Regulating Your Emotions As A Parent | Emotion Savvy Parenting | Alissa Jerud | #156

Parenting often feels like living in weather that changes without warning: calm skies one minute, a sudden storm the next. The goal isn’t to eliminate storms; it’s to learn how to steer through them with steadier hands and a clearer map. That’s where emotional agility comes in. Instead of fixing kids or forcing happiness, we can build skills that help us notice, name, and navigate emotions—our own first, then our children’s. When parents shift from control to connection, conflict eases, repair comes faster, and kids learn by example. The heart of this approach is simple: feelings have a purpose, and fighting them often makes them louder. Meeting them with skill makes the whole home calmer.

To make emotional agility usable in real life, Dr. Alyssa Jerud offers the ART framework: Accept, Regulate, Tolerate. Acceptance means recognizing emotions, thoughts, and bodily sensations without judgment and without trying to erase them. Mindfulness helps here, not as a 30-minute ritual, but as a five-second check-in while a toddler screams or a teen rolls eyes. When we observe our breath, the look on a child’s face, or the tension in our shoulders, we interrupt autopilot. That pause creates space to choose how to respond rather than react. Acceptance is not approval of behavior; it’s acknowledgment of reality so we can act wisely within it.

Regulation starts with understanding that emotions are built from many “ingredients”: thoughts, body changes, urges, context, and learning history. If we can tweak ingredients, we can change the recipe. Reframing a thought from “They’re defiant” to “They’re overwhelmed” shifts anger to curiosity. Small preventive habits—sleep, nutrition, movement, and realistic expectations—reduce vulnerability to blowups. When a feeling surges, skills like opposite action help: if anger urges us to attack, we soften our tone, step back briefly, or choose a supportive script. Modeling this teaches children that strong feelings are manageable and that caring action is possible even when upset.

Tolerating distress matters when regulation arrives too late and our body is revving. CARE skills—Cool with ice, Activate your body, Relax your muscles, Exhale slowly—lower physiological arousal fast. The dive reflex from cold packs across the eyes and temples can drop heart rate quickly; brisk movement resets stress chemistry; progressive muscle relaxation contrasts tension and release; longer exhalations cue the parasympathetic system to slow down. These skills don’t solve the problem by themselves, but they clear enough fog to see the next right step. Layering tolerance with acceptance and regulation turns a spiraling conflict into a moment of steady leadership.

Connection thrives when we stop treating emotions as emergencies. Validating a child—“That was disappointing”—while holding a boundary—“We’ll clean it up together”—keeps dignity intact on both sides. Calm windows are for quality, not quantity: five mindful minutes of joining play, then guilt-free space for adult tasks or partner time. Couples stay aligned by debriefing after conflicts, not during; by focusing on shared goals—raising emotionally agile humans—rather than winning arguments about tactics. Kindness to ourselves is the stabilizer. We will blow it sometimes. Repair, reflect, and try again. That repetition teaches the deepest lesson of all: love can hold big feelings without breaking.