ABOUT THIS EPISODE
🫣🚫 A child melts down over something small, and a tired voice in your head says the quiet thing: 'they should be able to handle this by now'.
This episode is about the expectation underneath that moment.
We expect children to manage feelings we have never actually taught them to name. Emotional regulation isn't a trait some children have and some don't. It's a skill, and like every skill it has to be taught, modelled and practised before anyone can do it alone.
I walk through what's actually happening inside a dysregulated child, why a feeling you can't name can only be acted out, and why co-regulation, borrowing your calm before they can build their own, is the real mechanism behind learning to self-regulate.
Then the practical layer: naming feelings out loud on a child's behalf, using an emotion wheel as a shared language rather than wall decoration, and why the calm you hold in those moments is some of the most skilled and draining work in teaching.
✨ In this episode:
- Regulation is a skill, not a trait.
- A feeling you can't name, you can only act out.
- Co-regulation: why children borrow your calm before they own their own.
- Why matching their intensity always backfires.
- Name it, then they can claim it: building emotional vocabulary in real moments.
- The invisible cost of staying calm, and why it deserves naming.
- One thing to try this week: name one feeling out loud before you do anything else.
Free resource in the HUB: a classroom feeling naming card you can point to in the moment. Log in to access 🎉🩵
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