2–3 years: crying, screaming, plus my kid is throwing a tantrum

Published: 18 November 2025

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Summary

This episode is part of the It Can’t Hurt to Ask: Parents' Group

How do you talk to your 2-year-old about emotions and discipline while barely managing your own meltdown?

Welcome to Episode 6 of Parents' Group, Season 4 of It Can't Hurt To Ask by Queensland Health. This week, your hosts Steph, Alex and Caitlin unpack the chaos and connection that comes with parenting a 2- to 3-year-old, from public tantrums and constant 'but why?' questions to emotional breakthroughs and bedtime battles.

Early intervention clinician Karen joins us to explain what’s actually happening during toddler outbursts, how to help your child (and yourself) co-regulate, and what 'discipline' can look like when we focus on building emotional safety. We also explore how to support different family structures and keep relationships strong when co-parents don’t always agree.

You’ll also hear from Katie, a single parent navigating these years with support from her family – a beautiful reminder that you don’t have to do this alone.

Follow It Can’t Hurt to Ask for future episodes and share with any parent who could use a warm, wise voice in their ear.

Episode resources

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Disclaimer

The stories and conversations shared by the hosts in this podcast reflect their personal views, experiences, and opinions. They are shared for informational and educational purposes only and are not intended as a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment.

Queensland Health does not guarantee the accuracy or completeness of the views expressed by guests and accepts no responsibility for any loss or damage that may result from relying on this content.

If you have questions about your health or treatment, please speak with a qualified healthcare professional.

Featured in this episode

Picture of Karen McKeering

Karen

Karen McKeering is an Early Intervention Clinician – Social Worker with Child Health Qld.

As a mother of 4 herself, she is passionate about all things parenting, especially when it comes to helping to support families with the wonderful, tiring, exhausting, puzzling, delightful – and sometimes challenging – journey of raising children.

Caitlin, a parent in Parents' Group

Caitlin

Caitlin is the proud mum of a busy, maths-loving and dino-obsessed 7-year-old and a sassy, creative, princess-obsessed 4-year-old. She loves the mess and magic of motherhood and manages the extra complexity of parenting a child with a disability and navigating her own physical birth injury.

In between her paid work in digital marketing, school and kindy drop offs, playdates, and kids' sports, therapy and extracurricular activities, Caitlin relishes the moments she gets to herself and the simple joys of a hot shower (bliss!), warm cuppa and chatting with her besties on the drive home from work.

Steph, a parent in Parents' Group

Steph

Steph is a non-birthing mum of two kids — a 6-month-old and a 3-year-old. Her wife carried both of their babies and is currently a stay-at-home mum while Steph works full-time in communications.

As a mum of 2 little ones, Steph doesn’t have time or energy for hobbies, but when she does get the chance, she enjoys sitting down for more than 5 minutes and eating a meal when it is still hot.

Alex, a parent in Parents' Group

Alex

Alex has spent more time raising kids than being one. He is a dad to an 18- and 17-year-old from his first marriage, and a 4-year-old from his second.

Between working in creative media and being a parent, he also enjoys playing guitar, cooking and martial arts (but only between 10pm and 12am when everyone is asleep). He lives with his 3 kids, wife and mum, leaning into the richness and chaos of intergenerational living.

Note

The stories and conversations shared by the hosts in this podcast reflect their personal views, experiences, and opinions. They are shared for informational and educational purposes only and are not intended as a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment.

Queensland Health does not guarantee the accuracy or completeness of the views expressed by guests and accepts no responsibility for any loss or damage that may result from relying on this content.

If you have questions about your health or treatment, please speak with a qualified healthcare professional.

Transcript

Steph

Hi, and welcome back to It Can't Hurt To Ask, a podcast by Queensland Health. I'm Steph.

Alex

I'm Alex.

Caitlin

And I am Caitlin. We are your hosts as we journey through the first 5 years of parenting and the rollercoaster of emotions that come with them.

Alex

Now, this week we're diving into the 2- to 3-year-old stage. You might know it as the age of big questions, big feelings and sometimes experiencing these in public.

