How to Teach Feelings to a 2-Year-Old (Step-by-Step)

Let’s start with the basics.

Two-year-olds are completely unable to “just” calm down. Their brains aren’t capable of doing so, which may seem obvious, but isn’t always clearly stated in many parenting books.

Developmental scientists agree: Children under 3 cannot self-regulate their emotions. This means they literally CANNOT calm themselves down, not right now, not anytime soon.

Dr. Daniel J. Siegel explains: “When a child is having a meltdown, logic is out the window.

Logic doesn’t even exist for children under the age of 5.” Dr. Siegel goes on to say: “Logic is one thing; the ability to regulate one’s own nervous system is another.

When we talk about ‘calming down,’ we’re really talking about calming down our body. And that requires something called executive function.”

Executive Function is the top-down thinking process that allows us to control our impulses, emotions, and behavior and is still developing in young children.

Step 1: Name the Feeling Out Loud, Even Before They Can

The simplest, cost-free step I began taking took about 5 seconds. I started talking about feelings – yours, hers, the dog’s, the character in the picture book.

“Wow, you really wanted that cracker. Frustrated sounds like what you’re saying.”
“Dad is very tired tonight. Dad is tired because he needs some sleep.”
“The puppy is wagging his tail. The puppy is clearly happy to see you.”

This isn’t just something nice to do. This method is based on decades of scientific research regarding development.

Research conducted by Dr. Matthew Lieberman from UCLA demonstrated that using “words” to express emotion creates measurable reductions in brain activity within the amygdala.

In essence, using words to describe emotions essentially “turns down the volume” on alarms.

As Dr. Lieberman’s team stated,

“Expressing emotions through words alters an individual’s emotional response,” which could be interpreted as a way of putting words to feelings that reduces an individual’s emotional reaction.

As a 2-year-old child is unable to utilize this skill themselves, YOU are providing external regulation by using your PFC to support the child’s developing PFC and emotional regulation.

It feels unusual at first to continually speak about feelings and actions with a child who either stares at you blankly or keeps yelling even after you speak. Continue to do it.

You are creating pathways in the child’s brain that will likely remain there for the remainder of their life.

Practical Script:

Instead of saying:

“Stop crying. You’re fine.”

TRY:

“You are crying. I believe you are feeling sad about having to go home. Leaving when you were having such a great time makes me realize how difficult it is to stop having fun!“

You don’t necessarily have to solve the problem; you simply have to label the problem.

Step 2: Teach the Vocabulary, But Keep It Small

When I began teaching my daughter about feelings, I did it incorrectly. I tried to introduce too many emotions at once.

I purchased a large poster listing forty-eight different types of feelings. She reviewed the poster once and utilized it as a climbing platform.

Numerous studies demonstrate that children learn vocabulary related to emotions most effectively when taught gradually over time, in real-time emotional moments, and in physical contexts associated with sensations.

Dr. Marc Brackett, founder of the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence and author of Permission to Feel, reports that approximately 75% of adult respondents identify only three feelings: good, bad, and stressed.

It would be unrealistic to assume that children can accurately identify their own emotions or those of others without explicit instruction in emotional vocabulary.

Begin with only four basic feelings. The four most common feelings at the age of two include:

1. Happy
2. Sad
3. Mad/Angry
4. Afraid/Scared

After these become natural expressions in everyday conversations, add additional basic feelings, including Surprised, Frustrated, Excited, Tired/Sleepy, and Silly.

There are several reasons why it is beneficial to limit your exposure to new vocabulary at any given time.

Both retention and generalization of vocabulary improve when learning occurs through repeated exposure over many weeks.

For example, she will eventually understand what it means to be “frustrated” after being unable to put on her shoes, unable to place a puzzle piece properly, and seeing a cup roll underneath the couch, before “frustration” becomes an integral component of her emotional vocabulary.

Step 3: Utilize picture books for emotional education

Picture books (and other forms of visual storytelling) serve as an educational resource on emotional intelligence that many parents use sparingly.

Here’s why it has worked so well for me:

Children experiencing a strong emotion experience heightened nervous system activation, which makes learning and processing difficult.

However, when a child is sitting calmly next to you, listening to a book, and/or you are feeling the same emotions as the characters, their nervous systems are relaxed; therefore, their brains are “open” to receiving new information. No danger exists. Only a story.

The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) recommends that children be read to from birth, noting that reading aloud helps build both language and social-emotional skills.

