Emotional Labeling: Teaching Our Kids to Name Their Feelings and Build Resilience

One of the most powerful lessons I’m teaching my kids — and re-learning myself — is that we are meant to feel all of our emotions. Not just the good ones. You can’t selectively numb your feelings. If you want to feel joy and love, you also have to make space for anger, sadness, fear, and frustration. That’s part of the full human experience.

But here’s the distinction I emphasize with my boys: you are allowed to feel everything, but you don’t have to wallow in it.

We have a new strategy in our home:

1. When you feel a negative emotion, name it.
   

2. Then take six deep breaths.
   

That moment of pause — of naming your emotion and breathing through it — is helping my sons (and honestly, helping me) build the muscle of emotional regulation. It creates a tiny space between stimulus and response, which is where growth happens.

This came up recently when I was interviewed on the Resilience Podcast. The host asked me what my big dream was, and I said:

I want conscious parents to raise emotionally intelligent and emotionally aware children.

To me, resilience is about being your true, authentic self — not constantly shape-shifting to meet the expectations of others. And you can’t be authentic without first knowing what you’re feeling and why.

And while I try to approach parenting with that level of awareness, I recognize the gap between intention and reality — especially when emotional bandwidth is low. It reminded me of a bit by comedian Louis C.K., where he talks about the absurdity of hitting children. He jokes that his mom would “spark” him, but as he reflects on it, he realizes it wasn’t about discipline — it was exhaustion. She was a single mom with no support and just didn’t have the tools or emotional space to parent consciously.

He even pokes fun at how illogical hitting kids is:

“You’re hitting someone who’s thinking, ‘Stop hitting me — you’re huge! I can’t even defend myself!’”

He points out how kids are the only people it’s still socially acceptable to hit. “We don’t even hit dogs,” he says. And it’s true. There’s a jarring cultural double standard: we’re expected to gently train puppies but somehow justify yelling at or hitting children who are still learning to regulate their feelings — and often mirroring our own.

That’s why I’m so passionate about emotional intelligence. It’s not just about raising well-behaved kids — it’s about raising whole, emotionally literate humans who understand themselves and have the capacity to extend that understanding to others.

Right now, we're exploring tools that support that emotional growth. One app we're loving is ThinkRight, an emotional fitness app from India that offers daily affirmations, mindfulness tools, and breathing techniques. It's a beautiful reminder that emotional wellness is a global pursuit - and we don't have to do it aloe.

Because the truth is: resilient kids aren’t the ones who never struggle. They’re the ones who know how to feel, name, and navigate those struggles — and come out stronger on the other side.