Steph

Yeah. It's also the age of 'why?'. Why are bananas yellow? Why can't I have an icy pole for breakfast? Why do I have to wear pants?

Caitlin

Classic.

And it's when our kids really start noticing the world around them, including different kinds of families they might see both in their lives and in care settings.

Before we dive in, how have your weeks been, Steph and Alex?

Steph

Yeah, thanks Caitlin. This week, my 6-month-old just started solids and oh my gosh, it is so different the second time around. I remember that we were just so stressed out the first time, like worried about everything, worried that our daughter was going to have a reaction to something, going to choke.

But now it's just like, 'oh, all right, this is just a thing that we do now.' This is fine. That first moment when we're all sitting at the dinner table together and we're having dinner together, it was just one of those moments where you just look around and you're like, 'oh, this is actually really special and this is what it's all about.'

So that was nice to just acknowledge that and just feel that moment altogether.

What about you, Alex? How's your week been?

Alex

It's been good. I like how you're talking about family and food and dinner times. They are special moments, and our house is a little bit different at the moment.

Our daughter's nearly 4. There's my mom in her eighties, two teenagers, me and my wife. So dinner times are a bit more chaotic. We're working around lots of different schedules. End of day with daycare.

There's little rundowns of, what the best friends were up to today and things like that, quite often followed by a bit of a meltdown. And I think one of the things I found having that kind of intergenerational family, was at the beginning when my mom moved in with us, there was a bit of a clash between everybody's different needs at different times of life from teenagers to young children to older people.

But you know, over time we're starting to make that dinner time something of a time where we can all get together. It's probably the one time where we do all sit down and we do share stories and bit by bit, we're starting to treat that as a space where we get to see each other for our true selves, if that makes sense.

How about you, Caitlin?

Caitlin

I had a really special thing happen this week.

My 7-year old got an award on assembly, -which, for him, he worked so hard at school and it's not easy, but I'm so proud of him and the effort he puts in. His award was for what I felt a really nice reason. He is a maths whiz; loves maths. But he's not sort of cocky about it. He's like very humble and unassuming mostly about his maths abilities.

And the award was for sharing his learning and understanding of maths with his peers and helping them with their schoolwork. And I just thought that was such a nice reason to get an award. I'm so proud of him and yeah, it's always nice to see your kid recognised for being kind.

Steph

Absolutely.

Caitlin

Before we get into it, we want to acknowledge the Traditional Custodians on the land on which we are recording.

For us, it's Meanjin, Land of the Yuggera and Turrbal people. We pay our respects to Elders, past and present, and extend that respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander listeners, including our parents and caregivers out there.

Steph

Joining us today is early intervention clinician, Karen, who works closely with families navigating toddler years. Karen, thanks for being here. Can you tell us a bit about what your day-to-day work involves?

Karen

Yeah, thanks Steph. So, I work as an early intervention clinician, which, we're a team of social workers or psychologists that help families to gain the tools for their own parenting journey.

We want to offer early help because small challenges can become bigger ones. But we know if we can help early, it's going to be better for everybody.

Things can feel like a rollercoaster sometimes, and of course everybody's needs are different in every family. So, in our job, sometimes that means that we're helping to manage stress or we're supporting parents and caregivers around the challenges that they're experiencing at home.

Or we're helping to help them build strong attachment between parent and child. And sometimes we're also just helping with say, anxiety and depression. And we do this in one appointment or across a number of appointments, and we also run groups as well, Steph.

Caitlin

We are seeing some interesting things at this 2-year-old stage. You know, more emotional outbursts.

So Karen, what is actually going on in a toddler's brain during a tantrum, and how can we as their parents, help them through this in a way that builds long-term emotional regulation skills?

Karen

Great question. At the core of it, it's really important to view children of this age group as very busy brain builders.

They are still creating all of the emotional wiring in their brain that will help them make, you know, their own decisions later. And there’s still such a big learning curve with their impulses, managing big feelings and reasoning. So, their system literally just gets overloaded.

Tantrums are a classic sign of this and that the emotional part of the brain is in charge and a little help is needed to help them calm down and manage those big feelings.

