Family Resource Center Mental Health Fitness: Five Skills Every Child Can Build Understanding Feelings and Emotions for Kids

Mental Health Fitness

Understanding Feelings

Kids experience dozens of emotions every day — some pleasant, some uncomfortable — and sometimes more than one at a time. We want them to know it’s okay to feel all of them, and recognizing and naming emotions is an important first step in building healthy coping skills.

UNDERSTANDING FEELINGS IN

Elementary School

What Kids Should Know About Understanding Feelings

At this age, start with naming emotions to help connect words with feelings.
Noticing body sensations that are attached to specific emotions offers clues to what we are feeling.
Using a scale of 1–10 to rate the intensity of emotions captures the idea that we feel some things more strongly than others.

What This Skill Teaches

Emotions are important because they provide information about what’s happening inside us and help us connect with the people around us.

Learning how to notice, label, and express their feelings helps children feel more in control of their emotional experience.

Naming a feeling can reduce its intensity, especially for strong negative emotions, and it’s something even young kids can practice.

Download the Elementary Guide

Each guide includes a skill summary for caregivers and a printable activity sheet.

Download Now

Try This at Home

1

Use daily check-in moments to ask how your child is feeling and how much of that emotion they are feeling on a scale of 1–10.
2

Listen before you fix. When your child is upset, try to name the feeling back to them before offering a solution. “It sounds like you’re really frustrated.”
3

Connect with your child by showing you can see their perspective. For example: “I can understand why you would feel that way.”
4

Name your own feelings and model what you do about it. “I’m feeling a bit anxious about this — maybe a 6. I’m going to take a few deep breaths.”
5

Use books and stories. Ask what a character might be feeling and what number they’d give it. This builds the vocabulary with less pressure.

UNDERSTANDING FEELINGS IN

Middle School

What Tweens Should Know About Understanding Feelings

In the middle school years, kids can feel a range of emotions and don’t always understand why. Learning to label emotions in their various forms is a skill that doesn’t feel babyish.
Social pressure, academic stress, and family conflict are all scenarios that can invoke strong emotions in this age group.
Using a scale of 1–10 to capture an emotion’s intensity is useful, as is connecting it to the body’s response to that emotion.

What This Skill Teaches

Emotions are information, and labeling them helps us communicate what we’re feeling and ask for what we need to regulate them.

Having the vocabulary to talk about our emotions helps deepen relationships with other people.

At this age, it’s especially important for parents to validate kids’ feelings before even approaching problem-solving.

Download the Middle School Guide

Each guide includes a skill summary for caregivers and a printable activity sheet.

Download Now

Try This at Home

1

Make time to ask how your middle schooler is feeling, how much of that emotion they are feeling, and what they are experiencing in their bodies.
2

Listen and validate your child’s emotions. For example: “I hear you feel angry and sad at the same time. That happens.”
3

Use positive feedback when your middle schooler identifies how they are feeling, such as: “Great job recognizing that you feel nervous, and thank you for letting me know.”
4

When watching a TV show together, help your middle schooler identify emotions in their bodies by discussing how the characters in the show might be feeling.
5

Label how you feel, how your body reacts to that feeling, and how much you feel it — this normalizes the practice and sends the message that feelings are important.

UNDERSTANDING FEELINGS IN

High School

What Teens Should Know About Understanding Feelings

Teens are becoming more independent but still need their parents’ guidance to think about their complicated, wonderful, confusing emotions.
Rating the feeling of emotions on a scale of 1–10 captures that we feel emotions in different amounts or intensities.
Learning how to notice, label, and express their feelings helps teens to feel more in control.

What This Skill Teaches

Emotions can be uncomfortable, but feeling them is healthy and important because emotions provide us with information about ourselves. Teens who can name what they’re feeling are more likely to respond thoughtfully rather than react impulsively.

The skill covers labeling emotions more precisely (not just “fine” or “stressed”), tracking physical sensations, and understanding intensity.

At this age, the emphasis shifts toward self-directed practice — teens monitoring their emotions and how it shows up in their body so they can identify what they need and communicate it.

Download the High School Guide

Each guide includes a skill summary for caregivers and a printable activity sheet.

Download Now

Try This at Home

1

Make time to check in with your teen and explicitly ask how they are feeling.
2

Listen to your teen and validate their emotions. This might sound like: “It seems like you’re feeling sad today. Is there anything you want to talk about?”
3

Once your teen has identified how they are feeling, ask them how much of that emotion they are feeling on a scale of 1–10. They can give you more information about how intense their emotions are.
4

Avoid minimizing emotions. Teenagers feel things intensely — even things that might seem small. Instead of “It’ll be fine” try “That sounds hard.”
5

Share your own emotional experiences briefly and honestly, not as a teaching moment but as a person. It shows them what emotional honesty looks like in practice.