The summer heat was thick and heavy that afternoon when my son came storming into our backyard, fists clenched, tears streaming, and voice rising with the kind of raw injustice that only children can express without reservation. A disagreement with a neighbouring kid had escalated beyond the usual playground politics, feelings had been trampled, and now he stood before me like a small hurricane of emotion.
Every parenting instinct I’d inherited from my own childhood kicked in immediately. Calm them down. Soothe the storm. Fix the problem. Maybe offer one of those well-meaning phrases that adults use to minimize kids’ big feelings: “You’ll be friends again tomorrow” or “It’s not that big a deal.”
But something made me pause. Maybe it was my years of working with families, or maybe it was the memory of my own childhood emotions being managed rather than honoured. Instead of rushing to calm the storm, I found myself saying something that initially surprised me: “That sounds really hard. I’m right here with you.”
What happened next changed everything I thought I knew about emotional resilience.
Rather than escalating or spiralling into chaos, my son began to move through his emotions like water flowing down a mountainside. The anger flowed into sadness, the sadness into quiet reflection, and eventually – without any guidance or intervention from me – into a surprisingly nuanced understanding of both his own feelings and his friend’s perspective.
I watched, fascinated, as he processed not just what had happened, but why it had hurt so much, what he might have done differently, and how he wanted to approach his friend the next day. The solution he came up with wasn’t one I would have suggested, but it reflected a level of emotional intelligence and personal agency that no adult-imposed resolution could have fostered.
By bedtime, he had a plan. By the next afternoon, he had not only reconciled with his friend but had somehow deepened their friendship through the process of working through conflict together. He had learned something that no amount of adult advice could have taught him: that emotions aren’t emergencies to be managed but messengers carrying important information about his inner world.
The Cultural War Against Feeling
In our achievement-obsessed, compliance-focused culture, we’ve lost sight of a fundamental truth about human development: emotional resilience – the ability to experience, process, and integrate the full spectrum of human feelings – is perhaps the most valuable skill we can nurture in our children. Yet everywhere I look, I see children being taught the opposite.
We live in a world that prioritizes surface-level happiness over authentic emotional processing. Children are rewarded for being “good” (which often means quiet and compliant) and corrected for being “difficult” (which usually means expressing genuine emotions). We medicate normal childhood feelings, rush to fix every emotional discomfort, and teach children that certain feelings are unacceptable or dangerous.
But here’s what I’ve learned: the children who struggle the most as adults aren’t those who felt too much as children – they’re those who learned to feel too little. They’re the ones who were taught to suppress, ignore, or medicate their emotional responses rather than learning to understand and navigate them.
Three years ago, I worked with a family whose seven-year-old daughter, Lily, had been labelled “emotionally dysregulated” by her school. The recommendation was immediate evaluation for anxiety medication. When I met Lily, I found a bright, sensitive child who was responding normally to an abnormal situation: her parents were going through a difficult divorce, she’d recently changed schools, and her beloved grandmother had been diagnosed with cancer.
“She cries too easily,” her teacher had reported. “She gets upset when things don’t go as planned. She has trouble focusing.”
But when I observed Lily in a supportive environment where her feelings were welcomed rather than pathologized, I saw something entirely different. I saw a child with remarkable emotional intelligence who was processing multiple significant life changes in the only way children know how: through their feelings.
The Hidden Wisdom in “Difficult” Emotions
Three months after that initial consultation, Lily’s mother called with an update that perfectly illustrates what happens when we honour rather than suppress children’s emotional wisdom. Instead of pursuing medication, the family had worked with me to create space for Lily’s feelings while teaching her practical tools for emotional processing.
“She’s like a different kid,” her mother said. “Not because she stopped having big feelings, but because she learned they were okay to have. She’s actually more confident now. When something upsets her, she knows how to move through it instead of getting stuck.”
Lily’s transformation wasn’t about eliminating her emotional responses – it was about helping her understand that emotions contain valuable information. Her sadness about the divorce was telling her that she needed extra comfort and connection. Her anxiety about school changes was alerting her to the need for more predictability and support. Her grief about her grandmother’s illness was helping her process love and loss in age-appropriate ways.
When we pathologize these natural responses, we rob children of their internal guidance system. We teach them to distrust their own emotional wisdom and look outside themselves for regulation and direction. We create adults who need external authorities to tell them how to feel, what to think, and how to respond to life’s challenges.
The Body’s Wisdom: How Emotions Create Resilience
What most people don’t understand about emotional resilience is that it’s not about having fewer emotions – it’s about developing a more sophisticated relationship with the emotions we have. Children who are allowed to feel their feelings fully, without judgment or pressure to “get over it” quickly, develop several crucial capacities that serve them throughout their lives.
