5 Easy Emotion Regulation Activities For Kids
Want simple tools to help your child stay calm, cope better, and build confidence? These 5 emotion regulation activities for kids are a brilliant place to start.
As a person-centred counsellor, I’ve supported many families navigating big feelings. By learning these simple, 5-10 minute techniques together, you can help your child build emotional regulation skills, reduce outbursts, and thrive. They are suitable for ages 5-16.
If you’re ready to go deeper, my colleague Dr Lucy Russell’s short online course End Emotional Outbursts gives you a simple, effective framework for working on emotional regulation skills with your child.
TL;DR: Summary of Emotion Regulation Activities for Kids
- 🟨 Use mood cards to build emotional awareness
- 🫧 Teach calming breathing techniques in quiet moments
- 📚 Spot and name feelings using picture books
- 🎲 Play board games to practice frustration tolerance and self-control
- 📊 Try the 5-Point Scale to recognize and manage rising emotions
- 🧠Take the End Emotional Outbursts short course to feel even more empowered in successfully managing your child’s emotional ups and downs.
Bonus: These tools are most effective when used together and practiced during calm times with your support.
Why Emotion Regulation Is Important for Child Development
All children, just like adults, experience a wide range of emotions every day. But unlike adults, children’s brains are still developing. The prefrontal cortex that helps them manage big emotions doesn’t fully mature until their mid-twenties.
That means it’s completely normal, expected even, for children to struggle with self-regulation. Especially if they’re tired, hungry, overwhelmed, or neurodivergent.
If your child finds it hard to manage emotions, you might see:
- Frequent meltdowns and tantrums
- Anxiety or shame about “being out of control”
- Trouble with friendships, learning or transitions
These moments aren’t bad behaviour. They’re a sign your child’s brain needs help.
When a child can manage their emotions, they:
- Are more likely to be able to ground themselves when they experience big emotions.
- Are more likely to feel good about themselves and develop self-awareness. In fact, lack of self-regulation often contributes to a sense of shame, anxiety that some emotions are “out of control”, and other complex emotions.
- May thrive within friendships and relationships.
- May do better academically at school, because overall they feel more in control.
These self-regulation strategies also support social-emotional learning.
5 Easy Emotion Regulation Activities for Kids to Use Daily
When your child is upset, they need your calm to find their own.
This process is called co-regulation. It’s about staying connected and steady so your child feels safe enough to begin calming down. Over time, they internalise those skills, but first, they learn from you.
These five easy calming activities for emotion regulation are all about co-regulation. They’re tools you can practise together, especially during calm times. That way, when emotions run high, your child has a stronger foundation to rely on.
Let’s explore them.
You will know an activity is working when you notice a gradual increase in your child’s ability to name their feelings and use self-regulation tools independently. Look for subtle improvements, such as shorter recovery times after becoming upset or your child voluntarily choosing a calming strategy during a tense moment.
Remember that progress is often small and non-linear (doesn’t go in a straight line), so focus on the long-term trend rather than perfect performance every time.
1. Mood Cards: Helping Children Understand Their Feelings
If your child can’t name what they’re feeling, it’s almost impossible for them to manage that emotion.
Mood cards are a brilliant way to help children recognise and build emotional awareness by naming emotions and expanding emotional vocabulary, especially in calmer moments. I use them in my counselling practice and they’re fantastic.
Mood cards are also known as feelings cards or emotions cards.
You can grab our free emotions cards to print and cut out!
Each colourful feelings card has a different emotion written on it, using clear, child-friendly language.
These are perfect for a fun game called “Act it Out”, which helps children understand emotions through movement and imagination, building emotional intelligence.
Here’s how to play:
- Cut out the cards and place them in a small pile face down.
- Take turns picking a card and acting out the emotion, using just your face and body, no words!
- The other person guesses the emotion.
- Then ask: “Can you remember a time you felt that way?” or “What do you think could help someone feeling like that?”
This game is a brilliant way to help your child notice how emotions look and feel, and it gives you an easy opening to talk about tricky feelings in a playful, low-pressure way.
Tip: You can keep the cards in a visible place and use them for regular check-ins too. “Which card matches how you’re feeling today?”
But remember: this is a learning activity for calm times, not a tool for in-the-moment meltdowns.eltdowns.
2. Breathing Exercises: A Simple Way to Calm the Body and Brain
When a child is in full meltdown, breathing exercises won’t work. At that point, their brain is in “survival mode”, fight, flight or freeze.
But when taught and practised regularly in calm moments, deep breathing exercises can become a powerful calming habit. They’re one of many calming tools, like a calm down jar, especially helpful when used early, when your child is just starting to feel overwhelmed or agitated. They also promote body awareness.
Try this deep breathing exercise:
- Lie on the floor together with a pillow under your heads.
- Place one hand on your tummy.
- Breathe in slowly through your nose, noticing the tummy rise.
- Breathe out slowly through your nose.
- Repeat together three more times.
Your child is more likely to use these techniques later if they’ve practised with you and felt the difference in their body.
Like all emotion regulation tools, breathing is most effective when introduced gently, during calm times, with your full support.
