Episode 147: Meltdown Nation — Understanding Today's Kindergartners

Ever wonder why kindergarten classrooms seem to have more meltdowns these days? You're not imagining it. Teachers across the country report a troubling rise in emotional dysregulation among our youngest students, with crying, yelling, and shutting down becoming increasingly common responses when things don't go their way.

As a former corporate manager turned education researcher and mother who's navigated these waters personally, I'm diving deep into what's behind this concerning trend. 

The good news? Emotional regulation can be taught and strengthened. I share evidence-based strategies that both teachers and parents can implement, like calming corners. 

I also make the case for bringing back elements that have gradually disappeared from kindergarten. By understanding what's developmentally appropriate and implementing practical regulation strategies at home and school, we can help our kindergartners build the emotional foundation they need for lifelong learning and wellbeing. 

Want to share your experiences with kindergarten emotional regulation? Visit my website and leave a comment—I'd love to hear from you.

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Chapters

• 0:00 Introduction to K-12 Education Insights
• 4:14 Understanding Emotional Dysregulation in Kindergartners
• 8:28 Factors Behind the Rise in Dysregulation
• 14:38 Classroom Strategies for Managing Emotions
• 23:12 The Case for More Play in Kindergarten
• 27:14 Practical Actions for Parents
• 29:44 Key Takeaways and Conclusion

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:56

Welcome to another episode of K-12 Public Education Insights Empowering Parents of Color podcast, the podcast that converges at the intersection of educational research and parental actions. It's about making the trends, topics and theories in public education understandable so that you can implement them into practical, actionable strategies that work for your children. My name is Dr Kim J Fields, former corporate manager turned education researcher and advocate, and I'm the host of this podcast. I got into this space after dealing with some frustrating interactions with school educators and administrators, as well as experiencing the microaggressions that I faced. As an African-American mom raising my two kids who were in the public school system, I really wanted to understand how teachers were trained and what the research provided about the challenges of the public education system. Once I gained the information and the insights that I needed, I was then equipped to be able to successfully support my children in their educational progress. This battle-tested experience is what I provide as action steps for you to take. It's like enjoying a bowl of educational research with a sprinkling of mother wit wisdom on top If you're looking to find out more about the current information and issues in education that could affect you or your children, and the action steps you can take to give your children the advantages they need, then you're in the right place. Thanks for tuning in today. I know that staying informed about K-12 public education trends and topics is important to you, so keep listening. Give me 30 minutes or less and I'll shine a light on the latest trends, tactics and topics pertaining to the constantly evolving K-12 public education environment.

Speaker 1: 3:30

We're all familiar with the meltdowns that toddlers and preschool children have, which can be triggered by any number of things, including a lack of oral language skills, the inability to regulate emotions and inexperience with socializing in group settings. By the time these children reach kindergarten, their meltdowns should have significantly decreased, but is this really true? In this episode, I'll be discussing the emotional dysregulation of kindergartners, which seems to be on the rise. I provide actionable strategies that you can put in place to help your child get back in control, whether they're a kindergartner or older. A growing number of children are entering formal education, that is, kindergarten, ill-prepared to manage their emotions. Based on the feedback from educators. If not appropriately addressed early on, these issues can not only accumulate. These issues can not only accumulate, but can also be combined with other problems. So what is emotional regulation? I discuss what this is, as well as emotional dysregulation, on this episode. Let's gain some insight on this.

Speaker 1: 5:15

Early childhood is a critical period when a child fills up the basic competencies and self-concepts that influence their later developmental trajectory. Every child needs effective early childhood support, and understanding the variables that affect children's problem behavior, such as emotional dysregulation, is important to discovering effective approaches that are appropriate. Problem behavior in early childhood causes low academic achievement and ineffective perspective on critical skills, as well as low emotional competence, knowledge and regulation. Consequential thinking and poor alternative thinking are typically associated with children's impulsivity over emotionality and low social and emotional competence. High self-esteem seems to be considered a protective factor against emotional dysregulation. This makes sense because healthy self-esteem is correlated with a person's happiness, mental health and positive adjustment.