When we are helping parents learn how to manage tantrums, we encourage parents to stay calm in the moment. It might be hard, but it's a really great way for us to model to the child, how to manage their feelings. So, by us staying calm, it lets them know that it's safe to go through these processes and that we're going to be with them as they go through the emotion and hopefully out the other end.

And this is the basis of emotional regulation. And it's also going to connect into self-esteem later as well. But what we want to do is just stay calm with them, and the second thing we want to do is start to name the emotion so that the child gets to know what they're going through and then they start to develop the language that's going to help support them with that as they get older.

There's so many great books out there about naming emotions and that's going to help also with their language development at this age as well.

They really also benefit if we show them how to co-regulate emotions together. So, our deep breathing, our trying to be grounded and present in the moment is really going to help anchor them.

So, that would be my takeaway.

Alex

I've actually found breathing a really valuable tool for a toddler having a meltdown. Just taking that moment and breathing with them. I find it really just gives you a pause and that oxygen just helps their whole nervous system, come down a little bit.

I'd recommend it. Yeah.

Caitlin

Mm-hmm. We do a silly breathing exercise where we hold up the fingers and blow out the candles and it often turns the overwhelm into laughter. It's such a good, like, circuit breaker.

Steph

Absolutely. Karen, can we talk about discipline?

It's such a loaded word and it means different things to different people. What would you say is a healthy approach to discipline that keeps relationships strong?

Karen

Steph, you're so right. It really is a loaded word and it often comes with expectations from others around us about what discipline should look like.

At the heart of it, 2- and 3-year-olds really still need a lot of guidance about managing behaviours that, you know, you want help stop those behaviours. You want to set boundaries in place so that the child will feel more secure knowing where those boundaries are.

So, we also want those boundaries to be consistent, so we do need follow through at this point as well. We want let them know in a clear and calm way, what those boundaries are. We want get on their level, we want use eye contact, we want make sure they're really hearing us.

So, when our kids have boundaries, they actually gain a really great sense of safety and it really helps with their feelings of their own security. And then they can put their focus more into the learning and growing of being a 2- and 3-year-old.

It's really interesting too, Steph, that the word discipline actually really means, 'to teach'. So, give them time to practice. Give them a reminder about the boundary that you've shared with them, or if they're really struggling, maybe give them a chance to try it another way.

We want to keep our connection strong with our child, and that's why the focus is more on teaching and not controlling, and that's really what's going to keep our connection strong.

Alex

I think that's some really good advice there. Yeah.

So, depending on the makeup of your family, there might be one decision maker, 2, maybe 3, you know, depending on if there's grandparents as well involved. What happens when parents and carers don't actually agree on how to approach behaviour and discipline? Like, it can put strains on relationships between yourselves and also with, with your children.

I know that I have got older children now from my first marriage. They were at that 2- and 3-year phase when we separated.

So even though we're not in a marriage anymore, we still have a relationship as parents and those disagreements can be difficult to manage, especially when there's like shared custody and you don't share a home anymore.

We found that raising children together but separately has meant that there's a lot more need for communication, which isn't always easy.

But it also means that sometimes you have to admit that there are better ways of doing things than the way you think is the right way. But I've found also along the way that parenting is very instinctive. It comes from, I guess some quite deep seated places as to how you were parented, the role models you had growing up.

Societal expectations and that can differ from person to person. So, there are times when we've just fundamentally like disagreed on the way forward and the right decision to make.

So, how should people approach this in order to help their children make the best informed decisions they can?

Karen

Yeah, great question.

Thanks Alex. And you really touched on something there. It's interesting. We might have ideas as we come into parenting that, ‘oh, I'm not gonna do this or that when I'm a parent', and then we find ourselves maybe doing something and then it's just really good to know that there's something called procedural memory and we sometimes just do things out of a habit, an ingrained sort of a legacy of our own childhood. And so therefore, as parents, one thing that's really helpful is developing the powers of observation, of what's going on for us, and where is this coming from? And that way we can then kind of explore that and think about how we do want to do things.

