Kids see what you feel, even if you don’t want them to. Then they mirror those feelings, even if you don’t think you’re projecting them, and they begin to feel those feelings, too. One of the reasons for this is that kids tend to be particularly bad at correctly interpreting what they’re seeing. So whereas an adult might spend the evening in the company of her grumpy spouse and think, “He’s grumpy, but it’s not about me. I think I’ll just leave him be,” a kid is likely to think, “Dad is grumpy. I must have done something wrong. He’s mad at me.”