Speaker 1: 6:33

Why the focus on kindergartners? Because kindergarten marks a critical stage in the child's growth, setting the foundation for their journey into becoming an engaging and compassionate member of society. During this phase, children develop a passion for learning, build meaningful bonds and start to explore and manage their feelings in constructive ways. Emotionally dysregulated kindergartners can create stress, burnout and unsafe learning environments for their teachers as well as their classmates. Emotional dysregulation is one of the most common reasons families seek psychological services and behavioral supports. Let's look at what emotion regulation is.

Speaker 1: 7:32

Researchers define emotion regulation as the practice of recognizing emotions and developing the skills needed to manage reactions to those emotions. Although emotional dysregulation is not considered a disorder in its own right, it is often associated with a host of other disorders, like mood disorders or anxiety disorders across early ages. That emotion regulation is not a single process or set of processes. It depends on a number of factors, including temperament and the relationship with a parent and or caregiver. It also depends on the early student-teacher relationship. Evidence suggests positive student-teacher relationships in kindergarten predict academic and socio-behavioral adjustments across the elementary school years. And a reminder that emotional dysregulation is not considered a disorder in its own right, but it is often associated with a host of other disorders. Research also indicates a definitive relationship between emotional dysregulation and children's behavioral and social development. Young children who do not develop regulatory control are likely to exhibit emotional and behavioral problems in both school and community settings.

Speaker 1: 9:15

Temper tantrums are not typically considered developmentally appropriate for kindergarten aged children, but, according to teachers, it's becoming more common. These teachers are reporting that they've seen a large increase in the inability for students to cope with things when they don't go their way. They see a lot of crying, yelling, shutting down and gross overreactions. These are all disruptive to the classroom environment. Compared to five years ago, according to Education Research Center's 2024 State of Teaching Survey, students show more and much more difficulty with social-emotional skills, including listening and following directions, sharing, cooperating with others and taking turns.

Speaker 1: 10:14

You might be thinking that COVID-19 may be responsible for what seems to be a serious regression among kindergartners. The answer from the experts, including educators, to mental health professionals, indicated that there may be some trickle-down effects that extend to younger children based on behaviors during COVID-19. This is interesting, given that children who are now entering kindergarten were barely born during the height of the pandemic. Worth noting is that the pandemic did prevent many young children from attending daycare and preschool, where they would have been with their peers for four hours each day, picking up the social cues and norms of being part of the group. If these current kindergartners had older siblings who never socialized with other children because schools were shut down and they were trapped at home, not building their social skills, that could also rub off on the younger children.

Speaker 1: 11:23

Another possible reason for the surge in young children's difficulty with emotional self-regulation is that their parents may struggle to regulate their own emotions, given the current climate in this country. Parents are stressed out about economics, they're stressed out about social and political things in society, about high gas prices, high grocery prices and about making ends meet, and they're not regulating well. Parents are also spending a lot of time on their screens, which is a leftover habit from the pandemic shutdown, which makes them psychologically absent to their children. They're not really spending time with their child in terms of supporting that healthy emotional development because they are potentially on their phones, doom scrolling all day long. Increasingly, 40% of children own a tablet by age 4, 58% of children on a tablet and use it regularly, and an estimated one in five children aged eight and younger use mobile devices for emotional regulation, mealtimes or to fall asleep, according to a February 2025 report by the non-profit Common Sense Media that surveyed 1,578 parents of children younger than nine years old. So for a lot of children who come to school that are four or barely five years old, teachers are asking them to sit in a classroom for six hours. However, nothing the teacher asks them to do will be able to match the engagement of an iPad. Some of the solutions that teachers have used to mitigate kindergarteners strong emotions include resources such as the Mood Meter, which is a chart like device that students can reference in order to identify how they're feeling in that moment. Another resource is the motion regulation wheel, which lets students spin a physical wheel, somewhat like a traditional board game wheel, and then choose an appropriate option to manage their feelings. Choices include strategies like sit by myself and do some breathing exercises or draw the experience. These tools and strategies help children to focus on emotions they're experiencing at the time and help them to tell the teacher what will help them in that moment, and help them to tell the teacher what will help them in that moment.

Speaker 1: 14:24

A school district in New York, the Bethlehem Central School District, created an interesting idea. They offered a pre-readiness kindergarten, where the district invited incoming kindergartners who may be less prepared than their peers to enter a full-day kindergarten to experience being in a classroom for short periods of time. The three-week camp is held two hours a day, three times a week, and it's free. It's run by district teachers, including a teacher experienced with English language learners, who make up the majority of the attendees. The children learn routines and the procedures of being a student, like how to unpack your bag during the school year, how to transition to different classes, how to get in line, etc. These things help prepare the incoming kindergartners for what it's like to be a student, because some of the kindergartners really don't know what that means, especially if they didn't attend preschool.

