5 emotional coaching tricks every parent should steal from child psychologists

Parenting is as much about guiding children’s emotional growth as it is about their physical or cognitive development. Emotion coaching equips parents to help their children understand, express and manage their emotions healthily. Child psychologists emphasize emotion coaching as a powerful way to foster emotional intelligence, resilience and strong parent-child bonds. Here are five emotional coaching tricks every parent should learn from child psychologists to support their child’s emotional journey effectively.

A recent 2025 study in the International Journal of Indian Psychology, revealed that parents’ own emotional regulation skills strongly influence their children’s emotional regulation abilities, highlighting the importance of modelling calmness.

According to a recent 2025 study published in the Youth Endowment Fund, emotion coaching increases parental awareness and validation of children's emotions, which improves emotional connection and reduces negative behaviours.

Research summarised in the previous studies indicates that increased use of validation and physical comfort during emotional episodes enhances parent-child relationship quality and emotional resilience.

As per the study, "The effectiveness of a parent emotion socialization program", published in a 2025 issue of a psychology journal on ScienceDirect, programs teaching parents emotion coaching techniques that include guiding reflection reduce behaviour problems and improve children’s emotional insight and regulation.

A 2025 study, Parental Emotion Regulation and Children's Mental Health, found that balancing empathy with firm boundaries in parenting supports children's mental health and emotional competence, with sensitive parental emotion regulation mediating positive outcomes.