Deep breathing exercises can be paired with mindfulness techniques, yoga poses, or guided imagery for children who need more sensory input.
For some children, occupational therapy principles like heavy work or other sensory activities can provide the necessary foundation for calming tools to be effective.
3. Use Picture Books to Spot and Talk About Feelings
Pick a picture book with clear facial expressions (you probably already have some on the shelf). As you read together, pause and ask:
- “What do you think this character is feeling?”
- “Why might they feel that way?”
- “What do you think they could do next?”
Don’t worry about right answers. You’re building your child’s confidence in noticing, naming and talking about feelings, fostering self-awareness. Discussing characters also helps build empathy and emotional intelligence.
You can also model this by sharing your own reactions: “I think I’d feel nervous if I were them.” This shows your child it’s okay to feel things and talk about them, promoting self-awareness.
4. Play Simple Board Games to Practise Taking Turns and Managing Frustration
Games like Uno, Snap, or Connect 4 are great for teaching patience, resilience, flexible thinking, impulse control, and coping skills.
Here’s what to do:
- Choose a short, easy game and explain the rules clearly.
- As you play, gently name feelings as they come up. For example: “You look disappointed. It’s hard when we don’t win.”
- Praise effort, not outcome: “I noticed you stayed calm even when you were losing. That’s brilliant self-control. You’re developing great coping strategies.”
5. Try the Incredible 5-Point Scale to Help Your Child Recognise Rising Emotions
Often when children are over-stimulated and emotionally dysregulated, they switch to “survival mode”.
At this point they may experience being in full fight or flight mode.
This may present itself as anger or a panic attack or extreme distress. It is almost impossible to manage emotions in a healthy way when you are in this state of mind.
Designed by Kari Dunn Buron, The Incredible 5 Point Scale can be personalised to situations and emotions that your child might be finding difficult and when they don’t know what to do or how to feel better.
Level 1 is always little and 5 is always big. It is not ‘right’ or ‘wrong’.
Once you and your child establish their scale with emotional regulation skills and coping strategies, you can take action!
For example, perhaps my excitement is a 4 but it needs to be a 2 or a 1, because I am on stage in my school concert and I need to be calm.
Perhaps I could:
- Engage in deep, slow breathing (which I have practised regularly at home).
- Do some repetitive, rhythmic movements, such as rubbing my hands, which calm the brain stem.
The incredible 5 point scale can also be used preventatively with calming activities.
Prior to the concert, activities to help bring excitement down to a 2 or a 1 might include:
Listening to calming music.
Intense exercise to release pent-up adrenaline and cortisol.
Your Child Can’t Do This Alone – But You Don’t Have to Either
You’re already doing the most important thing: showing up with love and curiosity, trying to understand your child’s world.
But if you’re still stuck in a cycle of explosive behaviour and constant firefighting, you don’t have to stay there.
End Emotional Outbursts is my short, practical online course designed specifically for parents of 7–13 year-olds with big feelings. In just five days, you’ll learn:
- What’s really behind your child’s outbursts
- How to spot the signs before things boil over
- Emotional regulation skills and calming activities you can introduce right now to reduce emotional explosions
You’ll get videos, simple worksheets, and clear step-by-step guidance based on everything I’ve learned in 20+ years as a psychologist.
“I feel I actually understand my child now and what is going on for her. I feel I have been equipped in so many ways to help her, instead of just getting exasperated.”
– Course Participant
If this sounds like the support you’ve been looking for, I’d love to welcome you inside.
👉 Click here to join End Emotional Outbursts for just £30 and start feeling more in control within days.
You don’t have to wait for a referral or a diagnosis to get support. You can start helping your child feel calmer and more confident today.
FAQ: Emotion Regulation for Kids
Q1: What is emotion regulation in children?
Emotion regulation is a child’s ability to manage and respond to emotional experiences in healthy ways using self-regulation strategies. It develops over time, especially with adult support through co-regulation.
Q2: What causes emotional outbursts in kids?
Meltdowns and tantrums often happen when kids feel overwhelmed, tired, or unsafe. Their brains aren’t fully developed yet, especially the parts responsible for emotional control.
Q3: How can I help my child during a meltdown?
Stay calm and connected. Your presence helps them feel safe. Don’t try to teach in the moment; instead, practise emotion regulation tools during calm times.
Q4: When should I seek extra support for emotional outbursts?
If your child struggles with emotional regulation skills and coping skills, leading to frequent, intense outbursts that impact daily life, it’s worth getting extra support.
You can start with the End Emotional Outbursts short course by Dr Lucy Russell, or seek direct guidance from a local child clinical psychologist.
Hayley Vaughan-Smith is a Person-Centred Counsellor accredited by the National Counselling & Psychotherapy Society. She is the founder and counsellor at The Ridge Practice in Buckinghamshire, and counsellor at Everlief Child Psychology.
Hayley has a special interest in bereavement counselling and worked as a bereavement volunteer with Cruse Bereavement Care for four years.
Hayley is mum to 3 grown up girls, and gardening and walking in nature is her own personal therapy. Hayley believes being in nature, whatever the weather, is incredibly beneficial for mental health well-being.
