Tiny Humans, Big Emotions: How to Navigate Tantrums, Meltdowns, and Defiance to Raise Emotionally Intelligent Children

by Alyssa Blask Campbell

If you usually handle bedtime and stick to a fairly strict routine, what happens when your partner takes over one night and doesn’t handle it the exact same way? If she gave an extra five minutes for bath and read an extra book, will your little one demand that tonight? The good news is that children can differentiate the expectations with different adults, and so long as you hold firm to your bedtime boundaries, tomorrow night won’t be a struggle even if you took the night off tonight.

I believe that the more emotionally intelligent humans we are raising in this movement, the more likely that will be for future generations, but right now, it’s okay if his teacher can’t hold space for his fear. It’s okay if at the end of the day he melts down with me as he releases all the things he has pent up because he didn’t feel emotionally safe to release them.

Create a safe space for them to be and to feel. Let them know you can handle whatever they bring to the table; they’ll come to you when they need you most if they know you can handle it.

When you introduce the cards for the first time, choose a limited number of them, between three to six of the ones you think you need the most. I chose four “easy” emotions that we often talk about in my household and four “hard” emotions that my tiny human was most often expressing or struggling with. We kept them available in the living room, our main play space, and he would interact with them during his play.