And there's a few steps involved in that. And I think just knowing that there's a process involved is really helpful, because we come into parenting and it's an ongoing journey. And as our kids are learning so much, we also have to learn so much along the alongside of them that, but we don't really realise that that's going on.

So it does help to then take that time to sort of observe what's going on for us, and then put the time into thinking, ‘well, what direction do I want to take this in?’

But you're right, when it comes to navigating this journey as well and doing it together as parents, we really need to know how to work out those shared responses, in managing the behaviour of our kids.

And that can make it really, really tricky as well. So, we really want to make sure that we're having those discussions with our parenting partners when things aren't heightened. We want to find time when it's, you know, a more calm time and that, that's tricky 'cause we're all going to be escalated at different times. And that's life, really, as parenting and knowing that I think is half the battle. So, taking the time when we're feeling calm and then we can really come up with shared strategies.

So, one thing to consider is that we really need to take the time to work out a shared response to managing behaviour, and the best time to do that is when things aren't tense. So, don't do it during the middle of high emotions. Bookmark it, come back to it later, put it on the shelf, and then take the time together later to develop a bit of a plan.

And yeah, sometimes parents we're individuals, so we're always going to have different styles to each other, and it's really being able to communicate with each other. Having compassion and empathy for what our partners are going through and supporting each other and trying new ways and observing those and seeing what's working and not working.

It really is about teamwork. That would be my takeaway on that one.

Caitlin

It's good advice for any parent, I think.

Steph

Yeah, absolutely.

Alex

Yeah, I think I found that over time you kind of figure out what one parent's good at and what the other parent's good at and you kind of give each other that space to like, okay, this is your moment to deal with this one, and you're good at that.

Caitlin

Yeah.

Alex

I'll come in for the other thing.

Caitlin

Yeah. Even if one's struggling, like, we'll be having a hard time individually with one child and we like tap out. Because when you come in fresh, you actually do a way better job. You're not better at it, but you've got this like calm that you bring to the situation that you couldn't possibly have if you're one hour into helping your child through a meltdown.

Steph

And I think like we forget as well that we are tired. And that impacts our ability to be good parents. I think we all need to give ourselves a bit of grace sometimes as well to be like, you know, I can see that you're really tired.

Can I give you a hand? And sometimes that's hard when you're in the moment 'cause you're like, if you are the one receiving that advice, you're like, well, no, I can do this. I'm fine. But sometimes you do need to just take a step back and be like, no, I'm really tired. Like, I do need some help. And to sort of raise that flag to be like, I actually can't do this. I need to tap out.

Sometimes that's not always possible if you're home alone, or you're a single parent or whatever. But you know, it is important to recognise in yourself, that it's not a failing of yourself to be tired.

Alex

Absolutely.

Steph

Or to be struggling. That's a normal response to the situation that you're in.

Caitlin

Yeah. Yeah. You're just doing your best, aren't you?

Steph

Exactly. Yeah.

Alex

I think I'm going to use your blowing out the candles for myself actually. Not just for the kids, but for the parents as well.

Caitlin

I actually did it with my daughter last night and I blew out some, and it just makes you breathe, which you kind of forget to do when you're heightened, you know, you're in that fight or flight response and your brain's not working effectively and yeah, it does help.

Alex

Yeah.

Caitlin

And who doesn't love a birthday candle?

Let's hear now from Katie, a single parent sharing how she lent on her family when her child was young.

Katie

Having a little baby as a single parent, it was extremely challenging, but I was very, very fortunate that I had a very supportive family.

So, I moved back in with my parents, and was just so grateful to have their support. It's not just having them physically present, but just also being able to duck out for a moment if you need to, or just having that sense of reassurance and support and comfort that you are doing a good job.

And obviously the bond that they've been able to create is very special, or they're very close. Oh my like, God, I'm gonna get upset. It's like happy tears actually. Like yeah, they are very close. And I think, people do say that a lot. Oh, you should be so proud of yourself or whatever, but you just don't as a parent.

I've always said, if you just trust your gut, I think, and go with that gut instinct. I think you'll do pretty well in raising a child.

Caitlin

Beautiful.

Steph

I know. I've got little tears in my eyes.