In 2014, the AAP updated its policy recommending that pediatricians recommend reading aloud to children as part of all routine developmental check-ups.

Books that have been used repeatedly:

“The Invisible String” by Patrice Karst: This is a very good tool for addressing separation anxiety/fear of loss.

After my daughter began crying at daycare drop-offs after school, I read this book with her each evening for three weeks. She did not cry again at drop-off time.

“Llama Llama Mad at Mama” by Anna Dewdney is essentially a script of what happens in the grocery store.

My daughter would laugh during those moments of familiarity. As we know, laughter serves as a co-regulatory mechanism to help regulate our nervous systems.

“In My Heart” by Jo Witek is also very helpful. It provides physical descriptions of how children may experience various emotions (e.g., happy: “feels like sunshine in my chest”).

These descriptions represent emotionally and developmentally appropriate concepts for young children, since they experience emotions in their bodies long before they can name them abstractly.

How to actively engage with books during reading time:

When reading books to young children, stop on almost every page and ask:

“How does she think she feels right now?”

Do not tell the child whether or not they are correct.

For example, if she says “she looks happy,” while the character’s expression clearly depicts that she is frightened, say: “Let’s take a closer look at her face. What do you see? Her eyes? Maybe she is a little frightened too.”

By asking questions about emotions, you model curiosity about others’ emotional worlds rather than evaluating her ability to provide the correct answer.

Step 4: Connect Feelings to the Body

The first, and perhaps most crucial, part of helping your child develop emotional awareness is something that many parenting books skip altogether: understanding how the body experiences emotions.

Emotionally, two-year-olds experience everything through the lens of their physical selves.

To a two-year-old, abstract terms such as “emotional” have no real relevance, while terms describing physical sensations associated with feelings do.

For example, your child may be able to understand and relate to the idea that “when you’re worried, your tummy gets tight,” because they have experienced those same sensations before.

According to Dr. Lisa Feldman Barrett, a neuroscientist at Northeastern University and author of How Emotions Are Made, emotions aren’t something that happens to people.

Rather, emotions are constructed by our brains using data from our bodily experiences (or interoceptions) and other factors.

As Dr. Barrett points out,

Teaching children to recognize and pay attention to what is happening inside their own bodies isn’t just a feel-good or philosophical approach. It’s based on actual scientific evidence.

Here’s an example of how you could use this information to help your 2-year-old become aware of their emotions:

When your child is bouncing around and laughing at full speed, ask them:

“Do you see how fast your legs want to move?

Do you see how much fun you’re having?”

When your child starts to get mad and their crying begins, tell them:

“I see your lip shaking. I see your eyes starting to water.”

When your child won’t calm down and go to bed, place your hand over their chest and say:

“Can you feel your heart beating? Can we try to slow it down together?”

Take a deep, slow breath yourself, and your child will likely follow suit.

Researchers studying the Vagus Nerve and Social Engagement Systems have found that it is a mechanism by which calm adults physiologically regulate the nervous system activity of nearby children.

Step 5: Validate First. Redirect Second.

I had always tried to fix the emotional response right away. As soon as my child began crying, I would jump into what I call “problem-solving” mode.

What I now understand is that this is also the exact wrong way to approach the situation.

By bypassing validation and redirecting our children without delay, we are saying (even if we don’t mean to) that the feelings themselves are wrong, inconvenient, or shouldn’t have existed.

In time, our children begin to realize that their best option is to suppress these feelings rather than express them. Feelings which are suppressed do not cease to exist; they continue to build up over time.

One researcher who has studied thousands of families is John Gottman. He is Professor Emeritus of Psychology at the University of Washington. He is one of the authors of Raising an Emotionally Intelligent Child.

According to his research, parents who use dismissal, minimization or punishment to manage their child’s emotions tend to raise emotionally challenged children.

These children exhibit increased behavioral problems, decreased academic success, and reduced ability to maintain healthy relationships.

Gottman’s studies were so consistent that he could predict children’s future well-being based on how their parents responded to their negative emotions.

Gottman recommends the following sequence when dealing with your toddler. This sequence can be easily applied by using examples.

1. Pause and recognize your child’s emotional expression.
2. Name it. Express your child’s name along with the emotional state you see. (“You are Angry.”)
3. Empathize with your child’s emotions. (“It makes perfect sense why you would be upset. You spent a lot of energy building that tower.”)
4. Set limits when necessary. (“However, throwing the blocks is unacceptable.”)
5. Work with your child to find alternatives. (“We can look for alternative ways to act when we become angry.”)

