When Your Child's Emotions Feel Like Too Much

I remember one ordinary afternoon when my son asked for more cookies before dinner. He was two, and when I said no darling, let's save some for tomorrow he lost it. The tears came, then the screaming, his little body pacing around right there in our kitchen. I felt my chest tighten, restriction in my throat, a familiar feeling of panic and I had this strong urge to shut his feelings down—to just give in and hand him the cookies, to distract him with something else, to do anything to make it stop. But underneath that urge was something else. Embarrassment. Like there was this overbearing voice over my shoulder saying, "Look at the type of kid you've raised." It was as if a two-year-old having big feelings about not getting what he wanted felt like a sinister thing. A part of me felt that him testifying and disputing my boundary, playing up like this, was something shameful. Something that reflected badly on me.

I never realised how strong the cultural conditioning really was—the messages I'd absorbed about what "good" children were supposed to look like, how they were meant to behave. I'd been brought up to see this sort of reaction from a child as naughty and something that needed to be controlled and shut down quickly.

It took me some time to understand that his feelings were triggering something much older inside me. His emotional expression was colliding with my own buried experiences of how feelings were meant to be handled. Or more accurately, not handled. Shut down. Pushed away. Made small and manageable and quiet. Somewhere along the way, I'd learned that big emotions weren't safe to express. That crying meant weakness. That being "too much" would cost me love and belonging. These weren't just ideas I'd picked up—they'd become wired into my nervous system, shaping how I moved through the world and engaged in relationships.

So when my own child expressed the very emotions I'd spent decades learning to bury, my body remembered. His distress didn't just make me uncomfortable—it activated every old wound around my own emotional supression. The little girl inside me who learned that feelings disrupted family harmony, who got the message that staying quiet and composed kept her safe, was suddenly alert and anxious.

I used to feel really overwhelmed every time my baby cried, raged, or expressed sadness . I did my best to listen, to try and help him through it, but the feelings that would bubble up inside me—the panic, the discomfort, the intensity—left me struggling. I couldn't quite handle what was coming up for me, so I'd find myself shhhhing him, rocking him, bouncing, trying to help calm him down. Trying to help both of us, really. There was always this underlying current of "please, let this pass soon." I thought something was wrong with our parenting. Or worse, that something was wrong with him.

Then I discovered the beautiful work of Marion Rose around Aware Parenting. Reading her book The Emotional Life of Babies was like finding the missing link to what I didn't understand about crying, feelings, and emotional expression. It all started to make sense.

As a kid, if I got upset, I would go to my room to cry—embarrassed for my family to see me like that. I'd come out with a pillowcase over my head so no one could see how I was feeling. When I'd finally pulled myself together and the red eyes and puffy face went away, I'd take it off and almost pretend like nothing had happened. I learnt quickly that feelings were meant to be—hidden, managed alone, gotten over quickly.

The shift came when I understood that what I was experiencing during my son's big emotions wasn't actually about him at all. Those overwhelming feelings rising up in me? They were my own unexpressed emotions that I'd never been given space to process as a child. The panic I felt watching him cry was connected to every time my own tears had to be hidden behind a pillowcase. The rage that surfaced when he pushed back was tied to all the times my own anger had been labeled as bad, unacceptable, something to be ashamed of.

The more and more my husband and I held space for each other to listen and feel what was there underneath the surface we noticed massive shifts with how we responded when our Son was upset. Not overnight—healing never works that way—but slowly, deeply, it began to change how I saw both myself and my son.

When I realised I wasn't doing anything wrong and dropped the guilt stick for feeling triggered by his emotions, when I understood that my reactions made perfect sense given what I'd learned as a child, something softened inside me. I could finally offer myself the compassion I'd been withholding. And in turn, I could begin to see my son's big feelings differently too—not as something threatening that needed to be controlled, but as communication. As information. As the natural, healthy expression of a little person learning to navigate this overwhelming world.

The real work happened when I learned how to hold space for my own feelings. When I started doing my own inner work—sitting with the discomfort, feeling the old grief and anger that had been stored in my body for so long—I discovered I could actually be present with difficult emotions without needing to fix or change them. And when I felt supported by my partner, when I experienced what it was like to have someone witness my pain without trying to make it better or rush me through it, I finally understood what my children needed from me.

They needed me to be able to sit with them in their pain without needing to fix it. To witness their rage without taking it personally. To be the steady, grounded presence that says: I see you, I hear you and I love you. This way of showing up only kicked into gear when I honestly turned the attention back to me, my unmet needs and my feelings. I wouldn't be able to have the patience and compassion for my son if I still was afraid of my own feelings bubbling up.

This is the truth that often goes unspoken in parenting conversations. Before we can truly be present for our children's big feelings, we need to understand what's happening inside us when those feelings show up. We need to notice our own patterns—the ways we might rush to distract, fix, minimise, or shut down their emotional expression, often without even realising we're doing it.

What I've learned through my own journey and through my work with families is that our children's behaviors and emotional expressions aren't meant to be controlled or managed away. When a child cries, rages, or melts down, they're actually showing us something they don't yet have the words to express. Emotions are communication. They're acting out what they feel because they can't articulate it.