First, they develop self-awareness. When children learn to recognize and name their feelings, they create the foundation for emotional intelligence. They begin to understand the difference between anger and frustration, between sadness and disappointment, between anxiety and excitement. This emotional vocabulary becomes a powerful tool for self-understanding and communication.
Second, they develop authentic expression. Children who feel safe expressing emotions without fear of judgment learn healthy ways to communicate their needs and boundaries. They don’t learn to suppress their feelings until they explode in destructive ways, nor do they learn to manipulate others through emotional drama. They simply learn to express what they’re experiencing in ways that honour both themselves and others.
Third, they develop regulation skills. This might seem counterintuitive, but children who are allowed to feel their emotions fully actually develop better self-regulation than those who are taught to suppress or avoid difficult feelings. By moving through emotions rather than around them, they build the neural pathways needed for healthy emotional processing.
I think about Jake, a ten-year-old in my practice who used to have what his parents called “meltdowns” whenever he encountered frustration. These episodes were intense and seemed to come out of nowhere, leaving everyone feeling exhausted and confused. His parents had tried everything: time-outs, reward charts, even threats of consequences.
But when we shifted the approach from managing Jake’s emotions to understanding them, everything changed. We discovered that his “meltdowns” were actually his nervous system’s way of processing overwhelming sensory input and social pressure. Instead of trying to stop these episodes, we created a safe space for them to happen and taught Jake to recognize the early warning signs.
Nature’s Classroom: Where Emotional Resilience Grows
One of the most powerful tools for developing emotional resilience is also one of the most ancient: unstructured time in nature. Before scheduled activities and digital entertainment dominated childhood, children built emotional strength through free play outdoors – building forts, creating imaginary worlds, and navigating the small challenges and triumphs that arise when humans interact with the natural world.
Research confirms what our ancestors intuitively knew: nature exposure significantly reduces stress hormones, improves mood, and enhances cognitive flexibility – all crucial components of emotional resilience. But the benefits go far beyond biochemistry. Nature provides children with a context for processing emotions that our indoor, structured world simply cannot replicate.
I remember working with the Peterson family, whose eight-year-old son David was struggling with anger management after his parents’ separation. Traditional talk therapy wasn’t making much progress, and his explosive outbursts were becoming more frequent and intense. His mother was at her wit’s end, feeling like she was failing him somehow.
On a whim, I suggested they try “Wilderness Wednesdays” – afternoons when screens were off, schedules were clear, and their backyard or local park became a space for unstructured exploration. I wasn’t sure what would happen, but I knew that David’s nervous system needed something different than more talking and more rules.
The transformation was remarkable. Within weeks, David’s mother reported that he was not only calmer and more focused, but also more capable of working through disagreements and frustrations independently. “It’s like nature gives him permission to be himself,” she observed. “He can be loud and physical and messy, and somehow that helps him find his centre again.”
What David was experiencing is something that indigenous cultures have always understood: the natural world provides a container for human emotions that allows for authentic expression without judgment. In nature, children can be as big as they need to be. They can shout, run, climb, and explore without being told to quiet down or sit still. They can encounter real challenges – like building a fort that keeps falling down or navigating a disagreement with a sibling about which path to take – and develop genuine problem-solving skills.
The Power of Parental Presence
Perhaps the most crucial element in developing emotional resilience isn’t a technique we use with our children but how we relate to our own emotions in their presence. Children learn emotional patterns primarily through observation and nervous system co-regulation. When we hide our feelings, minimize our struggles, or present a perpetually positive facade, we inadvertently teach our children that certain emotions are unacceptable or dangerous.
I learned this lesson the hard way during my early parenting journey. I had been so focused on being a “good” mum – calm, patient, always in control of myself – that I was modelling emotional suppression rather than emotional intelligence. My children were learning that adults don’t have big feelings, which meant that their own big feelings must be wrong or bad.
The shift came during a particularly challenging week when everything seemed to go wrong at once. Work was stressful, money was tight, and I was dealing with my own marital issues. Instead of hiding behind my usual composed facade, I found myself saying to my children, “I’m feeling worried about some grown-up things. I’m going to take some deep breaths and go for a walk to help my body feel better.”
What happened next surprised me. Instead of becoming anxious or trying to fix my feelings, my children simply accepted this information and went about their day. Later, when one of them was struggling with disappointment about a cancelled play date, they said, “I’m feeling sad like you were feeling sad. I think I need to take some deep breaths, too.”
