Emotion coaching
Learn about emotion coaching techniques and how you can use them to support your child to identify, understand and manage their emotions.
On this page
- Changes in parenting
- Emotion coaching and emotion dismissing
- Example: parent-adolescent interaction
- Awareness of underlying emotions and connecting with your adolescent
Changes in parenting
Parenting changes across the transition from childhood to adolescence. Mike Riera (2003) suggests this change is a little like moving from being a manager to being a consultant.
When children are young, they want their parents to be their manager. For example, they like it when you organise things for them and steer them through life. This could include telling them who to play with, what to eat, and what to do.
In adolescence this often changes when the adolescent wants more independence. They discover that their parents don’t know everything and don’t always get things right!
At this time, parents are often ‘fired’ as the child’s manager. This is not easy! You may experience grief, loss and anxiety at this change. Some parents might want to try to hold on to your role. However, adolescents will use anger and irritability to keep you ‘fired’ each time they think you are trying to sneak back in as manager.
Rather than insist on remaining the manager, as parents, it is necessary to change communication to be ‘rehired’ as a consultant and guide. Parents can try to be more respectful when giving direction or making requests. They can also try to give their adolescent more room to make decisions.
As a consultant, you need to change the relationship to one where your adolescent feels trusted and respected. You can still set limits with empathy and share your own needs and expectations. But sharing them more gently will be more likely to bring out similar responses from your adolescent. They are still learning how to communicate respectfully, especially when emotions are strong. See Managing rejection for further information.
This change in parenting may also require you to stop doing some things for your adolescent. this will allow them more autonomy and independence.
- Additional information
- Understanding and responding to your adolescent’s emotions will help you to positively change your role as a parent. It will allow you to maintain or improve your relationship. It will also help you not to take things personally. Adolescents will often say things they don’t really mean when they’re experiencing intense emotions. You can role model respectful communication.
- Shifting from manager to consultant requires you to deal with your own feelings. You might feel hurt from experiencing regular rejection from your adolescent. It can be tempting to try to hold on to the role of manager. Some parents might try to be even more controlling. Others might want to give up entirely and take a ‘hands off’ approach to parenting. Neither of these are helpful for the adolescent. Mike Riera says it is the parent’s task to work on being ‘rehired’ as a ‘consultant and guide’.
- The change from manager to consultant means allowing them greater autonomy and independence as they get older. It also involves providing guidance and support in a respectful way.
Emotion coaching and emotion dismissing
What is emotion coaching
Emotion coaching is a way of interacting with your adolescent where you focus on their emotions before addressing their behaviour. This helps them to understand and work through their feelings.
In this section we provide you with following:
- A way of responding to your adolescents’ emotions called ‘emotion coaching’ that helps them develop emotional intelligence.
- How you can be more accepting and less dismissive of emotions with your adolescent.
- How you can be a good role model for your adolescent with ways to manage your own emotional reactions.
- Ideas that you can teach your adolescent to help them manage emotions like sadness, worry or anger.
Emotion coaching steps
Emotion coaching with adolescents includes 5 steps:
- Become aware of your adolescent’s emotion, especially if it is of lower-intensity (such as disappointment or frustration).
- View their emotions as opportunities for connecting and teaching.
- Listen and accept their emotions with empathy: avoid judgement.
- Help your adolescent to describe how they feel: verbally label emotions.
- If appropriate, help them to problem-solve or negotiate boundaries.
These 5 steps of emotion coaching help adolescents to feel accepted and understood when they are emotional. They are also useful when your adolescent is experiencing difficult emotions. These are best used when you are calm and ready to help them work through the feelings. Emotion coaching is a way of communicating that considers emotions. This is a useful skill in any relationship at any age.
Leading researchers John Gottman, Lynn Fainsilber Katz and Carol Hooven (1996), found that when parents used emotion coaching 30–40% of the time, their children were more likely to have:
- better emotional intelligence
- good social skills
- fewer behaviour problems
- better physical health.
Other research has also found that emotion coaching is very important for helping adolescents develop emotional intelligence. It has found emotion coaching is related to lower anxiety, depression symptoms and behaviour problems.