Different cultures shaped these patterns in different ways. Some of us grew up in environments where emotional expression was actively encouraged, where tears were held with tenderness. Others learned early that feelings—especially certain feelings—disrupted family harmony and needed to be contained. These cultural scripts run deep, informing not just how we respond to our children's emotions, but what we unconsciously believe about our own.

What gets triggered isn't really about our child's tantrum over bedtime or their frustration with boundaries. It's about the little version of us who learned that feelings needed to be hidden to stay safe, to be accepted, to belong. It's about all the times we weren't allowed to fully feel, to fully express, to take up space with our emotional reality.

The key message here is when we can recognise our own triggers, when we can separate our child's experience from our own story, we create the possibility for something different. We can offer them what we might not have received ourselves—the message that all of who they are is acceptable. That their sadness, their anger, their fear, their overwhelm… it's all allowed. It's all welcome. They don't need to perform or pretend or push it down to earn our love.

In offering them this we begin to heal the very wounds that were triggered in the first place. We start to reclaim our own right to feel, to express, to be fully human in all our emotional complexity. We break the generational cycle.

This is the deeper work of parenting—not learning better techniques to manage our children's behavior, but understanding what's in the way of us being able to truly see and hold them. What stories are we carrying? What were we taught about emotions? What did we learn we had to be—or not be—to stay safe and connected?

These questions aren't always comfortable. But they're essential. Because our children deserve parents who can witness their full emotional range without needing to shut it down. Who can be with them in their messy, overwhelming moments and communicate through their steady presence: you don't have to hide any part of yourself from me. I'm not going anywhere.

When my toddler experiences a big feeling now, my response is so different. I still feel it sometimes—that old tightening, that familiar discomfort—but I can recognise it quickly for what it is and remind myself that it's okay that I am also feeling something, i have learnt to validate my own experience and make myself feel seen and heard. And instead of reacting from my younger self I can offer my child the compassion, space, and loving presence to be with their feelings, with no urgency to make it go away.

The more my husband and I practice this—truly holding space without trying to fix or rush—the more quickly our son is able to move through an emotion. He feels safer to express it, to let it out. And then it passes, naturally, the way feelings are meant to.

This is the work. This is where children's big emotions no longer become something to avoid or feel shameful about. Here's what is important, you can't give your children what you don't have yourself. You can't hold space for their emotional worlds when you're still carrying the weight of your own unexpressed pain. You can't teach them that all their feelings are welcome when you haven't yet learned to welcome your own. They learn through us, being exposed to how we respond to our own needs but also how we hold space for others.

I just want you to pause here and take a moment to offer yourself some compassion. If you're reading this and recognising yourself in these patterns—the urge to shut down emotions, the discomfort with big feelings, the ways you've tried to make it all stop—please don't let guilt take hold. You were only doing what you learned through your own cultural conditioning. This is exactly how cultural conditioning is meant to work. It gets passed down, generation to generation, until someone decides to pause and look at it differently.

That's not your fault. And if you've responded to your children's emotions in ways you now wish you hadn't, that doesn't make you a bad parent. It makes you someone who was doing the best you could with the awareness you had at the time.

This is why it's so important for us as parents to allow ourselves space to work on ourselves—to explore our own wounds from childhood, to understand what we learned about emotions and expression, to feel the feelings we've been holding onto for years, maybe decades. Not because there's something wrong with us, but because healing ourselves is how we break the cycle for our children.

We need support for this work. Just like our children need us to witness their feelings without trying to fix them, we need someone who can do that for us. A partner who can listen with a loving, warm presence. A friend who understands and doesn't rush to make our pain go away. A therapist who can hold space for what we're carrying. Someone who can offer us the compassion we're learning to give ourselves and our children.

This work isn't separate from parenting. It is the work of parenting. Because every time we turn toward our own pain with curiosity and compassion instead of pushing it away, we're healing the very wounds that get triggered when our children cry, rage, or fall apart. We're learning to be with discomfort without needing to control it. We're reclaiming our own capacity to feel, to be vulnerable, to be fully human.

And this work includes the basics too—the unsexy, unglamorous work of actually looking after ourselves. It's very hard to be a calm, connected parent when we're exhausted, running on empty, stressed to the point of breaking. We need to look after ourselves before we can look after others. That means rest when we need it. Asking for help. Setting boundaries that protect our own wellbeing. Nourishing ourselves—not just with food, but with connection, with moments of peace, with things that fill us back up.

You cannot pour from an empty cup, as they say. And you cannot hold space for your child's overwhelm when you're completely overwhelmed yourself.

And our children? They get to grow up knowing that all of who they are is acceptable. That their sadness, their anger, their fear, their overwhelm—it's all allowed. It's all welcome. They don't need to hide behind a pillowcase or pretend everything's fine when it's not. They get to be seen, held, and accepted in their wholeness.

This is the gift we give them when we do our own healing work and tend to our own needs. This is how we create something different. Not perfect—we'll still get triggered sometimes, still feel that familiar tightening, still have days when we're too tired to show up the way we want to—but we'll know what's happening. We'll be able to pause, breathe, and choose differently more often than not.

Please reach out if you would like some guidance or a supportive space to express yourself and feelings. This is a large part of the work I do with clients, and what I'm truly passionate about.

Alice