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Nannytax | Holly | Children’s Mental Health Week 2025 – Talking to Children About Wellbeing

Talking to Children About Wellbeing

Nannytax | Children’s Mental Health Week 2025 – Talking to Children About Wellbeing

This week is Children’s Mental Health Week, and we’ve asked Nannytax Nanny Ambassador Holly to share her tips on talking to children about wellbeing.

Nannytax | Children’s Mental Health Week 2025 – Talking to Children About Wellbeing | Holly The Nanny

Hello! I’m Holly, a Norland Nanny And Nannytax Ambassador currently working in London. I share some of what I get up to, alongside activity ideas, over on my nanny Instagram (@holly_the_nanny_).

This children’s Mental Health Week, I’m sharing how to talk to children about their wellbeing. Helping children understand, explore, and deal with their emotions has always been a huge passion of mine and something I think is incredibly important. It’s such a vast topic with lots to cover, but here are a few of my top tips!

Talking about emotions

Talking to children about emotions can start from when they are babies. By creating an environment where feelings are labelled, valued, and supported, you build a foundation for children to feel safe and secure, allowing them to express their feelings—whether big or small, happy or sad! Little ones understand before they can verbalise, so through labelling emotions, promoting conversation (even if it’s just babble!), and co-regulating with a child, you are helping them piece together that whatever they feel is okay. You are here for them, and you want to help them, showing them that it’s okay to express their emotions.

Phrases such as “I can hear/see you’re feeling sad right now” followed by “Would you like a hug?” model to children that you can see the feeling they’re expressing, you have given it a name, and you’re offering a solution. By naming the emotion, you help the child understand what they are feeling. Over time, this gives them the vocabulary to identify their feelings, which allows them to express themselves more effectively and, in turn, builds their toolkit for emotional regulation. Essentially, by labelling feelings, we are “naming it to tame it.”

Here are a few more examples—these are some basic versions and can be expanded depending on the age and stage of the child.

Nannytax | Children’s Mental Health Week 2025 – Talking to Children About Wellbeing | Phases

When children experience big emotions and become overwhelmed, they become dysregulated. When they are in this state, they aren’t able to be receptive or rational—such as when a toddler is having a tantrum! Imagine being full of an uncomfortable feeling (a feeling you don’t even know what it is, let alone how to deal with it)—it would be totally overwhelming! We have to remember that when children are feeling these emotions, it’s all new and unknown to them. They don’t know what they’re feeling or how to deal with it, so they become totally unregulated.

Another way we can talk about wellbeing and feelings is by incorporating the names of feelings into the daily dialogue and discussing coping mechanisms in relation to different situations and people. This helps children build an understanding so that when you are supporting them through a big emotion, they can recall and remember a bit about it. The more and more you co-regulate (support them in dealing with their feelings), the more they will build an understanding and a basic metaphorical toolkit for dealing with their emotions independently (to self-regulate).

Supporting Emotional Regulation

Supporting emotional regulation can be done in a variety of ways, such as:

  • Bringing Feelings into Role Play: Children can learn a lot through role-playing situations, which helps them feel more confident and equipped when they face similar situations themselves. They may also use role play to share feelings and experiences they are going through.
  • Talking About Things You See Out and About: This works well for understanding both happy and sad feelings. For example: “I was so glad to see…” or “It made me feel happy when…” For children, they are often overjoyed by the little things, so sharing in their excitement is a very special opportunity to connect with them. For instance, the little boy I look after (who’s 1 and a half) loves trucks. He gets so excited to see them on the road. By matching his excitement and sharing in his joy, this allows us to explore a feeling together and creates an open space for expressing emotions.

There is as much value in supporting children in their happiness as there is in supporting their sadness.

  • Grounding, Something I’ve found to always be helpful in helping a child calm down and regulate to a place where they can be rational and content is grounding. This may seem like a distraction, but sometimes a child needs to be calm before you can fully talk about and process the emotion together. It’s important to do both grounding and processing (even if the processing happens later in the day); otherwise, you’re just distracting them without addressing their feelings. Depending on the age and stage of the child, grounding can take different forms. I often find myself with children counting things we can see. Over the years, I’ve spent many hours sitting on the floor counting all sorts of weird and wonderful things! One example that comes to mind is sitting on the steps in Trafalgar Square, counting bricks with a dysregulated 2-year-old who had just dropped her raisins and was beside herself. Did we look a bit silly at the time? Probably! But it worked to help the child settle, and then we were in a position to have a cuddle and talk about why she felt sad, why it was okay, and what we were going to do about it.

