A young child can be furious without knowing the word frustrated. They can feel frightened without being able to explain what scares them. They may cry, withdraw, shout, or hit because something inside them feels overwhelming, even when they cannot yet tell us what that feeling is.
This is part of emotional development.
Children do not arrive knowing how to understand everything happening inside them. They gradually learn to notice emotions, give them names, connect them to experiences, communicate them, and eventually find ways to respond to them. Emotional understanding develops alongside language, thinking, relationships, and experience. Research suggests that children's understanding of emotions can also be strengthened through appropriate learning experiences.
First, children experience emotions
Before a child can say, “I am disappointed,” they can experience disappointment.
A toddler whose play is interrupted may scream or throw a toy. A preschooler whose parent leaves may cry. A school-aged child who feels excluded may become unusually quiet.
The emotion is real even when the explanation is not yet available.
This is important because adults sometimes expect children to explain feelings before they have developed the language and cognitive skills needed to do so. Emotional understanding develops gradually, rather than appearing all at once.
Language helps children make sense of what they feel
One of the ways children learn about their emotions is through language.
An adult might say:
“You are upset because your brother took the toy.”
Or:
“You were excited when you saw your friend, and now you are disappointed that she has gone home.”
The adult is not simply telling the child how to behave. They are helping the child connect an internal experience with a word and a situation.
Over time, children can begin to make those connections themselves:
“I'm angry because…”
“I'm nervous about…”
“I'm sad because…”
This growing emotional vocabulary gives children more ways to communicate experiences that might otherwise come out only through behaviour.
Research describes emotion knowledge as a developing and malleable set of skills, and studies have found associations between children's emotion knowledge and social and behavioural outcomes.
Children gradually learn that feelings have causes
Understanding an emotion involves more than recognising a facial expression or knowing its name.
Children gradually begin to understand that emotions happen in relation to something.
A child may learn:
“I feel scared when the room is dark.”
“I become frustrated when I cannot do something by myself.”
“I feel sad when someone I love leaves.”
This is a significant developmental step. The child is beginning to connect an internal state with an experience.
As children grow, their understanding can become more complex. They may eventually understand that two people can experience different emotions about the same event, that people can hide what they are feeling, and that a person can experience more than one emotion at the same time. These are among the more advanced aspects of emotion understanding identified in developmental research.
Adults help children learn through co-regulation
Children do not develop emotional understanding entirely by themselves.
Parents, caregivers, teachers, siblings, and other important adults help children make sense of difficult experiences. When a child is overwhelmed, a calm adult can provide the stability that the child cannot yet provide independently.
This does not mean solving every emotional problem for a child. It means supporting the child while their own abilities are developing.
Emotional development occurs through an interaction between the child's developing capacities and their environment, including their relationships with caregivers.
Sometimes the most useful response to an overwhelmed child is therefore not a lecture about behaviour. It may be a calm presence, simple language, and enough time for the child to become ready to communicate.
Understanding an emotion is not the same as suppressing it
There is an important difference between teaching a child to understand an emotion and teaching them that certain emotions are unacceptable.
Children will experience anger, sadness, fear, jealousy, disappointment and frustration. Emotional development does not mean eliminating these feelings.
Instead, children gradually learn:
“This is what I am feeling.”
“This is what may have caused it.”
“I can tell someone what is happening.”
“I can find a safe way to respond.”
That final ability takes time. Knowing what the appropriate response should be does not automatically mean a child can use that response while deeply upset.
Self-regulation is a developing capacity, and supportive relationships are part of how children develop it. UNICEF's guidance for caregivers similarly emphasises the importance of understanding children's developmental stages and supporting adults in responding to emotional situations without violence.
Stories, play and everyday moments all provide opportunities
Children do not need formal lessons about emotions every day.
A story can become an opportunity to ask, “How do you think she feels?”
A disagreement between siblings can become an opportunity to discuss what happened after everyone has calmed down.
A child who is nervous about school can be helped to identify what the nervousness feels like and what might make the situation easier.
Research reviewing emotion-understanding programmes found that structured training can improve several aspects of children's understanding of emotions, although the researchers also noted the need for more well-controlled studies.
Everyday conversations and experiences can therefore complement more deliberate teaching.
Not every child will communicate emotions in the same way
This matters especially when we think about inclusion.
Some children communicate their feelings through spoken language. Others may rely more on gestures, facial expressions, movement, drawing, signs, pictures, communication devices, behaviour, or other forms of expression.
A child who cannot easily say “I am overwhelmed” is not necessarily a child who does not experience or understand being overwhelmed.
Even the way children's emotional knowledge is assessed requires care. Researchers have highlighted the importance of considering language, culture and the characteristics of the children when measuring emotion knowledge.
The goal should therefore not be to make every child express emotions in exactly the same way.
The goal is to help each child develop meaningful ways to understand and communicate their own experience.
Understanding comes before judgment
A child's difficult behaviour can sometimes be the most visible part of an emotion that they do not yet know how to explain.
Instead of asking only, “How do I make this behaviour stop?”, adults can also ask:
“What might this child be experiencing?”
“Do they have the words or communication tools to express it?”
“What support would help them understand what is happening?”
Children gradually learn to understand their emotions through relationships, language, experience, play and repeated opportunities to make sense of what happens inside them.
They do not need to become children who never feel angry, frightened, sad or overwhelmed.
They need opportunities to become children who can increasingly recognise those experiences, communicate them, and find safe and meaningful ways of living with them.
That is not the absence of emotion.
It is emotional understanding.
References
Kamboukos, D., Ursache, A., Cheng, S., Rodriguez, V., Gelb, G., Barajas-Gonzalez, R. G., Dawson-McClure, S., & Brotman, L. M. (2022). Measuring children's emotion knowledge: Steps toward an anti-racist approach to early childhood assessments. Affective Science, 3(1), 62–68. https://doi.org/10.1007/s42761-022-00105-w
National Scientific Council on the Developing Child. (2004). Children's emotional development is built into the architecture of their brains: Working paper no. 2. Center on the Developing Child, Harvard University.
Sprung, M., Münch, H. M., Harris, P. L., Ebesutani, C., & Hofmann, S. G. (2015). Children's emotion understanding: A meta-analysis of training studies. Developmental Review, 37, 41–65. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.dr.2015.05.001
Trentacosta, C. J., & Fine, S. E. (2010). Emotion knowledge, social competence, and behavior problems in childhood and adolescence: A meta-analytic review. Social Development, 19(1), 1–29. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9507.2009.00543.x
UNICEF & Pan American Health Organization/World Health Organization. (2020). Emotional self-regulation and alternatives to eliminate violence in parenting: Guide for parents and caregivers during early childhood. UNICEF Latin America and the Caribbean Regional Office.
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