All of Steps 1-3 must occur prior to doing Steps 4 & 5. The steps cannot be done in reverse.

To tell the truth, during the peak of a public meltdown, I very frequently jumped to Step #4. And each time I did so, my daughter’s meltdown lasted longer than ever before.

Step 6: Use Play to Practice

One of the most consistent findings in research on early childhood development is that young children (ages 2-4) rely almost exclusively on play to process and integrate information and experiences.

During play, the child’s brain is in an extremely receptive and integrative mode.

According to Stuart Brown, the founder of the National Institute for Play, writing in his book “Play: How it Shapes the Brain, Opens the Imagination, and Invigorates the Soul, play does NOT represent the opposite end of the spectrum to work; it IS the work.

It is through play that young children develop ways of metabolizing their experiences, whether physical or emotional.

Using deliberate play strategies will allow your young child to explore and practice using emotional skills such as:

Using stuffed animals to practice checking in emotionally:

“What do you see that Mr. Bear has going on today? What do you think he might need from us?”

Your young child is developing problem-solving around emotions using a safe proxy.

Games based on feeling faces: Use exaggerated facial expressions and ask your young child to try to figure out what emotion she sees being expressed.

Then switch roles. Young children at this developmental stage tend to laugh while learning, and learning within a laughing context may be one of the most effective environments possible for learning.

Drawing emotions: Provide crayons and ask your young child to draw what happiness looks like in color. Ask her to tell you what color represents anger.

The idea here is not to get a “right answer”, but rather to begin developing the habit of recognizing and communicating emotions.

Role-playing: Young children who engage in dramatic play, whether it is pretending to be a parent or playing with dolls, naturally create opportunities for them to practice various emotional scenarios.

Pay attention when your young child engages in these types of activities. “Why do you think the baby is crying? What could be making him feel sad?

A Note on Tantrums: What Science Actually Says

I am going to speak about the “elephant in the room,” as many parents bring up this subject because of their children’s tantrums.

Here is an interesting thing the research tells us, which might shock you: tantrums are not symptoms of poor parenting or poor behavior.

Tantrums are normal and, in some ways, healthy aspects of childhood development. They show that the child’s nervous system is learning to process the large amount of stimuli it receives.

In a 2011 study titled “Acoustic Characteristics of Infant Toddler Tantrums,” published in the Journal of Emotions by Michael Potegal at the University of Minnesota, he used recorded audio from tantrums to analyze and conclude that there is a specific sequence of emotions experienced when toddlers experience a tantrum:

1. Both distress and anger reach peak levels at the same time, and
2. Distress will decrease before the child returns to a state of calm.

What does that mean? That if you remain calm and engaged during a tantrum and do not escalate things further, you will likely shorten its length.

If you become engaged in responding to the angry part of the tantrum through argumentation, yelling, or punishment, you will likely increase its duration.

According to the Centers for Disease Control & Prevention (CDC), “Learn the Signs. Act Early.” is a resource for assessing a child’s development.

While they suggest talking to a child’s pediatrician if a child exhibits tantrums frequently, intensely, and for extended periods after age three, tantrums at two years old are simply providing you with information: “My feelings are larger than what I can manage right now.

What I Got Wrong (And What I Learned From It)

I want to be real about the suggestions that didn’t help my daughter.

There are lots of well-known tips circulating on social media suggesting you create a “feeling chart” and ask your two-year-old to select where they are feeling (on a scale) when they get up in the morning.

I used the ‘feeling chart’ on our refrigerator for approximately six weeks. Most days, my daughter would indicate “disgusted.”

She loved looking at the faces on the feelings chart. However, research indicates that toddlers (2 years old) lack the cognitive ability to accurately assess their emotional state and assign a specific emotion or symbolic representation to it.

This skill typically develops between the ages of 4 and 5.

Additionally, I followed the suggestion to utilize time-outs to manage large/overwhelming emotions. At this point, I believe utilizing time-outs was the wrong decision for our family.

Time-outs remove the child from the calm, regulating parent/adult at the exact moment that the child needs co-regulation.

Clinical Psychologist Dr. Daniel Hughes has found that children with sensitive nervous systems may experience increased anxiety due to being isolated during emotional distress, instead of building self-control.

Our family switched to what we call “time-ins”, which consist of sitting calmly and quietly with your child until the intense emotions pass.

It’s worth noting that there isn’t one right way to do things for all families. I simply wish someone had informed me that many popular suggestions aren’t necessarily backed by evidence.