Speaker 1: 15:34

A counterintuitive strategy for emotional self-regulation in the classroom is distraction. It's the same strategy that is effective for a toddler who's having a meltdown. Distraction can be a powerful tool to reset during an emotional moment. In fact, research shows that distraction through a creative activity like drawing is particularly an effective way of lessening negative effect and boosting positive effect. In other words, distraction can be helpful because it provides immediate relief even in emotionally intense situations, and because it's an attention deployment strategy that's carried out before emotional information is fully processed in the brain. Plus, distraction is easy to rely on and requires little mental effort.

Speaker 1: 16:35

Teachers can use distraction to help students re-engage or refocus at school. They can provide movement or social breaks for students to stretch or talk to their friends. It's helpful to provide students with the choice of calm activities that are active distractions and those that match their temperamental activity level to help them regulate themselves. For example, a young learner in grades K through 1, a calm distraction might look like coloring a picture, while an active distraction could be a freeze dance. Distraction, however, can become unhelpful in the long run when there is no intention to engage with the situation that prompted negative emotions. In the future, prolonged distraction can lead to hiding or running away from an emotional situation. When teachers understand how distraction functions as an emotion regulation strategy, they can help students notice if they're using distraction in an unhelpful manner. They can help students explore and identify their emotions using a mood meter that I mentioned earlier in this discussion. Another strategy for helping students manage their emotions in class might be integrating physical activity into class time, which can not only curb disruptive behaviors but also reinforce content mastery.

Speaker 1: 18:15

It's worth noting that self-regulation can be taught. Here are some strategies kindergarten teachers can utilize to build this skill, and they may also be appropriate for you. One support the brain. Allow kindergartners to eat and drink in class to nourish their brains and increase the amount of physical movement. Two make it fun. Learning self-control doesn't have to be painful and it shouldn't feel like a chore In order to make it fun. Incorporate games like Simon Says and Concentration, using role-playing scenarios where students deal with real-life situations and problems and engage students with intriguing scenarios and questions. 3. Improve short-term memory. Short-term memory, use spot-the-difference puzzles and play games like 20 Questions, where students have to hold information in short-term memory or working memory. Also, teachers can externalize information such as time limits, guidelines and directions, with visual cues and written reminders. Having those time limits and guidelines is certainly something that you can incorporate when it's time to play games. And number four do a room check. And number four do a room check.

Speaker 1: 20:11

The physical environment of the classroom can have a tremendous impact on a student's ability to focus and exhibit self-control. Some students, particularly those in low self-regulation, are sensitive to things in the environment that can be very difficult to ignore things in the environment that can be very difficult to ignore. So spend some time analyzing the classroom with a keen eye toward things that could be a distraction for students. This is also very helpful at home, especially in spaces where you've set aside for your children to do homework. Consider things like placement of desks and pencil sharpeners, the amount of clutter and traffic patterns. Teachers could ask themselves this question is my room neat, tidy and organized, or cluttered, messy and overstimulating? More play and more movement seems to be an antidote to the emotional dysregulation of kindergartners. Given this, most kindergarten programs have become more academic focused, leaning into instruction that emphasizes teaching students to read and gain basic math skills, and moving away from activities like self-directed play, including painting, use of blocks or puzzles.

Speaker 1: 22:30

Many kindergarten teachers indicate that the kindergartners that they're seeing currently are having tantrums because they're being asked to do things that four to six-year-olds shouldn't be asked to do, because many of them are not ready developmentally to sit quietly for longer lengths of time to learn in a traditional passive learning classroom. Play skills help kindergartners learn social and fine motor skills. Kindergarten classrooms need to bring back play kitchens and an area where the children can play games with each other. Kindergarteners need to have classrooms that allow them to move, play without adult interference, explore and discover, sing, talk to their friends without adult interference, tell stories and rhymes, play games and get dirty. Having them focus on reading, fluently writing and doing basic addition and subtraction may be forcing them into studies before their minds and bodies are ready for them.

