By age 5, your child has made leaps and bounds in their emotional development. They've gotten much better at regulating their emotions, and they talk about their feelings easily. They have also gotten better at controlling their impulses.
Kids have a hard time with emotions for different reasons. These include stress and mental health issues like anxiety and depression. Kids who experience trauma may also struggle. It's very common for kids with ADHD to have trouble managing emotions.
While emotional regulation learning begins in one's toddler years, research shows that it generally takes kids until they are 8 or 9 to really have significant control of it.
Infants and young children cannot regulate their emotions on their own, they need loving adults in their lives to help them immediately regulate their emotions and behaviors and learn skills to do so independently. With practice and support, young children can learn skills that will help them self-regulate.
This encompasses resisting or controlling highly emotional reactions like frustration or excitement appropriately, calming emotions, adjusting to change, focusing on tasks, refocusing attention on a new task and controlling impulses.
Emotional dysregulation is a core component of ADHD. In R. A. Barkley (Ed.), Attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder: A handbook for diagnosis and treatment (pp. 81–115).
Examples of Self-Regulation in Children
Being able to focus on a task. Refocusing their attention on a new task. Controlling their impulses. Learning behavior that helps them play well with others.
A highly sensitive child is a child that is more sensitive and often also more reactive to environmental influences. Such children are acutely aware of the outside world, and they're quick to react to subtle changes in everything around them. They are hyper-aware of the sounds, smells, and temperature around them.
A highly sensitive person is very in tune with their environment. They are often deeply empathic, intuitive, and good at reading others. They are highly observant, thoughtful, and intentional.
Gifted people are usually also highly sensitive and intense. They are more aware of subtleties; their brain processes information and reflects on it more deeply. At their best, they can be exceptionally perceptive, intuitive, and keenly observant of the subtleties of the environment.
Signs of ADHD in children
trouble focusing on activities and becoming easily distracted. low attention span while playing or doing schoolwork. fidgeting, squirming, or otherwise having trouble sitting still. constantly needing movement or frequently running around.
Blood relatives, such as a parent or sibling, with ADHD or another mental health disorder. Exposure to environmental toxins — such as lead, found mainly in paint and pipes in older buildings. Maternal drug use, alcohol use or smoking during pregnancy. Premature birth.
The sensitive period of development is the overlapping periods of child development in which children are sensitive to specific stimuli or interactions and is a critical period in child development. The sensitive period occurs between birth and six years of age.
Children are born emotionally sensitive, but their behavior may not seem out of the ordinary until age 5 or 6 when their peers cut back on tantrums and meltdowns. Although kids won't outgrow these feelings, they can learn to control their reactions -- in essence, toughen up.
But, despite those similarities, autism and high sensitivity are two different things. Not only that, but a recent study shows they are profoundly different—and that high sensitivity is also unrelated to various disorders, such as schizophrenia and PTSD.
The good news is that highly sensitive people aren't more or less emotionally intelligent than others. They just use emotional intelligence differently.
Parents should pay particular attention to their child's feelings of despair or hopelessness; lack of interest in family, friends, school or other activities once considered enjoyable; or behaviors that are dangerous to the child or to others.