Caitlin

Me too. So, you do get that sense of wanting to do a good job and second guessing yourself. Yeah. And the fact that Katie clearly cares so much, it just speaks volumes of like, she is doing a good job and sounds like she had a good support network around her when her child was really young.

Steph

Yeah.

Alex

Yeah. I think for single parents, having been one myself that support network is important. More than you realise. I didn't have it. So, my entire family doesn't live in Queensland and I moved up here because that's where my wife's family was from. So, when we were having children, that was our decision to move up here so she could be closer to her family.

Caitlin

Mm-hmm.

Alex

But then separating at that young age for the kids, was a real kind of rupture for me because you had this whole life planned ahead of you. You know, once you have kids, you know, it's like you start imagining them much older. You start imagining the outcomes, what you're going to be like as a parent, and suddenly that was just kind of pulled out from under your feet. And not having that support, not having those family members nearby. I definitely, listening to Katie's story just there, it just hit me just how much that would've been valuable and how much I could have leant on that during that period, rather than feeling like you're making so many mistakes all the time. Which I mean, you feel like as a parent anyway.

Caitlin

Yeah.

Alex

But it's kind of amplified, I think when you are solo. And you've got no one to measure that against and no one to kind of, was that a good reaction? Was that a right decision? Did I give them too much leeway? Was I too harsh? Like you can't sit down and unpack that with somebody when you're on your own.

Caitlin

Yeah. Especially when your kids are 2 and 3, like you said, they’re so little. It is a really tricky time to parent as well.

Alex

It really is. And they're so time consuming, right? Because suddenly, like you said, earlier, before the show, like they're not potatoes anymore. They're kind of, they're moving, they're people.

They've got emotions, they've got needs and wants and they're mobile and they've got energy to burn. And by the end of the day, you, all you wanna do is tuck them up and get them off to sleep. But, yeah. Once they are off to sleep, I just remember that sense of, wow, was today a good day?

Steph

Mm-hmm. Yeah. And that thing that Katie said about the reassurance as well.

I don't know, I sometimes feel like when you're going through these things and everything's new to you, like you almost feel like a child again in some ways 'cause you're like, I have no idea what I'm doing. Who can I look to to tell me that I'm doing a good job?

Because sometimes you are doing a good job on paper, but your child is still having these massive tantrums and you feel like, well, I've done all the things that 'they' said I should do, but I'm not getting the results that I want. That's not your litmus test necessarily, is how your child's reacting to you.

So, it's like you're looking, you are like a child looking for someone to pat you on the back and say, you are doing a good job. Because it's hard. You don't know if you are or not. And sometimes the things that you're doing might not have immediate results. And you can't always see that and you don't know what you're doing.

Alex

And it's not like having a hobby. It’s not like, come back and do it better next time. It's like you get one shot at this generally. I know it's a long road, but you want to do the best you can.

Steph

Mm-hmm. Yeah, absolutely.

Karen, Katie's story is such a good reminder that you don't need to do it all alone.

What stood out to you?

Karen

Yeah, you're so right Steph. I mean, solo parents are handling so much and there's such a genuine potential for overwhelm. So, I agree that it's so important to give yourself as a solo parent the same kindness and compassion that you would give your own children, and fill your own cup.

We really need lots of self-care there for ourselves, because we can't pour from an empty cup. And we use that analogy a lot at work. We want have a full cup, so that we can keep giving. But how do we do that when we're solo parents? And I appreciate, the stresses that might be there.

And it's true, it does take a village to raise a child. And even those micro moments in a day where even if it's a cup of tea or sitting in the sun for a minute just being able to fill your cup in little ways so that we've got more capacity to give.

So, it's really important to not aim for perfection as well. Being good enough is certainly enough.

Alex

Karen, it seems to be a bit of a recurring theme in this episode, in this age group that things just don't quite go smoothly as planned. There's yelling, there's crying, sometimes, not just from the kids. Can you talk about when things fall apart, how do you get them back together? What matters most when things just go completely off the rails?

Karen

Yeah, great question Alex. Before we were talking about having a full cup, and we know that cup's going to get depleted. And often that's exactly the times when, we might lose our cool sometimes. And that's so normal. It's a normal part of life. But it's how we deal with it, that is the important thing.