A Practical Daily Routine

Don’t think you have to create separate lesson plans for developing emotional intelligence. Emotional intelligence can be developed as part of everyday routines – as long as you recognize when they are happening.

Mornings: Upon waking, simply ask her,

“How does your body feel today?”

She may respond with an emotion such as “Cozy” or “Ready”.

Meal Time: For example, after burning your finger while handling hot pasta, you could say,

“I burned my finger on the hot pasta. That is frustrating. That makes sense.”

Transition Times (Leaving the Park, Turning Off a Show, Going to Bed): Transition times are consistently the most difficult times for toddlers.

Provide five-minute warnings. Name the transition time:

“We are leaving the park in five minutes.

“We will probably feel sad or angry.”

This creates a pattern of recognizing our emotions, which will help us navigate transitions for decades to come.

Bedtime: Ask one or two simple questions:

“What was something that made you happy today?”

“What was something that made you sad or angry today?”

Do not try to analyze or solve problems. The goal at bedtime is to develop a lifelong habit of self-reflection regarding how we feel emotionally.

The Bigger Picture

Teaching emotions to a two-year-old is NOT about preventing tantrums. It’s NOT to raise a child who never cries.

It IS to lay the groundwork for what research calls emotional intelligence – the collection of skills that show up better than most everything else (except maybe socioeconomic status) in terms of well-being, relationship quality, school performance, and mental health.

In 2013, a meta-analysis published in the American Journal of Public Health showed that social-emotional learning programs implemented during early childhood had positive effects that persisted years after implementation.

They had improved graduation rates, lowered substance abuse rates, and reduced their chances of getting involved with the justice system.

What you’re doing while you are feeding your toddler cereal in the kitchen or playing with him on the floor of the grocery store, or even just tucking him into bed when you are exhausted and he is crying again, is one of the most important things you’ll ever do as a parent.

My daughter is now three years old. Last week, after she woke up from an afternoon nap, my daughter came to me and said: “Dad, I’m frustrated and I have no idea why.”

Oh. My. Gosh. I almost cried.

She doesn’t need to know WHY she feels frustrated. She just needs to know that she is allowed to feel this way; that she is not by herself; and that there is a name for how she is feeling. That’s it.

Quick Reference: Phrases That Work

These are the lines I return to again and again:

“I can see you’re feeling…”

“It makes sense that you feel…”

“That feeling is allowed. Let’s see if we can find it in your body.”

“You wanted that so badly. That’s a big feeling.”

“I’m right here. We can feel this together.”

“What does [character’s name] feel right now? How do you know?”

“All feelings are okay. What we do with them matters.”

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References

1. Barrett, L. F. (2017). How emotions are made: The secret life of the brain. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.
2. Brackett, M. A. (2019). Permission to feel: Unlocking the power of emotions to help our kids, ourselves, and our society thrive. Celadon Books.
3. Durlak, J. A., Weissberg, R. P., Dymnicki, A. B., Taylor, R. D., & Schellinger, K. B. (2011). The impact of enhancing students’ social and emotional learning: A meta-analysis of school-based universal interventions. Child Development, 82(1), 405–432. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8624.2010.01564.x
4. Gottman, J. M., & DeClaire, J. (1997). Raising an emotionally intelligent child: The heart of parenting. Simon & Schuster.
5. Green, J. A., Whitney, P. G., & Potegal, M. (2011). Screaming, yelling, whining, and crying: Categorical and intensity differences in vocal expressions of anger and sadness in children’s tantrums. Emotion, 11(5), 1124–1133. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0024173
6. Jones, D. E., Greenberg, M., & Crowley, M. (2015). Early social-emotional functioning and public health: The relationship between kindergarten social competence and future wellness. American Journal of Public Health, 105(11), 2283–2290. https://doi.org/10.2105/AJPH.2015.302630
7. Lieberman, M. D., Eisenberger, N. I., Crockett, M. J., Tom, S. M., Pfeifer, J. H., & Way, B. M. (2007). Putting feelings into words: Affect labeling disrupts amygdala activity in response to affective stimuli. Psychological Science, 18(5), 421–428. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9280.2007.01916.x
8. Porges, S. W. (2011). The polyvagal theory: Neurophysiological foundations of emotions, attachment, communication, and self-regulation. W. W. Norton & Company.
9. Siegel, D. J., & Bryson, T. P. (2012). The whole-brain child: 12 revolutionary strategies to nurture your child’s developing mind. Bantam Books.