Parents often think they’re teaching emotional regulation to their children. Developmentally, they’re actually building a regulation system together.
By Tess Shirefley, Developmental Psychologist and Child Development Professor
TL;DR
- Parents and caregivers aren’t just teaching emotional regulation, they’re building it alongside their children in real time.
- The same stress that overwhelms a child’s developing nervous system can overwhelm an adult’s too.
- Our own early experiences and emotional histories shape how we respond to our children’s biggest moments, often without us realizing it.
- Co-regulation doesn’t require perfection, it requires returning to calm, repairing after hard moments, and continuing to model emotional openness.
- When we strengthen our own emotional regulation, we give our children somewhere safe to borrow it from.
- Three research-backed strategies — slowing your breath, running a HALT check on yourself, and prioritizing repair over perfection — can help you build your own regulation alongside your child’s.
Why It’s So Hard to Stay Calm as a Parent
In a previous post, we explored why emotional regulation is so hard for children. But there’s a part of the story we didn’t finish: why staying calm in those moments is just as hard for parents, and what we can actually do about it.
Many of the same factors that make emotional regulation difficult for children also make it hard to stay calm as a parent. Stress narrows our nervous systems and limits our ability to think flexibly, solve problems, and respond thoughtfully. Our nervous systems are shaped by years of life experiences, which can lead us to automatically react to situations that feel threatening, overwhelming, or emotionally significant.
None of us begin parenting with a blank slate. Long before we become parents ourselves, we spend years learning what emotions look like, how conflict is handled, and what helps us feel safe when we’re overwhelmed. Whether those experiences came from parents, caregivers, teachers, or other important adults, they become part of the foundation we bring into our own parenting. Without realizing it, our early experiences continue to shape how our nervous systems respond to stress and how we navigate our children’s biggest emotions.
Parenting has a remarkable way of activating our nervous system in ways we didn’t know before. Despite my years of developmental training, I hadn’t recognized how limited my stress response was until becoming a parent. A child screaming at the grocery store may trigger embarrassment. A toddler hitting their sibling may cause frustration. A preschooler refusing every request after an exhausting workday may simply overwhelm an already depleted nervous system. In those moments, our own capacity for emotional regulation becomes strained at exactly the time our children need us to provide it.
Development Doesn’t Stop in Childhood
The good news is that development, including our own, doesn’t stop in childhood – it expands across our whole lives. Just as children continue building emotional regulation through repeated experiences of co-regulation, adults can strengthen their own regulation skills through awareness and practice. Co-regulation isn’t about staying perfectly calm. It’s about returning to calm often enough that our children experience us as a safe place to borrow regulation while they continue building their own.
At this point, I recognize I may be starting to sound like a self-help book! Trust me, I know that “work on your own emotional regulation” is much easier said than done. Most parents are already juggling a million competing demands, making it feel impossible to add one more thing to the list. Parenting is also, by nature, a deeply selfless role, so the idea of focusing on building our own capacity can feel a little selfish.
But there is a reason flight attendants always tell us to put on our own oxygen mask before helping someone else. It isn’t because our needs matter more than our children’s. It’s because we are in a much better position to care for others when we have enough capacity to care for ourselves first.
Emotional regulation works in much the same way. When we strengthen our own ability to stay grounded, we are better equipped to provide the calm, consistency, and connection our children need to build those same skills themselves.
Fortunately, development rarely happens through dramatic transformations. It happens through small, repeated experiences over time. The same process that helps children gradually build emotional regulation can help us strengthen our own. Below are a few research-backed strategies that might help you and your child handle those never-ending big feelings.
Three Research-Backed Strategies to Build Your Child’s and Your Own Regulation Skills
1. Start with your breath
Developmental principle: Children borrow our nervous system before they borrow our coping strategies.
I know, I know, you’ve probably been hit over the head with “breathwork” and “mindfulness.” I’ll admit that before becoming a parent, I was skeptical, too. However, the research over the past decade has been pretty clear. Breathing using a variety of techniques has been shown to slow our nervous systems, offering especially us in caregiving roles more stable ground to work from.
When we become stressed, our breathing naturally becomes faster and shallower, signaling our bodies to stay in a heightened state of alert. Slowing our breathing helps interrupt that stress response and gives our brains the opportunity to regain access to the very skills we need to parent well.
I’ve started using breathing during the moments I know tend to push my buttons (some people call these “trigger points”). For me, they tend to be rushing out the door, chaotic car rides, or bedtime negotiations.
One technique I particularly like is the “sip, sip, sigh” or as some research has called it, the cyclic sigh. The other day I noticed my raging three-year-old started copying me while I was trying to “sip sip sigh” myself through the moment. Without saying a word, we were suddenly breathing together. It was a small reminder that co-regulation often begins with our own bodies. Sometimes our children don’t need us to tell them to calm down, or ask what is wrong, they need us to show them what calm looks like.