Because it's ironically that the child is learning that making mistakes is just a part of life and it's how we repair after we make mistakes, like lose our cool, lose our temper. But that actually ironically helps the child feel more secure when we model to them how emotional repair is done.

So, that's done by reconnecting back with the child. But it's also knowing that our cup's empty. We need a bit of time out for ourselves as well to fill that cup up, and take that time that we might need.

But reconnecting with our child is what's really important. Take time with them to cuddle, talk through what happened and reconnect with them.

Alex

So, it's okay to not quite live up to our own expectations and admit that to our kids and talk that through with them.

Karen

Absolutely. And we're also going back to that term that we used before about being good enough. We're not aiming for perfection here. Making mistakes or losing our cool is a part of life.

And then if we can model the behaviour to them about how we reconnect after we make a mistake or we lose our cool is really, really important for our child. And ironically then adds to their level of security, because they get to see that this is a part of life and this is how we do it.

Caitlin

I've seen that really help in my parenting.

Way back when my son was 2, 3-ish, I did the Circle of Security Program and it helped me so much to sort of, understand attachment, but also this concept of rupture and repair. So, you know, I clearly am not a perfect parent and, and I try not to be. I did at the beginning and, and put a lot of pressure on myself, but the program helped me understand it's okay to make mistakes.

So, we, my husband and I, really try and repair with the children when we don't quite get it right and, it can be as simple for us as sitting down. And mummy's really sorry. Mummy shouldn't have yelled. I felt out of control in my feelings. I got really frustrated. It's, you know, not okay to yell.

And how did that make you feel? And I'm really sorry for making you feel that way, and I'm going try and do it differently next time. And having this really beautiful conversation with them that's quite honest and a little bit vulnerable. It's made such a difference, not just for us and our attachment with the children, but their relationship as well.

We've brought it into our parenting. We go, ‘can you please go and repair with your sister? Notice how she's feeling. Look, she's crying. How do you think, she's feeling if she's crying, what could you do to help her feel better?’

And it's really given us that playbook of that relationship and the connection that we have and how to genuinely apologise and genuinely bring it back to this nice place after you've had that rupture and things haven't gone the way that you hoped they would.

Steph

I love that.

And that's something that. It seems really funny to say out loud, but there's a lot of adults that don't know how to do that as well. I don't think that that's something that necessarily comes naturally to everyone. It's something that some of us have learnt over experience of a number of years, but some haven't.

Alex

That's something I learned from the kids, it was very much like, 'oh, this actually seems to work when they see you for the full person, not just this kind of caricature of a parent of what a parent should be', you know?

Steph

Yeah. And you can't keep that up all the time.

Alex

No, it's exhausting. It's exhausting. Exactly.

Steph

And you're around them 24/7. Maybe you can be like that in your professional life or around your friends, but like you're with these little people all the time. You can't be on all the time. We're all going to make mistakes. We have to just learn how to deal with that once we do.

Alex

I found it really helps you let go of things as well. Yeah. Not hold onto that, that feeling, that frustration. Just, it's gone. Okay. We've talked about it. It's gone. Yeah. We've named it.

Steph

Absolutely. And then when we are moving on from that, when we're starting fresh, what are some of the small ways that we can help our toddlers to start to understand and to also manage their emotions from day to day?

Karen

Yeah, that, that's a great question Steph. It really is amazing, too, how in the ordinary day-to-day moments that you share with your child, it really does contribute so much to their understanding about emotions. And, of course, as we've talked about, books and stories are really valuable at this age for helping toddlers learn about emotions.

And it can also help us as parents and caregivers to have some more confidence with that material. And it might open up some extended conversations that you can play with, with the kids to help explore it and really bed down their understanding of those feelings.

Parents can also show a little bit of thinking out loud, by sharing some of the things that they're curious about. You know, saying, ‘oh look, the dog looks so excited to go for a walk.’ Or ‘Dad looks so tired tonight as he is walking in’, or ‘Grandma's so happy to see us.’

