Helping children name their feelings: a parent's guide to emotional literacy

Why naming feelings matters

"I'm fine." "Not bad." "Alright." "Can't complain." These are the most common replies when someone asks, "How are you feeling?" Not a single one actually names a real feeling.

When asked this question, people often talk about their thoughts and assumptions rather than their actual internal experiences: "I feel like I should have done it differently," or "I feel like he doesn't care." Sometimes they even mistake someone else's emotion for their own: "I feel like she was terribly embarrassed in that moment."

Or they try to name a feeling but simply don't know how. Instead of "I am furious," they say "I feel like absolute murder." Instead of "I feel ashamed," they say "I just feel like I'm constantly getting everything wrong." Instead of "I'm envious of her," they hide behind "we have a slightly complicated relationship."

Over time, many people block out their emotions entirely, burying them for years, only to seek therapy later in life because everything has become too heavy to carry.

Growing up with a healthy connection to your feelings has never been straightforward. From early childhood, children absorb unspoken rules about emotional expression, constantly hearing things like:

• "You're a big girl now, stop throwing a tantrum."
• "It's bad manners to be jealous."
• "Stop shouting, it's antisocial."
• "Don't be a crybaby."
• "You should be thoroughly ashamed of yourself."

Generation after generation, children grew up believing that envy, anger and tears were the domain of the ill-mannered, or a weakness to be hidden. They were taught that sad people must be cheered up immediately, that joy should be kept quiet and modest, and that carrying a constant backpack of guilt is perfectly normal.

To fit into such an unnatural grid of rules, we learn to keep a tight grip on ourselves. But this constant emotional policing is exhausting. Eventually it catches up with us — a sudden tightness in the chest, a heavy heart, a lump in the throat, or simply no energy to get out of bed in the morning.

The good news: it is never too late to reconnect with your emotional self. You can start getting to know your feelings today and begin calling them by their real names.

Emotions versus feelings: what is the difference?

We often treat "emotion" and "feeling" as synonyms. In daily life the distinction can seem trivial — a stressed parent rushing through the school run won't feel better for knowing which one they are having. But to build emotional intelligence, the terminology helps.

Emotions (from the Latin emovere, to stir up) are like flashes of lightning: short-term, immediate physiological reactions to a trigger. Psychologists identify seven basic emotions — fear, interest, joy, sadness, anger, disgust and surprise. Emotions evolved early; both humans and animals experience them. They originate in the ancient part of the brain, the limbic system, which sends rapid signals to the body to prepare it for action. Emotions are highly dynamic, visible through quick changes in facial expression, tone of voice and body language.

Feelings are remarkably human. They are a product of the newer part of the brain, the neocortex, and are deeply tied to our capacity to think, reason and process complex information. A feeling is a complex, multi-layered emotional construct. While an emotion flashes and fades, feelings are built up from sustained emotional experience over time. They are stable, deeply rooted, and can live within a person for years.

Is envy actually useful?

Consider how many successful professionals, creatives and entrepreneurs have quietly built their careers on a driving sense of envy. Looking at those who seemingly had it easier, or possessed more resources, can spark a relentless internal question: why should they have that opportunity and not me?

Envy is often split in two. There is benign envy — socially acceptable, even used as a compliment: "You're off to the Med for two weeks? I'm green with envy." And there is malicious envy, seen as destructive and toxic, which we hide, fight, and feel intensely guilty for experiencing.

Yet our minds do not develop powerful emotional responses without a purpose. Emotions are tools. Think of a standard iron: it presses a shirt sharp, but in careless hands it can burn the house down. Envy works the same way. It is a natural response to seeing something we want. With emotional intelligence, we can decode that envy — it becomes a map pointing directly to our true, hidden desires.

If a fiercely career-driven professional goes to a university reunion and feels a sharp pang of envy towards a classmate who stepped back to raise a big, happy family, it highlights exactly what is missing in their own life. But if a person refuses to look at that envy constructively, it simply rots inside, turning into a chronic source of bitterness. Envy shouldn't be a stamp of being a bad person. It should be a tool for self-improvement: "What exactly am I envious of here, and what steps can I take to achieve something similar?"

Supporting children through emotional storms

When supporting children through emotional storms, well-meaning parents frequently make two subtle mistakes: they either minimise what the child is experiencing, or they accidentally signal that certain emotions are simply unacceptable.

A child comes home from school, drops their bag, and barks, "I absolutely hate school." The standard parental reflex is often "Hate is a very strong word," or "It can't be that bad." A toddler trips, grazes their knee and cries, and the adults immediately chant, "You're fine, you're okay, no tears."

