How Children Learn to Regulate Emotions

Children are not born with fully developed emotional regulation. The ability to recognize feelings, manage emotional intensity, recover after distress, and respond flexibly to difficult situations develops gradually through maturation, experience, relationships, and repeated opportunities to practice.[1,2,6]

This development does not happen in isolation. Children initially rely heavily on adults to help them manage emotional states, and over time they begin to use more of these regulatory processes themselves.[3,4,6] The pace and form of this development can vary widely between children and across situations.

Updated November 2026 · Hope For Families Knowledge Center

1. The Short Answer

Emotional regulation develops gradually as children learn to notice what they are feeling, tolerate emotional intensity, use strategies to manage it, and recover after difficult experiences.[1,2]

Early in development, much of this regulation is supported by other people. Adults help children calm, organize attention, make sense of emotions, and return to a more manageable state.[3,4,6] With time and repeated experience, children begin to take on more of this work themselves.

This does not mean that emotional regulation improves in a smooth or predictable line. A child may manage frustration well in one setting and struggle in another, or use skills successfully when rested but lose access to them when tired, stressed, overwhelmed, or highly excited.[1,6,7]

Emotional regulation is therefore best understood as a developing capacity that depends on the interaction between maturation, relationships, experience, emotional demands, and the context in which the child is trying to regulate.[1,2,6]

2. Why Emotional Regulation Develops Gradually

Emotional regulation depends on several capacities that develop over time. Children need to become better at noticing internal states, shifting and sustaining attention, using language to understand experience, inhibiting immediate reactions, and choosing responses that fit the situation.[1,2]

These abilities do not mature all at once. A young child may understand a feeling but still struggle to manage the impulse that comes with it.[1,2] An older child may know several calming strategies but find them difficult to use when emotions become intense.

Development also depends on experience. Children gradually learn what different emotions feel like, what tends to trigger them, which responses are useful, and what kinds of support help them recover.[1,4,6] Repeated opportunities to experience emotion within manageable situations can help these skills become more accessible over time.

For this reason, emotional regulation is better understood as a developmental process than as a skill children either have or do not have.[1,2]

3. How Relationships Support Emotional Regulation

Children learn to regulate emotions partly through relationships. Before they can reliably manage strong feelings on their own, they often depend on adults to help reduce distress, organize attention, provide reassurance, and make emotional experiences easier to understand.[3,4,6]

Over time, repeated experiences of being supported during difficult moments can help children build expectations about what happens when they are upset, frustrated, frightened, or overwhelmed.[3,6] Adults can also model ways of naming emotions, pausing before reacting, solving problems, and recovering after conflict.[4–6]

This process does not mean that adults should remove every difficult feeling or immediately solve every problem. Support is most useful when it helps children remain within a manageable level of emotional intensity while still giving them opportunities to practice their own developing skills.

As children become more capable, adults can gradually provide less direct support. Emotional regulation develops through this shift from regulation with others toward increasing independence, while relationships continue to matter throughout childhood.[2,3,6]

4. How Practice and Experience Build Regulation Over Time

Children become more skilled at emotional regulation through repeated experiences of noticing emotions, responding to them, receiving support, and trying different ways of coping.[1,2,7]

Practice matters because regulation is easier to learn when children have opportunities to use strategies in real situations.[1,7] A child may first need help naming a feeling, slowing down, asking for support, or shifting attention. With repeated use, some of these responses can become more familiar and easier to access.

Experience also helps children learn which strategies work in different contexts.[1,7] Taking space may help in one situation, while talking, movement, problem-solving, reassurance, or waiting may be more useful in another. Regulation therefore becomes more flexible as children build a broader range of responses and learn when to use them.[1,2,7]

Progress is rarely linear. New demands, strong emotions, unfamiliar settings, fatigue, stress, or developmental transitions can temporarily make regulation harder even when a child has previously used the same skills successfully.[1,2,6]

What This Can Look Like

Emotional regulation often looks different depending on the situation, the intensity of the feeling, and the support available.[1,6,7]

A child may be able to handle disappointment when a game ends at home but become overwhelmed by a similar frustration at school. Another child may calm quickly when an adult helps name what is happening, yet struggle to use the same strategy independently.

Regulation can also look different across emotions. A child may manage anger relatively well but find fear, embarrassment, excitement, or uncertainty much harder to tolerate.

These differences do not necessarily mean that a child has learned nothing or is being inconsistent on purpose. They show that emotional regulation is highly context-dependent and that developing skills can become harder to access when demands increase.[1,6,7]

What Adults Can Take From This

When children struggle with strong emotions, it can help to think about regulation as something that is still developing rather than something they should always be able to do on demand.

