Shared Delight Builds Resilience: Ideas for Every Stage, from Toddlers to Teens
“How can I help my sensitive child build more resilience?”
“What are ways that I can co-regulate my upset child?”
“It’s so hard when my child is angry - what do I do? “
Understandably, we look for answers about what to do when upsetting emotions arise - a topic that I explore in numerous other articles in my blog series. We tend to think of “co-regulation” as something that happens at times of distress. However, this viewpoint overlooks the crucial role of positive emotions in the parent-child dyad. Research on child resilience highlights that shared positive emotion is a key building block for child emotional development. Shared positive emotion predicts secure attachment, social competence, and self-regulation. Co-regulation of positive affect in the parent-child dyad lays the foundation for regulation of negative emotions. Routine experiences of positive emotions in everyday moments predict better child coping when hard things happen.
On good days, shared delight might feel like low-hanging fruit to families. Other times, finding enjoyment in everyday life can feel like a stretch. We spend a lot of time with families whose children are struggling with negative behaviors and emotions. Family relationships become strained when anger outbursts, aggression, and emotion dysregulation are daily occurrences. Getting through the day can feel like an act of survival, never mind finding space for positive emotions.
The teen years are often a time when negative emotions become more prominent, making it harder to find these moments of connection. Parents might feel rebuffed by their teens when the gestures that used to be well received are now falling short.
Families can also feel emotionally stretched for other reasons, such as serious illness in a family member, a move, or a job loss. During darker times, it can feel much harder to bring play and enjoyment into everyday routines. Sometimes, we need to be deliberate about finding these spaces to connect.
Shared positive emotion can take many forms, such as:
Warm physical contact
Physical affection
Smiles, with shared gaze
Warm vocal tone
Laughter
Singing
The resilience-building element of positive emotions has do to with whether the emotional experience is shared between family members. Researchers call this dyadic synchrony. Dyadic synchrony refers to the amount of time that the parent and child dyad express similar intensity of positive emotion, whether highly expressive or more muted forms. In other words, we are not talking about trips to Disneyland. The magic lies in everyday, “micro” interactions of warmth and delight. It’s this kind of synchrony that functions as a mechanism for building emotional stability and resilience. The shape of dyadic synchrony shifts as our kids grow up, especially during the tween and teen stages. This article outlines some activities that can invite shared positive emotion at each stage.
Toddlers and Preschoolers: Play and Affection
Physical affection is a natural element of parenting young children. Young kids enjoy being carried, snuggled, and kissed. The toddler and preschool years are among the most delightful when it comes to games of affection. Young children are an easy audience. Parents can enjoy a playful zone that exists only in the world of the young child. This is a narrow window when caregivers can engage in simple, playful routines and have a child respond with complete joy and delight.
I’m sharing a few games that I created when my kids were young, because I’m feeling nostalgic and because they capture the spirit better than any general description:
Helicopter. My son, at three, would sprint across the room and launch himself onto me while I lay on my back, arms and legs out, pretending he was flying. The helicopter would develop "technical difficulties" and go down in a dramatic, laughing crash.
Puppy shopping. I would pretend to browse a room full of puppies, making a show of not finding quite the right one, until I "found" my son or daughter and reacted with a burst of love, wonder, and delight.
Squeaky limbs. We would pretend that my kids’ arms and legs had gone rusty and squeaky. I would then "oil" each joint until the squeaking - which grew gradually quieter with each oil treatment, eventually resolved and they could move freely. Inevitably, my child would let me know that the oil had worn off and the sequence needed repeating - again and again.
The shared ingredients in all three examples involve physical closeness, a bit of buildup or anticipation, and pure delight. The specific game matters less than the presence of shared positive emotional expression.
School-Age Kids: Shared Activities
As school-aged children grow out of the playful rituals of earlier childhood, they still enjoy physical activities, games, jokes, and shared routines.
Some ideas:
Wrestling, roughhousing, piggyback races
Cooking or baking together
Knock-knock jokes
Parent interest in the child’s interests
Shared musical or artistic activities
Physical warmth during ordinary moments: braiding hair, back scratches during a show or a bedtime song
"Special time” - a few minutes of undivided, child-focused playtime
Noncompetitive games that invite laughter, such as charades, freeze dance, and “would you rather”
It’s great when these activities can be built into predictable rituals, while also leaving room for spontaneity. Parents sometimes ask whether rowdy roughhousing is okay - the research shows that this kind of play can be a valuable way for kids to feel more connected to their parents and to build self-regulation..
Tweens and Teens: Affection as Presence
Teens tend to be a trickier audience. Parents need to aim for a presence that is consistent yet nonintrusive. If efforts are met with eye rolls, it’s important to refrain from responding negatively - since this undermines the entire intent. Patience on the part of parents is needed. Activities with teens might include:
Watching comedy or funny videos together
Sharing in video game play
Enjoying family pets together
Conversations about the teen’s interests
Small symbolic gifts, treats, photos, or memories ("I saw this and thought of you")
A foot rub, if accepted. This can be a great way to offer physical touch that does not require a hug or eye contact, which matters for teens who pull away from face-to-face affection but will happily sit next to you on the couch
Family game night, for willing teens
These activities signal parental presence, which is essential to healthy teen development. Even if the teen does not acknowledge the effort in the moment, it will still register as parental warmth.
When Things Are Hard: Positive Synchrony as an Anchor
Parent-child synchrony of positive emotions operates as a buffer when it comes to protecting the child during stress. Researchers believe that the positive exchanges, over time, build the child’s ability to regulate negative emotions. The positive valence of the parent-child relationship functions as a major contributor to child mental health resilience. The microlevel process of day-to-day positive exchanges are related to the macrolevel process of resilient mental health. These findings are so compelling that interventions for child problems aim to build more positive dyadic synchrony as part of the treatment.
Services at Child and Teen Solutions in Seattle
It’s much easier to engage in these activities of delight when the relationship is going well. It is much harder, yet all the more important, to keep offering these gestures when a child is struggling or when the relationship has been strained. At Child and Teen Solutions, we work with families on building skills to support mental health recovery and long term resilience. We support families whose children are dealing with anxiety, disruptive behavior, emotion dysregulation, autism, and ADHD.
In addition to our treatment services, we offer highly specialized neurodevelopmental evaluations (e.g., autism, ADHD, learning disorders) for persons ages 3 years through college age.
To learn more, reach out to us through our Contact Page.
If you like what you’ve read, sign up for the Parenting Tips Newsletter.
References
Coffey, J. K. (2018). Positive psychology of infancy and early childhood. In C. R. Snyder, S. J. Lopez, L. M. Edwards, & S. C. Marques (Eds.), The Oxford handbook of positive psychology (3rd ed., pp. 152–170). Oxford University Press.
Lagattuta, K. H., & Wellman, H. M. (2002). Differences in early parent–child conversations about negative versus positive emotions: Implications for the development of psychological understanding. Developmental Psychology, 38(4), 564–580.
Lunkenheimer, E., Hamby, C. M., Lobo, F. M., Cole, P. M., & Olson, S. L. (2020). The role of dynamic, dyadic parent–child processes in parental socialization of emotion. Developmental Psychology, 56(3), 566–577.
