From your very first interactions with them as babies, your kids are learning on the fly how to interact with other human beings. What’s acceptable? What’s effective? What are both, and neither? It’s a lot of trial and error and conversation and correction when it comes to big toddler emotions.

Through it all, remember your young kids won’t be so dependent upon you forever.

It’s easy to extrapolate your child’s present level of maturity and understanding into the future. When you’re used to something in the day to day, it’s hard to avoid subconsciously doing this - I got into “I guess this is my life now” mode when Molly was throwing a fit and envisioned her just sized up as a fourteen year old doing Godzilla stomps through the house and hissing at her brother as she threw a tantrum. And the same goes for James now, as he’s taken up a new hobby of building up a head of steam and shoulder checking Molly into the nearest piece of furniture. But the kids of a decade from now are going to have matured every which way and be dealing with all new challenges.

One hopes.

At that point in life, their social ecosystems will have increased by an exponent compared to now. In all of those relationships they’ll have to navigate developing their own voices - and it won’t come by osmosis. We have to keep teaching about productive communication even in the midst of big emotions. Here are three ways in particular we’re trying to do this:

We don’t forbid emotions.

We do our best to give the kids the space to express genuine emotions, without trying to minimize or suppress them. They’re allowed to be sad, or afraid, or even angry. What they do with those emotions is subject to correction, but the mere act of feeling those particular ways isn’t. Our inconvenience or discomfort should not dictate how they are allowed to feel.

If you catch yourself saying things like, “Stop being angry,” “You don’t need to feel sad,” or “Calm down, there’s nothing to be scared of,” check yourself. If another adult told you any of those things, how would that sit with you? Personally, I’d land somewhere between put off and pissed off. Keep front of mind that your child is a small person. Emotionally disregulated, ignorant of much, but an entire person in their own right. And people feel.

It’s what makes us people.

We care more about momentum than mouth.

I got a sage bit of wisdom in police academy from a grizzled veteran trainer who came up, as the old timers put it, “in the revolver days.” He’d seen and dealt with just about anything you could conceive of on the street, and was teaching a module on deescalating volatile situations. One thing in particular has always stuck with me. Paraphrasing, he said:

“If you’re telling someone to do something, and they’re cussin’ you up one side and down the other, but they’re doing it, you’re winning. Don’t interrupt them with demands they show you some respect, because there ain’t none to show, and as soon as you open your mouth they’re gonna stop and have the fight you’re picking.”

The same can be said for toddlers. Now, none of this is to say you shouldn’t have conversations about tone of voice and speaking respectfully to people. But if your toddler is picking up her toys through protest, or whining while they get dressed, or dramatically sighing while they brush their teeth, just let them. You’re winning. Don’t let their not doing those things with a sweet smile and fluttering eyelashes get in the way of that.

We don’t diminish or rush emotional processing.

Everything’s a bigger deal to the kids. It doesn’t matter how big a deal something is to me, or how big a deal I think it ought to be to them. They’re going to have their own reactions to things, and work through their emotions at their own rate.

Emotions are like river rapids to them. They don’t have control over them, can’t fathom their depths, and don’t know where the hazards are. If you just try to stifle them by telling them to stop feeling a particular way, you’ll have the same result as if you tried stopping a canoe dead in its track in rapids: You’ll dump them in the water and they’ll keep going downriver anyway, now even more upset and with fewer means of control.

We try to get in the boat with them and guide them downriver instead. This will take time and cause frustration. We try to do it anyway. Now, I understand that you can’t take an extended amount of time to process every upset - when James decided once to boycott walking in the middle of a crosswalk, I had to throw him over my shoulder and deal with the emotional fallout on the far sidewalk. But if you’ve got the margin, use it.

Let’s consider an example:

You’re going out for an errand with your toddler. It rained recently, so you ask him to wear his rain boots. He says no, that he wants to wear his canvas shoes instead.

It’s clear toddler emotions are about to turn this into A Thing.

Let’s put a pin in the situation here and explore one path:

You say, “Absolutely not, it’s wet outside and the mud will ruin your shoes. I don’t care if you don’t want to, put your rain boots on right now…don’t get mad about this.” He ignores this, of course, and throws a tantrum. You escalate in turn, because you can’t bear to reward this, and now it’s a meltdown.

Not to take his side here, but you’re partially to blame. You tried to stop a canoe, with predictable results.

Now, let’s go back to our pin and get in the boat with him instead:

“I hear what you’re saying, buddy. You’re upset because you want the shoes instead.”

Identifying the emotion puts a crisp border around it and makes it less overwhelming for both of you. Kids can pick up when they’re being listened to rather than dictated to earlier than we give them credit for. If your kid doesn’t think you hear them, they’re going to escalate until they feel heard, one way or the other.

For you, it contains their response to this particular situation in your mind. This is not some meta power struggle. It’s not Zeus challenging the supremacy of Kronos. I’m sorry to inform you that the boy isn’t really factoring you into the equation, which is no more complicated than (cool shoes > uncool boots). There is no subtext here.

“Why do you want the shoes and not your boots?”

It’s easy to fall into the trap of feeling like our kids are just maliciously making decisions based on the amount of inconvenience it causes for us. Let’s not write normal toddlers off as psychopaths though - there’s usually some reasoning behind their desires, however arbitrary or tortured. Figuring that out can help you pick your way between boulders in the river.

“Oh, so you think the shoes look cooler than the boots. Well, you do have to wear the boots because of the mud…but I tell you what. What if, just this one time, I let you put a couple of cool stickers on your boots?”

Toddlers crave control and accomplishment. Giving them a win which costs you little to nothing is a good way to dig a boat paddle in and redirect the both of you toward calmer waters. Your little one feels heard, got to express disappointment without getting shut down, and thinks he got one over on you with the stickers. You got what you wanted all along: A happy kid wearing rainboots.

Did it cost you a spot of time versus dropping a ban hammer? Sure. But a hammer drop is never the end of it. Even if you get acquiescence, that energy doesn’t magically dissipate - emotional energy is just like physical energy in that it can’t be destroyed, only changed in form. It’ll present itself somehow, some way, someday. And I guarantee the time you’ll have saved not trying to stuff an enraged toddler into a car seat far outstrips the time it took to prevent it.

I get it, it’s seldom this cut and dry. But it’s important to keep situations like this in a proper frame: It’s not a “fight.” You’re not a peer combatant, you’re a mentor. Dealing with big toddler emotions is an opportunity for both of you to grow and mature, in your own ways, together.

We try to model emotional regulation ourselves.

Toddlers are sponges. They’re constantly looking for cues on how to respond to particular situations. It’s certainly true for our kids. An extended family member, who shall remain nameless in an effort to protect the guilty, has an occasional tendency to express frustration by saying, “Oh, for God’s sake!”

Scene cut to little Molly once upon a time suffering a building block architectural failure: “Fugawsake!”

It’s not fair to scold your toddler for throwing tantrums or expressing frustration if you’re swearing, muttering, and slamming things around when you get upset. Talk all you want, it’s not going to override your actions. Model the behavior you want from your kids - it’s the only way they’re going to learn.

This parenting journey with big emotions is less about wielding a paddle like a weapon to beat the rapids into submission, and more about learning to navigate them alongside your little one. It takes practice, patience, and plenty of messy moments, but by giving them the space to feel, prioritizing forward momentum over perfect execution, riding the waves with them, and showing them how you handle your own storms, you’re equipping them with the vital skills they’ll need as those rivers of emotion inevitably grow wider and faster in the years ahead. It’s tough work, no doubt, but investing in their emotional fluency now is one of the greatest gifts you can give them – and yourself – for the journey downstream.