Adults can support this development by helping children notice what they are feeling, putting language around difficult experiences, offering calm support, and making space for recovery before expecting problem-solving or explanation.[3–6]

It is also useful to match support to the child's current level of regulation.[3,4] A child who is already overwhelmed may need fewer words and more help settling, while a calmer child may be ready to reflect, choose a strategy, or think about what to do differently next time.

The long-term goal is not permanent adult involvement. It is to provide enough support and practice that children gradually become more able to regulate with increasing independence.[2–4,6]

What Not to Assume

Difficulty regulating emotions does not automatically mean that a child is defiant, manipulative, immature, or unwilling to use the skills they have learned.

A child may understand what they are supposed to do and still struggle to access that knowledge when emotions become intense.[1,2,7] Regulation can become harder when children are tired, hungry, stressed, overstimulated, frightened, frustrated, or dealing with demands that exceed their current capacity.

It is also important not to assume that emotional regulation means staying calm all the time. Healthy regulation can include feeling strong emotions, expressing them appropriately, seeking support, taking time to recover, and returning to the situation when ready.[1,7]

Likewise, needing adult support does not mean that a child is failing to become independent. Co-regulation is part of how self-regulation develops, and the amount of support children need can change across ages, situations, and levels of emotional intensity.[2–4,6]

When to Look More Closely

Strong emotions and occasional difficulty regulating them are a normal part of childhood. What matters most is the broader pattern over time.

It may be useful to seek guidance when emotional reactions are consistently very intense, last much longer than expected, occur across several settings, or regularly interfere with learning, relationships, sleep, participation, or everyday routines.

Closer attention may also be helpful when a child is losing previously developed regulation skills, becomes increasingly difficult to soothe or support, or shows persistent distress alongside changes in behavior, communication, health, or functioning.

Seeking support does not mean assuming that a child has a disorder. It can help clarify what may be making regulation more difficult and whether additional support, assessment, or changes in the child's environment could be useful.

Continue Learning

Emotional regulation becomes clearer when it is connected to co-regulation, self-regulation, relationships, and the broader developmental processes that help children manage increasingly complex emotional experiences over time.

Recommended next pages

Understanding Emotional Regulation
Explore how children gradually develop the capacity to notice, manage, and recover from emotional experiences.

Understanding Co-Regulation
Learn how supportive interactions with adults help children manage emotions and gradually build greater regulatory capacity.

Understanding Self-Regulation
Explore the broader capacity to regulate emotions, attention, behavior, physiological states, and responses to changing demands.

Understanding Relationships
See how supportive relationships contribute to emotional development, learning, exploration, and regulation.

Why Relationships Matter for Child Development
Learn how responsive relationships can support regulation, communication, stress recovery, and development over time.

References & Scientific Literature

This guide is an educational synthesis of developmental psychology and emotion-regulation research. The sources below include major reviews and empirical work relevant to the development of emotional regulation, co-regulation, parental emotion socialization, family context, and the gradual shift toward greater regulatory independence.

1. Crowell, J. A. (2021). Development of Emotion Regulation in Typically Developing Children. Child and Adolescent Psychiatric Clinics of North America, 30(3), 467–474.

2. Haidar, J., McAloon, J., & Bulsara, S. (2026). From Little Kids, Big Kids Grow: The Development of Emotion Regulation Abilities from Childhood to Adolescence. Clinical Child and Family Psychology Review. Advance online publication.

3. Paley, B., & Hajal, N. J. (2022). Conceptualizing Emotion Regulation and Coregulation as Family-Level Phenomena. Clinical Child and Family Psychology Review, 25(1), 19–43.

4. De Raeymaecker, K., & Dhar, M. (2022). The Influence of Parents on Emotion Regulation in Middle Childhood: A Systematic Review. Children, 9(8), 1200.

5. Edler, K., & Valentino, K. (2024). Parental self-regulation and engagement in emotion socialization: A systematic review. Psychological Bulletin, 150(2), 154–191.

6. Morris, A. S., Silk, J. S., Steinberg, L., Myers, S. S., & Robinson, L. R. (2007). The Role of the Family Context in the Development of Emotion Regulation. Social Development, 16(2), 361–388.

7. Alarcón-Espinoza, M., Sanduvete-Chaves, S., Anguera, M. T., Samper García, P., & Chacón-Moscoso, S. (2022). Emotional Self-Regulation in Everyday Life: A Systematic Review. Frontiers in Psychology, 13, 884756.

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