Speaker 1: 23:48

One of the main differences that I noted with my grandchildren when they were in kindergarten is that there is no nap time for kindergartners. No wonder they're experiencing emotional dysregulation. A five-year-old needs a nap every day. Whose bright idea was it to eliminate naps for kindergartners. This is where researchers and parents diverge on what's best for the child. A parent of a five-year-old knows that their child needs a nap every day. It's best for the child, the parent and the home environment. In any case, many districts started the shift to a more academic-based kindergarten around 2010. There was less focus on play and more focus on social-emotional learning and academic-based content. Kindergarten may not ever revert completely to the play-centric environment that it once was, but perhaps with vocal pushback from parents and kindergartners, kindergarten programs will examine more closely the dual goals of meeting academic standards for young learners, along with a propensity toward playfulness. So let's get practical. What can you do about the information I just shared? Here are the action steps you can take regarding emotional dysregulation of kindergartners.

Speaker 1: 25:27

Emotional dysregulation of kindergartners is something that has happened in recent years, and one of the reasons for this is that the children are being asked to do things to which they may not be developmentally or emotionally prepared to do. Here are some actionable strategies you can use to help your kindergartner manage their emotions in preparation for going to class. One make sure your child has plenty of rest and eats healthy, nutritious meals every day. Two, allow time in your daily schedule for your child to release energy and focus better by engaging in physical exercise. Three practice the academics reading, writing and math skills, like addition and subtraction, in short bursts, typically no more than 20 minutes at a time. Four encourage building language and problem-solving skills through playing with blocks or Legos and reading stories to your children. Five check in with your child to get a sense for how he or she is feeling. You can create an emotion regulation wheel, which is a physical wheel as in a game board, and label the appropriate options on the wheel to ask what your child might be feeling. The second part of identifying his or her emotion is letting the child choose a strategy that will help them manage their emotions. Something like sit by myself and do some breathing exercises myself and do some breathing exercises. And six create a space in your home that's designated as a quiet corner or a calming corner. This allows your child to quietly settle himself or herself so that they develop a sense of control over the situation rather than feeling out of control over the situation, rather than feeling out of control. When he or she is ready to re-engage with the family, welcome him or her back. Here are this episode's takeaways.

Speaker 1: 28:00

Researchers define emotion regulation as the practice of recognizing emotions and developing the skills needed to manage reactions to those emotions. Although emotional dysregulation is not considered a disorder in its own right, it is often associated with a host of other disorders, like mood disorders or anxiety disorders across early ages. It's worth noting that emotion regulation is not a single process or a set of processes. It depends on a number of factors, including temperament and the relationship with the parent or caregiver. It also depends on early student-teacher relationships. Emotional dysregulation can cause behavioral problems in early childhood, causes low academic achievement and ineffective perspective on critical skills, as well as low emotional competence.

Speaker 1: 29:02

Knowledge and regulation. Consequential thinking and poor alternative thinking are typically associated with children's impulsivity over-emotionality, children's impulsivity over emotionality and low social and emotional competencies. A counterintuitive strategy for self-regulation in the classroom is distraction. It's the same strategy that's effective for a toddler who's having a meltdown. Distraction can be a powerful tool to reset during an emotional moment. In fact, research shows that distraction through a creative activity like drawing is a particularly effective way of lessening negative effect and boosting positive effect. In other words, distraction can be helpful because it provides immediate relief even in emotionally intense situations, and because it is an attention deployment strategy that's carried out before emotional information is fully processed in the brain. Fully processed in the brain. Another strategy for helping students manage their emotions in class might be integrating physical activity into class time, which can not only curb disruptive behaviors, but also reinforce content mastery, mastery.

Speaker 1: 30:44

What's been your experience with dealing with emotional dysregulation of kindergartners or older children? Let me know your thoughts by leaving a text comment on my podcast website, k12educationinsightsbuzzsproutcom. Here's how you leave a text comment Go to the episode description page and click on the send me a text message link. Again, it's k12educationinsightsbuzzsproutcom. If you enjoyed this episode, why not listen to another episode from our library? It could take as little as 15 minutes of your day and remember new episodes come out every Tuesday. Thanks for listening to this episode. Be sure to come back for more insights on K-12 education topics that impact you and your children. Until next time, aim to learn something new every day.