Trusting the Body’s Intelligence Over Expert Opinion
Over the years, I’ve witnessed a troubling trend: the increasing pathologization of normal childhood emotions. Feelings that were once recognized as natural aspects of development – the anger of a toddler establishing boundaries, the anxiety of a child facing new experiences, the emotional intensity of adolescence – are increasingly labelled as disorders requiring pharmaceutical intervention.
This medicalization of emotions reflects our culture’s discomfort with feeling states that don’t conform to our ideals of productivity and pleasantness. Yet these “difficult” emotions contain essential wisdom and developmental purpose. Anger teaches children about boundaries and injustice. Anxiety alerts them to potential challenges and helps them prepare. Sadness helps them process loss and develop empathy.
When we rush to suppress or “fix” these emotions, we rob children of important learning opportunities. We teach them that their internal guidance system is unreliable and that external authorities know better than their own bodies do about what they need.
This doesn’t mean ignoring genuine mental health concerns or avoiding professional support when needed. Rather, it means distinguishing between pathology and the natural emotional landscape of childhood – and trusting that many emotional challenges resolve naturally when given appropriate support and space.
I think about the difference between two families I worked with, both dealing with children who were experiencing anxiety. The first family immediately sought medication for their daughter’s worry about starting middle school. The second family chose to address the anxiety through nervous system support, nutritional changes, and emotional processing techniques.
Six months later, the first child was dependent on medication to manage normal life transitions, while the second child had developed robust coping skills and confidence in her ability to handle challenges. Both approaches addressed the immediate symptoms, but only one built long-term resilience and self-trust.
The Courage to Trust Your Instincts
Perhaps the most important message I can offer parents concerned about their children’s emotional wellbeing is this: trust yourself. Trust your knowledge of your unique child. Trust the wisdom that humans have carried for millennia about caring for young hearts and minds.
In a culture saturated with expert opinions and conflicting advice, it takes genuine courage to listen to your own instincts about what your child needs. Yet no expert – conventional or holistic – knows your child as intimately as you do. You are the one who has observed their patterns since birth, who knows their triggers and their comforts, who can sense when something is truly wrong versus when they’re simply processing normal developmental challenges.
The most emotionally resilient children I’ve encountered in my practice share one thing in common: parents who were willing to question conventional wisdom when it didn’t serve their child’s unique needs. Parents who recognized that genuine connection – being fully present with their child through joy and struggle alike – matters more than any particular technique, approach, or external advice.
Creating a Family Culture of Emotional Wisdom
Building emotional resilience isn’t about perfection or having all the right tools. It’s about creating a family culture where feelings are welcomed as messengers rather than problems – where children learn that emotions are valuable information about their inner world, not emergencies to be managed or eliminated.
This might start with something as simple as a daily feelings check-in, where family members share one emotion they experienced that day without judgment or problem-solving. It might involve creating sensory play opportunities where young kids can process emotions through their bodies – clay for pounding out frustration, water for soothing anxiety, and paint for expressing joy.
It might mean protecting unstructured time in nature where children can be as big as they need to be, where they can encounter real challenges and develop genuine confidence in their ability to navigate difficulties. It might involve modelling your own emotional processing, showing your children that adults have feelings too, and that there are healthy ways to move through them.
Most importantly, it means trusting that your child’s emotional responses contain wisdom, even when they’re inconvenient or uncomfortable. It means believing that children who feel deeply grow into adults who stand strong, and that by honouring your child’s emotional landscape today, you’re helping them develop the inner resources they’ll draw on for a lifetime.
The world needs emotionally resilient humans – people who can feel without being overwhelmed, who can process difficulty without being consumed by it, who can use their emotions as a compass for navigating complexity with wisdom and grace. These are the people who will resist manipulation, who will trust their own judgment, who will create authentic connections and meaningful lives.
Your child’s big feelings aren’t a problem to be solved – they’re a strength to be nurtured. In a world that profits from emotional suppression and dependency, raising children who can feel deeply and stand strong is one of the most radical acts of resistance you can perform. It’s also one of the most loving gifts you can give your child: the knowledge that they can trust themselves, that their emotions are valid, and that they have everything they need within themselves to navigate whatever life brings their way.
An Invitation to Begin
Building emotional resilience isn’t about perfection. It’s about creating a family culture where feelings are welcomed as messengers rather than problems. Remember: children who feel deeply grow into adults who stand strong. By honouring your child’s emotional landscape today, you’re helping them develop the inner resources they’ll draw on for a lifetime.
Coming soon: my free 5-Day Natural Kids Wellness Challenge. Each day, you’ll receive a simple, practical tool for fostering physical and emotional resilience in your children, along with the science and wisdom behind it. Stay tuned for more information.