2. HALT your child and yourself
Developmental principle: Emotional regulation depends on meeting basic physiological and emotional needs.
In a previous post, I introduced the HALT framework as a way to consider whether a child is melting down because one of their basic needs has gone unmet. What I didn’t mention then is that we (yes, you and me!) benefit from the exact same check-in. When we find ourselves becoming overwhelmed, it’s worth pausing to ask whether one of our own basic needs is quietly draining our capacity to regulate.
Hungry
When was the last time either of you actually ate or drank some water? Kids have an incredible ability to burn through energy, and adults aren’t much better at remembering to feed/water themselves. Between skipping breakfast, sharing half our lunch (gotta love the little racoon hands grabbing food off my plate), and prioritizing everyone else’s water bottle refill before our own, hunger and thirst can quietly become fuel (or antifuel) for frustration.
Angry
If emotions are already running high, don’t stop at recognizing anger. Instead, pause to reflect on where the anger is coming from. Just the other day my son had what felt like a completely inexplicable meltdown. After everyone had calmed down, he finally told me, “I got so angry because you asked me to pick up the nail polish.”
Was that the response I expected? Absolutely not. But it reminded me that children often have reasons for their feelings that make perfect sense to them, even when they don’t make immediate sense to us. Understanding the source of the frustration is often the first step toward solving it.
Lonely
This may be the most overlooked need of all. A few years ago I found myself home with an 18-month-old and one-month-old twins. Despite being surrounded by people all day, it was one of the loneliest periods of my life. Once I intentionally started reconnecting with other adults, I noticed I had more capacity at home.
As our children get older we may need to refill our capacity by finding purpose and connection with others outside of our children, too.
Tired
This one probably doesn’t need much explanation. Sleep deprivation makes emotional regulation harder for everyone. While “sleep when the baby sleeps” may be one of the least practical pieces of parenting advice ever given, it is worth remembering that our own exhaustion affects our ability to respond thoughtfully just as much as it affects our children’s.
Maslow argued decades ago that our higher-order goals depend on our basic needs first being met. Emotional regulation is no different. Before assuming someone (including yourself) simply needs to “calm down,” ask whether your or your child first needs a snack, a drink of water, a hug, a nap, or simply some more connection.
3. Focus on Repair Rather Than Perfection
Developmental principle: Children learn resilience through repeated experiences of rupture and repair.
If there’s one misconception I’d love to erase from parenting, it’s the idea that “good parents” never lose control. Developmental science tells us that children don’t need perfectly controlled parents, they need parents who know how to repair and model what happens after a challenging moment.
Children learn emotional regulation not because adults remain calm every single time, but because they experience relationships that recover after difficult moments. When we apologize after yelling, acknowledge our own emotions, reconnect after conflict, and talk about what we’ll do differently next time, we’re teaching emotional regulation in real time.
Not long ago (i.e. yesterday), I lost my patience and yelled at my kids in the car. Once everyone had calmed down, I not only apologized but I explained what happened to me. I shared that I had been feeling overwhelmed because I was trying to drive safely while everyone was talking, crying, and asking for things all at once. We talked together about what each of us could do differently next time including what I could do to stay calmer, and what they could do to help keep everyone safe.
While I wish I hadn’t yelled, the repair afterward gave the moment a purpose. My children saw that adults make mistakes, take responsibility, reconnect, and try again. Perhaps even more importantly, they learned that relationships can survive conflict. That lesson becomes one of the strongest foundations for emotional resilience they will carry into future friendships, classrooms, workplaces, and maybe one day their own families.
At the end of the day, emotional regulation isn’t built in one perfectly handled tantrum or one flawlessly calm parenting moment. It’s built across thousands of ordinary interactions including those that are good and not so good. Fortunately for all of us, children don’t need perfect parents. They simply need adults who are willing to keep growing alongside them.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is co-regulation?
Co-regulation is the process by which a child borrows a caregiver’s calm nervous system before they’re able to self-regulate independently. For parents, it means the calm you offer your child is doing real developmental work, not just managing the moment.
How can I stay calm when my child is melting down?
Start by working with your own nervous system, not just your child’s. Slow, extended-exhale breathing (like cyclic sighing) can measurably reduce stress in minutes. It also helps to run a quick HALT check on yourself (Hungry, Angry, Lonely, Tired) before assuming you simply need to “get it together.”
What if I lose my temper with my child?
Losing your temper occasionally doesn’t undo a child’s development. What matters most is repair: acknowledging what happened, apologizing, and talking about what you’ll do differently next time. Children build resilience through this repeated pattern of rupture and repair, not through never seeing a parent struggle.
How can I use HALT on myself as a parent?
The same HALT check that helps identify why a child is struggling — Hungry, Angry, Lonely, Tired — applies to caregivers too. When you’re feeling overwhelmed, pausing to check whether one of those basic needs is unmet is often more effective than trying to “just calm down.”