Young Children and Their Emotions
Should We Help Them to "Shift"? How, and Why?
Terry––age three––comes in the room crying so loudly it hurts my ears! I walk over with a small smile, take his hand gently and lead him over to where I’m teaching Emily the vocabulary enrichment card set of kitchen items. We sit down on the floor together next to Emily’s rug of cards, and Terry starts to work himself up into a wail. I rub his back gently with one hand while I talk with Emily about the photo of each item:
“It’s a whisk. Whisk. Have you seen one of these? We use it to beat eggs for baking, or to make whipped cream…”
Emily chimes in, “Yes, when we make cookies!”
I respond, “Oh, yes! Do you use a whisk like this one when you make cookies at your house?”
Terry deescalates a little as he listens, and looks over with interest at the card, so I suggest to Emily,
“You could show the whisk to Terry…” and “Would you like to look more closely, Terry?” Emily holds the card towards Terry. His breaths shutter and he accepts the card with the fingertips of both hands. He looks at it.
“Whisk”, I say again.
He says, “Whisk” too.
“That’s what we use to beat eggs in the kitchen…Perhaps you have one at your house?”
He nods, puffy cheeks blotted with tears. I continue with other cards, and after a few more cards of other kitchen items, I suggest,
“Terry, your body is getting hot here in your winter coat, you could take it off, hang it up, and come back to do these vocabulary enrichment cards with us.”
He nods and shuffles off towards the coat closet, then a moment later, rushes back over, cheeks still red and eyes puffy, but looking eager to rejoin us.
I marvel at the fact that Terry calmed down so quickly and has moved on from whatever was upsetting him before. Ever since the vacation, he has come in crying loudly, saying he wants to go home. Helping him to get interested in something seems to be the answer each time. Today, it worked even more quickly…
This reminds me of the story that a seasoned Montessori teacher shared about teaching children who had endured bombing in London during WWII. When one little girl lost her whole family, the teacher wondered what to do with her when she came into school: what she could possibly do to help this little girl? She thought about Maria Montessori’s guidance to help the children work through their trauma by getting them interested in a task…So this Montessori teacher showed the little girl how to wash a table with a scrub brush, soap and water, and the girl chose to scrub and scrub for a long while. The activity seemed to comfort and satisfy her needs. “Work” enabled her to soothe herself in a way that no one’s words could have done for her.
I love seeing a child’s expression when deeply involved in an activity that serves her internal needs. Do you notice here the engagement of her mind, AND her whole body?
Helping children develop the tools to self-regulate, even in less extreme situations, is more important than some may realize. According to the author Ethan Kross, (SHIFT: Managing Your Emotions So They Don’t Manage You, 2025), studies have shown that, “Early childhood emotion regulation was so potent a factor in a person’s development that it proved more influential than the socio-economic circumstances of a child’s family or even the child’s intelligence levels in predicting several…outcomes” such as advancing further in their careers and being physically healthier. (p. 25)
Learning to manage your emotions when young, in other words, matters a great deal to your ability to function in all areas of life in adulthood. The good news is that studies also show that people can improve their ability to manage their emotions, at any stage of life. And this doesn’t involve stuffing our feelings down, or not expressing them. It’s more about reading our emotions accurately and responding to them in ways that help us. One way to respond is to get our minds on something productive…perhaps a little friendly “work.” With very young children, this is often the answer, as Maria Montessori discovered.
In Montessori classrooms, we do several things that really help children when they’re feeling anxious, upset or distressed. For one, we set up a peaceful environment with choices and flexibility with just the right balance of structure and predictable routine. Children can relax and concentrate in such a place. They can also find comfort in the activities themselves- washing a plant’s leaves by hand, tracing a metal inset…The slow rhythmic motions and ease of calm movements permeate everything we do in Montessori.
Maria Montessori showed us that children regulate themselves best when their attention becomes fixed on an activity––or what she called “work”. Work in this case––the activity–– is anything the child is drawn to do because it serves some internal, developmental need. What are these needs? To learn how to move one’s body with self-control, to master fine motor skills, to pronounce words, acquire more vocabulary, to express oneself through language, and to direct one’s actions with their mind. An activity that seems so simple to us––like washing something or arranging something––is actually an exercise in self-mastery for a young child who is actively building such skills unconsciously. They are driven towards these actions.
A Montessori teacher is trained to not get rattled by a child’s emotions, but to continue to connect them to activities that can help them, unconsciously, to self-regulate. From the book SHIFT (mentioned above), I also learned that––although sometimes, the best way to handle emotions is so to express and process them––according to research, another effective technique is to flexibly get one’s attention on something else and move on. In other words, to shift––which was what I did to help Terry that day.
In a society that appears more anxious and emotive than ever, it may be timely for adults to remember that children need this kind of support. Once again, I am amazed at how Maria Montessori noticed something––so long ago––that continues to be true!
(For teachers seeking historical and contemporary evidence of how Montessori’s approach effectively provides support to more traumatized children, see Trauma-Informed Practice in Montessori Classrooms. 2025. B. Phillips, C. O’Toole, S. McGilloway and S. Phillips.)
Absolutely, Dawn! This is meant mainly for younger children, and you're right that while younger children are in their senses and need movement, the older ones need collaboration and more "thinking" challenges. But I do find that work is the answer there, too- solving problems of all kinds, for instance, and it refreshes them. I'll be curious to hear what you find working! My biggest go-to in the EL classroom was bringing the students something I was really excited about- a new discovery on Mars in the news, something about bird behavior or science- "geek out" basically- that was infectious and they'd take off. We'd all forget about all the other "stuff" that crowds our brains. Its much more fun than worrying🙏🤗❤️
I find myself giving myself physical breaks to handle my anxiousness about the world right now: but these physical tasks are meaningful to me. When I try to do the same with some elementary aged children, it doesn't always work if it's not 1) social 2) meaningful in some larger way: I'm finding it more and more difficult to bring meaning to them when they seem so disconnected. But I will keep trying: thank you for explaining this process in more words than "take them back to the work".