Emotions and anger

• How do children's fears change with age?

  Fears aren't random — each one arrives with a mental capacity the child has just gained. Fear of the dark and of separation come when attachment is being built; monsters arrive with imagination; illness and death arrive when permanence is understood; social fears arrive when a child realises other people hold opinions about them. So a new fear is usually a sign of development rather than a setback. What to watch is not the fear itself but how much of your child's day it takes away.

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• How do you teach a child emotional regulation?

  Regulation isn't taught by explanation — it's learned by doing it together first. A young child can't bring their own nervous system down, so they borrow an adult's calm; this is called co-regulation. The order is: the adult stays calm, names the feeling, settles the body, and only then talks about solutions. With age a child starts doing some of those steps alone. Self-regulation comes out of co-regulation being lived many times over — it doesn't replace it, it grows from it.

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• What are the signs of anxiety in children?

  Anxiety in children rarely announces itself as worry. It shows up in the body and in avoidance: a stomach ache before school, trouble falling asleep, crying at separation, refusing something they used to do without a problem. Specific fears are expected at specific ages; what turns anxiety into a problem is not the fear itself but the way it narrows a child's life. When avoidance — not going to school, not sleeping alone, not visiting friends — lasts for weeks, it's worth an assessment.

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• Are temper tantrums normal, and when do they stop?

  Tantrums are an expected part of development between roughly one and four years old: a child who cannot yet name a feeling says it with their body instead. They peak around two to three and thin out as language arrives, becoming uncommon by school age. What matters is the pattern, not any single tantrum. Tantrums that persist several times a week past four or five, regularly run beyond fifteen minutes, end in injury to the child or someone else, or spill into school, sleep and eating are worth taking to a professional.

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