Emotion coaching also strengthens parent-adolescent relationships. Better emotional intelligence in young people and stronger relationships between parents and adolescents help with the transition to secondary school.
You do not need to use emotion coaching all the time. Often it is about finding the right time to use emotion coaching with adolescents. This is when:
- you are not too angry or overwhelmed yourself
- other people are not watching
- you have time – adolescents often need time to calm, and be able to stop and start conversations when they are working through emotions. Unlike with children, adolescents often take longer to work through emotional issues.
You might not be able to use emotion coaching right in the heat of the moment. However, you can come back later when the time is right for you (and your adolescent).
What is emotion dismissing
Emotion dismissing is a style of responding to emotions that avoids, ignores, minimises, or is critical of the adolescent’s emotion. This is most common with negative emotions.
Most of us have grown up in cultures and families where our emotions were dismissed, not talked about or accepted. This means we are likely to react the same way when we notice these emotions in ourselves or others. Despite our best intentions, we may be emotionally dismissive with our children and adolescents when we:
- ignore or don’t talk about their emotions
- tell them their emotions are an overreaction, wrong or we are critical of them for having these feelings
- try to distract them without acknowledging their emotions
- immediately offer advice, explanations, or solutions about what they should do
- immediately provide reassurance – such as ‘you’ll be fine’ or ‘don’t worry about it’
- focus only on their behaviour.
We can be warm and caring with an adolescent but also be emotionally dismissive if we don’t acknowledge their emotions.
Can you think of times when you have been emotionally dismissive of your adolescent? It might be when you just wanted your adolescent to be happy and free of negative emotions. You might try to cheer them up without allowing them space to talk about how they feel. At other times it might be that you think the adolescent is being over-reactive, weak, or that the emotion they are feeling is not appropriate. This could lead to you being more dismissive of their emotions.
Can you think of times when you have used emotion coaching? See if you can use emotion coaching with your adolescent when they experience emotions. Try to notice emotions behind the words they say, behind their behaviours or situations. Remember, even if you only manage the emotion coaching steps 30–40% of the time it can have a positive impact!
Differentiating between emotion coaching and emotion dismissing
It is useful to understand more closely the difference between being emotionally dismissive and emotion coaching.
The below video further explains the 5 steps of emotion coaching.
This video is also available in 10 languages. Select your preferred language on the translations page.
https://player.vimeo.com/video/1044555894?autoplay=0
Introduction to Emotion Coaching
Example: parent-adolescent interaction
The below video features a dad talking to his daughter about the up-coming orientation day for secondary school.
First, we see the dad being emotionally dismissive.
Then, we see the same situation with the dad using emotion coaching.
Once you have watched this video you may have a better understanding about how emotion coaching and emotion dismissing look.
This video is also available in 10 languages. Select your preferred language on the translations page.
https://player.vimeo.com/video/1044552070?autoplay=0
Emotion dismissing vs emotion coaching
Awareness of underlying emotions and connecting with your adolescent
Underlying emotions
- Emotion coaching helps explore what emotions and issues lie ‘under the surface’.
- A little like an iceberg, we often see behaviours (like shouting, crying or withdrawal) or ‘obvious emotions’ (like irritability or anger) that are ‘on the surface’.
- More vulnerable and less easily expressed emotions (like disappointment, jealousy, fear, guilt, or shame) are not as obvious and are ‘under the surface’.
- Noticing the less obvious emotions and responding to these using the emotion coaching steps, can help your adolescent understand and work through their emotions.
- Exploring what lies ‘under the surface’ helps adolescent brains grow to be more emotionally intelligent.
- See the below video for more information on how emotion coaching can help you explore emotions your adolescent may be feeling underneath the surface.
This video is also available in 10 languages. Select your preferred language on the translations page.
https://player.vimeo.com/video/1044554183?autoplay=0
Emotion coaching helps explore what’s under the surface
Updated 27 March 2026
Related links
- Easing into adolescence: resources for families
- Adolescent emotional development and parenting styles
- Putting it into practice
- Emotional regulation
- Dual transitions
- Learning confidence and adolescent development
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