Driven by a loving desire to protect and cheer them up, we end up teaching children to doubt their own senses. Sometimes our corrections sound like outright commands: "Calm down," "Get a grip," "Don't be so sensitive."

Children learn by watching how we react, not by listening to our lectures. If the home bans anger, yet adult frustration is vented through slammed doors or passive-aggressive silence, children quickly learn a damaging lesson: having intense feelings is wrong, and showing them is unsafe. They learn to suppress, mask and hide from their inner world.

A feeling is just a feeling. It isn't inherently good or bad — it just is. The wisest thing we can do as parents is to stop trying to immediately fix, argue down or cheer up a child caught in a powerful wave of emotion. Instead, give them space to let the feeling run its course, sit quietly beside them, and say: "Tell me all about it." Avoid the classic trap of "I know exactly how you feel." The truth is, you don't — their internal experience belongs entirely to them. By pretending their inner world is an open book to you, you inadvertently rob them of their own unique experience.

The feeling matrix: a parent cheat-sheet

Use this vocabulary matrix to help yourself and your child identify what is truly happening beneath the surface.

Try this at home this week. Instead of launching into a classic household argument — "I am sick of you being so selfish and never putting your muddy shoes away" — rephrase it using the exact names of your feelings:

The first formulation is an attack that triggers defensiveness. The second is the actual key to solving the problem.

Alexithymia: when words fail

Translated literally from Greek, alexithymia means "having no words for feelings." Coined in the early 1970s by psychiatrist Peter Sifneos, it describes a specific personality trait rather than a mental illness. Key characteristics include:

• An inability to identify, name or describe one's own emotions.
• An inability to distinguish emotional feelings from physical sensations — for example, mistaking anxiety for a stomach bug.
• A very literal, factual style of thinking, with little daydreaming or imaginative fantasy.
• A distinct lack of self-reflection or interest in exploring one's own inner life.

While there can be neurobiological or genetic factors involved, it most often develops as a functional coping mechanism. When a child experiences overwhelming, prolonged distress — family instability, severe bullying, traumatic loss — their mind shields itself by turning the emotional volume down to survive.

The catch: the mind doesn't have selective volume sliders. There is one main switch — all on, or all off. When a child shuts out pain and fear, they accidentally turn off their capacity for genuine joy, spontaneous curiosity, wonder and deep empathy. They live their life on mute.

Research suggests alexithymia affects around 10% of the general population, with estimates across studies ranging more widely. It significantly lowers quality of life, making it harder to build meaningful relationships, maintain steady self-esteem or adapt to change, and it can contribute to social isolation. This is why developing emotional literacy in childhood matters so much.

A healthier view of anger

Anger is one of the most misunderstood emotions. A few principles, drawn from modern therapeutic thinking, can reframe it:

How to actually process an emotion

In childhood we are taught how to hold a pen, how to cross the road, and what to do if we catch a cold. We pack our minds with academic facts. Yet very few of us are ever given a practical manual on how to process a heavy emotion.

Psychologists love to say "you must process your feelings," which often leaves parents puzzled. Processing an emotion is not the same as venting or acting it out. It takes a deliberate three-step approach.

Reading and watching together

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Your home challenge this week: the post-theatre chat

Emotional intelligence cannot be built overnight or memorised from a sheet. It grows through steady, everyday habits — much like building physical strength at the gym.

This week, take your child to a live play, a musical or a local theatre production. On the journey home, have a real conversation about it. The trick is to avoid questions that can be answered with a simple "yes" or "no."

• "What do you think the main character was feeling right before the curtains closed?"
• "Did you notice a moment where your own heart started beating a bit faster? What emotion was that?"

If your child struggles to find the exact word, gently offer a choice to scaffold their vocabulary: "Do you think he felt completely terrified, or was he just caught off guard and surprised?" Don't worry about lecturing on the moral of the story — simply focus on helping them spot, identify and name the raw human emotions they just witnessed.

A closing note on being whole

When we allow ourselves to be fully alive, we notice our natural limits. Most of us can only do a few hours of deep, focused work a day before our energy dips. We can only manage one or two truly deep conversations a day before the mind needs to retreat, digest and rest.

When we choose to feel everything, we become more selective about what we read, what we watch, who we listen to and who we share our lives with. A handful of deeply rooted relationships tends to matter more than dozens of superficial ones.

It is possible to switch on cynicism, sarcasm and emotional numbness, move at hyper-speed and accomplish a great deal — the trick is simply not to feel. You can act like a perfect, unshakeable professional. But it is not much of a life.

Choosing to be open-hearted, sensitive and adaptable means accepting your own vulnerability and limits. Given that our time here is finite either way, choosing to feel is what gives it meaning. Helping a child keep that capacity alive — rather than learning to mute it — may be one of the most valuable things a parent can do.