Understanding their starting point helps us walk forward with them.
When I speak with parents, I often hear very similar stories.
“I’ve explained it so many times, but he still doesn’t seem to understand what ‘happy’ means.”
“He stares at the emotion pictures for so long, yet he still can’t pick out the ‘sad’ one.”
“Whenever we try emotion worksheets, he quickly becomes impatient and wants to stop.”
Behind each of these moments, I always sense the same mixture of worry, confusion, and quiet frustration. And truly—I understand why. When we see a child struggle with something that feels simple to us, it’s easy to wonder what we’re missing.
But here is the gentle message I always hope to offer parents:
Your child is not refusing to learn.
Your child is not lacking effort.
Emotion learning works differently for some children.
For them, emotions aren’t straightforward labels or neat categories. Emotions are a multi-layered experience that requires many abilities to work together at the same time. And when even one layer becomes difficult, the whole process may feel overwhelming.
Today, I hope to guide you through these layers slowly—so you can see the challenges your child may face, and also the effort they have already been putting in, quietly and persistently.
It’s easy to imagine emotions as simple concepts: happy, angry, sad.
But in a child’s brain, understanding an emotion requires several systems to activate simultaneously.
A child has to notice the details of someone’s face, hear subtle shifts in tone, interpret what is happening in the situation, sense changes in their own body (interoception), and then decide how to respond. None of these steps happen in order; they happen all at once.
For children who struggle with emotions, this experience can feel like multi-tasking. If one part of the process falls out of sync—even slightly—the entire emotional picture becomes unclear.
I often compare it to being in a demanding meeting. You’re listening to your manager, scanning the slides, writing notes, and preparing an answer—all at the same time. If even one task becomes difficult, the whole meeting feels overwhelming.
This is the level of complexity some children are navigating every single day.
It’s not that they “don’t get it”. It’s that their brain needs more time and clarity to process something that seems simple from the outside.
Before emotions become words, stories, or labels, they begin as sensations in the body. A quickened heartbeat, tight shoulders, a loosening of muscles—these internal shifts shape how we feel long before we name it.
But for some children, these signals are not consistent. Their sensory system may be overly sensitive or unusually quiet, and this affects how clearly emotions are perceived.
Some children feel sensations intensely. A slightly loud sound or bright light can create discomfort or panic. Their sensory world is amplified, and what would feel like “a little upset” to us can register as “a lot” in their bodies.
However, other children receive these signals only faintly. A change in tone might go unnoticed. Facial expressions may appear neutral even when they aren’t. Their own discomfort might be so subtle to them that they can’t name it. When the body itself sends unclear messages, how can a child confidently understand emotions?
This is not inability.
It is simply the way their sensory system is wired—quiet in some places, amplified in others—and the emotional signals become harder to interpret.
Most children learn emotions by watching others. They look at faces, notice smiles, frowns, raised eyebrows, softened eyes. They pick up tone and rhythm, and they imitate expressions without thinking.
But some children naturally place their attention elsewhere. They may be drawn to movement, patterns, objects, sounds, or colors. Faces might not feel immediately meaningful or interesting to them, and so they miss many subtle emotional cues that other children absorb automatically.
This doesn’t mean they’re unwilling to observe or uninterested in others. It simply reflects how their attention system works—a different orientation, a different rhythm.
Because of this, they lose out on a major source of “natural emotional learning.” Not because they refuse, but because the cues we expect them to notice are not the cues their brain prioritizes.
They aren’t falling behind.
They just need emotion learning to be intentional, rather than incidental.
Emotion worksheets, flashcards, and teaching materials are widely used, and many children benefit from them. But these materials often assume that certain foundational abilities are already present. For some children, those foundational abilities are still developing, which turns these materials into a test instead of a teaching tool.
A child may be asked to identify an emotion from a picture, name it, or match it to a situation. But if they have not yet learned how to observe facial features—where to look, what to notice, what changes signify emotion—the task becomes abstract.
Some children see all faces as nearly identical. Some children cannot extract the key features that differentiate one expression from another. Some children lack clear internal cues (interoception) to connect a picture with a felt experience. Others may find imitation difficult, so they cannot “feel” the expression in their own body. In these cases, emotions are no longer experiences—they become disconnected labels.
When the foundational systems are not yet ready, abstract emotional concepts will naturally feel difficult to grasp.
Some may need to learn how to look at a face.
Some may need to start with imitation, feeling the emotion in their own body first.
Some may need to understand internal signals before the emotion becomes meaningful.
Some may need real-life, concrete situations to make sense of abstract emotional ideas.
Every child begins learning emotion from a different point. No starting point is superior. No starting point is inferior. They are simply different. Once we understand that our child’s starting point lies elsewhere, our hearts soften. We begin to see the effort behind every small moment of progress.
Emotion learning is not linear. It is not something taught once and mastered. For many children, it is a path woven through repetition, gentle guidance, and rebuilding. But none of this means they won’t eventually understand emotions deeply.
I hope this reflection offers you clarity, patience, and kindness—for your child and for yourself. Your child is not “bad at emotions”. They are not resisting learning.
They simply need a starting point that fits who they are.
And you are already walking alongside them—
step by step, discovering the path that belongs uniquely to your child. 🧡
