Brain-based parenting

Even after two decades studying the brain, I still forget how the simplest things are actually extraordinarily complex feats of our brains. And the developing brain is a constant reminder of this. Sometimes (ok, often-times) we are so consumed with trying to decode and de-escalate big emotions in our kids, we forget how difficult it is for young children to simply recognise an emotion, let alone manage it (let’s be honest, we all know adults who struggle with this too!). This week, in advance of a series of videos to be released on TikTok, LinkedIn and YouTube, going into emotion regulation (for ourselves and for teaching our kids), I want to share some of the challenges children have simply recognising an emotion in other people.

What does the research say?

Our own emotions are complicated enough (how often have you mistaken angry for hangry, and just needed a snack?), in other people it is even more complicated. Firstly, we have to both agree on what an emotion means. If you come to me in flood of tears asking for help, I need to recognise you are sad and not frustrated with me. This might sound obvious, but when we examine how people classify emotions across cultures, we can already see that societal and cultural norms have a big influence in our interpretation of emotions.

A study in Nature Neuroscience looked at how children aged 5-15 processed and recognised emotions. Lots of studies simply get children to look at pictures, like a sad face compared to a surprised face, but these neuroscientists wanted to investigate emotion in a more realistic way. They used a large dataset in which children were shown movies (like Despicable Me!) that provided social and emotional context to the emotion they were tasked with recognising. Children were in an MRI scanner while doing this, so scientists could examine activity in different regions of the brain and across networks of regions in the brain. They looked at overall positive versus negative emotions and at how specific emotions like anger, happiness, fear, excitement and happiness changed brain activity.

What did they find? (skip to the next section if you just want tips, not neuroscience!)

• It’s not only the frontal lobe and the limbic system: While these regions are undoubtedly critical for emotional processing, this study showed how widespread brain activity is when children are recognising and processing emotions in context. Multiple brain regions and brain networks are involved. In fact, every brain network was activated to some extent.

• Distinct emotion representations: When you look at what the brain is doing when children are watching emotional movie scenes, different displayed emotions have different signatures of brain activity. These signatures suggest that the representation of these emotions are already present in children as young as 5. Maybe no surprise there- your kids could recognise happiness and sadness at age 5. But, finding these signatures in the brain has important implications for our understanding of how emotions are processed and recognised. We know that babies can’t recognise emotions easily, so we might not be born with this ability.

• The brain signatures of different emotions look more similar as kids get older: Older kids show more similar patterns of brain activation to each other when processing the emotional scenes compared to younger children. This suggests a convergence on more shared conceptual understandings of emotions as children move through adolescence.

  So, younger children might not all agree on what specific emotion they are witnessing, but as they get older (probably through practicing socialising), they all start to share a concept (and brain signature). Basically, as kids gets closer to adolescence, they get better at agreeing what emotion they are seeing. Makes sense, because it’s really important for relationships. Imagine if every time you were happy, I interpreted it as fear and someone else interpreted it as anger.

• The DMN and negative emotions: The convergence in brain activity was particularly noticeable in the default mode network (DMN), a set of brain regions involved in tasks like thinking about others' perspectives and internal thoughts. Scenes that required inferring negative emotional states over a longer timeframe elicited more similar DMN activation in older children. This hits at a developing ability to interpret and integrate complex emotional information into adolescence.

• Age vs. Puberty: Chronological age was more strongly associated with these changes in brain activity, related to emotion processing, than pubertal status. The authors of the paper think that maybe accumulated life experience and cognitive development, captured by age, plays a more significant role than biological maturation, associated with puberty, in shaping how emotion concepts are refined.

What does this mean for my parenting?

Ok, a little heavy on the neuroscience this week, but I hope it gave you an insight into how complex and dynamic emotion processing is.

🧠 Emotion understanding is complex: Your child's ability to understand and interpret emotions is a complex skill that develops over time. It involves most regions of the brain, and entire brain networks, because of the number of contextual cues and sensory processes happening simultaneously. No surprise they may not be experts straight away (even adults aren’t always!).

😭 Expose them to lots of emotions in lots of contexts: Social and emotional development go hand in hand. Children learn to interpret other people’s emotions through interaction with them. Encourage play dates and time with peers to allow them to learn this. Play is where this all happens. Give kids opportunities to experience and discuss a wide range of emotions in different situations (through books, movies, and real-life interactions) to support their development of nuanced emotion concepts. Next time you see them arguing with a friend on a playdate, recognise its a normal part of learning about others emotions, and guide them through what happened afterwards.

😂 Always learning: As children approach adolescence their understanding of emotion concepts becomes more aligned with that of their friends and peers. This period may be a critical window for refining their ability to interpret social and emotional cues. Engaging in conversations with your older children about underlying emotions and motivations in stories or real-life situations can help them further develop these skills. For example, discussing why a character in a movie might be acting a certain way, even if they don't explicitly state their feelings. Books are also amazing for this- ask your children what a character is feeling and get them to guess what they might do based on that.

🧠 Emotions are complex: While younger children (5-8) can distinguish basic emotions with context, their brains are still developing the more complex integration seen in older children. Be patient and provide clear, concrete explanations of emotions and social situations.

Welcome to the community! If you're new here, I am Dr Michele Veldsman, neuroscientist, tech entrepreneur and mum of 2 (age 4 and 7). 

I am on a mission to support parents with real, evidence and science-backed parenting advice. I want to make parenting less lonely and less overwhelming. 

What you can find in my parenting community: 

1. A fortnightly, evidence-based newsletter (you can catch old editions here: https://playroom.beehiiv.com/)

2. A guide to brain-based parenting here