Other ways you can help a child ground themselves are through:

  • Singing a song, looking for something specific, or talking about the environment around them. This helps shift the child’s focus to the world around them, allowing them to pause and regulate.
  • Having flashcards, posters, or toys with a variety of emotions creates an opportunity for children to recognise and name feelings and become familiar with them. This allows them to use these words in their daily language. You could also do this by looking in a mirror and making different faces.
  • Having stories that talk about emotions can also be helpful for building a child’s understanding and emotional toolkit. Similarly, when reading other stories, there’s the opportunity to discuss the characters’ feelings, which the child can then relate to.
    Here are a few ideas of books and resources available. There are also lots of activity ideas and resources, so it’s about figuring out what works best for the child you’re supporting.

Here are a few ideas of books and resources available. There are also lots of activity ideas and resources, so it’s about figuring out what works best for the child you’re supporting.

Nannytax | Children’s Mental Health Week 2025 – Talking to Children About Wellbeing | Resources

Listening & Validation

As important as it is to talk to children about their feelings and emotions, it is equally important to listen and validate. I always try to remember that we have two ears and one mouth! Just because it doesn’t seem like the end of the world to you that the child’s train track came apart (or whatever else is causing the big feelings) doesn’t mean it isn’t real to them. To them, it really does feel like the end of the world. They are overwhelmed with an emotion, and that is hard for them. Therefore, it is important to listen to, respect, and respond to all the emotions children express, whatever the cause may be! This can be hard to remember when their worries or feelings seem unjustified, but if you can connect with the child by supporting and empowering them, this helps them feel heard and understood. It also contributes to building their ‘toolkit’ and understanding of how to deal with their emotions.

The Power of a Deep Breath


The power of a deep breath—for both adults and children alike! Something that seems so simple can do so much for a child by helping them stop and slow down. There are many different breathing techniques and exercises we can do with children to help them take a breath, so it’s about finding what works for the child. The more familiar and natural it becomes, the more it will be something the child can turn to. One of my favourites is “blowing out the candles”—using the child’s or adult’s fingers as candles and blowing them out. Other ideas include breathing in “happy” and blowing away worries, or doing a breathing star (there are lots of lovely posters and ideas available with a quick Google search!)

Setting the Foundations


Alongside talking to children about their feelings, you can also talk to them about their overall wellbeing and taking care of themselves both physically and mentally (because these two areas impact each other). Helping a child grow up aware of their wellbeing and needs sets a good foundation for them to listen to their body as they grow. One of the ways this can be done is through role modelling—showing the child that you have feelings too widens their understanding and gives them ideas they can implement themselves.

Within the daily routine, we do lots of things to support the child’s wellbeing—often without even thinking about it! I challenge you to verbalise to the child what we’re doing and why. For example: “It’s hard to listen and make happy choices when we’re hungry—shall we have some water and a snack?” or “When we’re feeling tired, we can choose to do something calm—would you like to read a story?”


Talking to children about wellbeing is such a big topic, and there is so much more to say, which obviously isn’t all going to fit in one blog. But hopefully, I’ve given you a few helpful things to consider and implement when supporting children with their feelings. So I will close with this , Children only express and share their emotions with those they feel safe enough to explore (or explode!) with. What a privileged position it is to be trusted by a little person and to support them as they grow and understand their feelings in this great big world around them. Do we remember and appreciate that enough?

Nannytax | Children’s Mental Health Week 2025 – Talking to Children About Wellbeing | Holly The Nanny Logo

Children’s Mental Health Week is organised by Place2Be and this year takes place between the 3rd-9th February 2025. The theme for this year is Know Yourself, Grow Yourself. You can find lots of fun and engaging resources for families, parents, and carers on Place2Be’s website to help you take part in Children’s Mental Health Week, click here to explore.

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