notice how quickly they recover as well as how intensely they react.

• Focus on helping them regulate before trying to solve the problem.

• Remember that emotional skills are still under construction.

  
  

Questions for Reflection

• Which emotions seem hardest for children to manage?

• Do some children recover from setbacks more quickly than others?

• How often do adults expect children to regulate emotions they are still learning to manage?

• What forms of co-regulation seem most effective?

• When a child is upset, is the focus usually on behaviour or understanding?

Key Takeaway

Children's feelings are not necessarily bigger than adults' feelings. What is different is that children are still developing the skills needed to understand, regulate and recover from those emotions. Emotional development is not about stopping children from having big feelings.

It is about helping them learn what to do with them.

References

Diamond, A. (2013). Executive Functions. Annual Review of Psychology, 64, 135-168.

Gottman, J., Katz, L., & Hooven, C. (1997). Meta-Emotion: How Families Communicate Emotionally. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

Rothbart, M. K. (2007). Temperament, Development, and Personality. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 16(4), 207-212.

Shonkoff, J. P., & Phillips, D. A. (2000). From Neurons to Neighbourhoods: The Science of Early Childhood Development. National Academies Press.

Siegel, D. J., & Bryson, T. P. (2012). The Whole-Brain Child. Bantam Books.

Thomas, A., & Chess, S. (1977). Temperament and Development. Brunner/Mazel.

Thompson, R. A. (1994). Emotion Regulation: A Theme in Search of Definition. Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development, 59(2-3), 25-52.