We are naming emotions as we're seeing them. But just being there for our children and offering comfort or a warm presence when they're going through big emotions will be what gives them a lot of help along the way. And it shows them that feelings can be shared, not to be afraid of feelings and to suppress and hide them. And through that we are helping them to form the basis of their own emotional regulation and also their self-esteem. So, it's really important stuff.

Caitlin

I feel like emotional literacy is a gift you can give your children as well. I know a lot of adults, including myself, that struggle to work out how we are feeling.

In our family, having a child who's neurodivergent, we've obviously done a ton of work on naming emotions and we've worked with therapists and we've read about 4 million books I would say.

The goal is to reduce meltdowns and help get through those really hard feelings. But in our 4-year-old, we've seen, she's just like latched onto this and couldn't get enough of naming her feelings. She was one, and she'd pipe up – at the top of one, she wasn't a baby, one-year-old – but she'd pipe up and say, ‘I'm in the green zone today, mummy.’ And it's, like, good for you babe.

It was so cute. She's super confident naming her emotions and sharing how she feels. We had this really beautiful moment at the shops the other day, we were buying toys for friends' kids. She was having a pretty hard time with it and getting upset, ‘I want a toy, I want a toy, mummy, I want a toy. Why can't I have a toy?’ on repeat a million times, and she pipes up, ‘I'm feeling jealous, mummy.’

And, it was such a moment because, jealousy is a really hard emotion to name for anyone, I think, especially a 4-year-old. And I sat down on the floor in the shops and we had a good chat about what jealousy was and why she felt jealous.

And we were able to not have a big meltdown in the middle of the shops and worked through it and then kicked on and we bought the presents for the friends. We were able to resolve it. We had a really nice moment, having a yarn about jealousy, and we left the shops and that was the end of it.

You know that seeing that emotional literacy develop in her and my son has been really incredible and it takes a bit of work, but the benefit really pays off.

Alex

I'm just curious how she learned that she was jealous. Like, where did that knowledge come from?

Caitlin

We've read a lot of books and we talk about how jealousy feels like a green monster inside of you. And the green monster has a hard time feeling happy for other people and that other people might have something you don't, and the feeling that you get that might not feel good from that is jealousy.

And then we've also switched around talking about how people might feel jealous of you as well. So, it's a universal feeling and just because someone else might have something you don't, you might have things someone else doesn't as well.

Alex

The capacity to learn just astounds me. Like even from such young age like that emotional literacy. It's like you just got to give them the tools and they can figure out the rest, hey.

Steph

Yeah. And when they go from just absorbing it all, like you definitely see that phase where they're just a sponge and they're just like grabbing everything or like repeating everything you're saying. But then when they turn around and they're like actually using it in the right way, sometimes inappropriately, but the context is spot on and they go from just absorbing to then actually being able to process it and spit it out.

Alex

Karen, thank you so much for being here with us today and having this conversation. And also a big thanks to Katie for sharing her really personal story with us. Before we wrap things up though, what are 3 things that you'd love to leave parents of 2- to 3-year-olds with today?

Karen

Well, we have covered just so much ground today. But I think first of all, remembering that toddlers really are very busy building those brains and learning so much, especially about emotions.

Second, that co-regulating with them and being calm with them in those tricky moments is the key and will help guide their learning. And finally, when mistakes happen, and they will, reconnecting afterwards helps with growing stronger bonds.

Alex

Yeah, that co-regulating, I think, is my big takeaway today. Just really leveling with them about where you are at as a parent, where they're at as a child and building, it's really building that relationship, isn't it, as you go through.

Caitlin

I really loved the really manageable self-care moments that you suggested. You know, self-care doesn't have to be going to a day spa for the whole day. It can be as simple as a warm cup of tea, enjoying the sunshine, taking a small moment for yourself, which is really achievable when you're a busy parent.

What about you, Steph?

Steph

Yeah, I loved just having a moment to chat altogether and take a step out of the day to day. Like you get so caught up when you're going through the motions of things. Labelling those things like the rupture and repair, that really resonated with me.

It’s things that you do, but you don't really, step back and perhaps think about it too much. So, I liked putting a name to it. I think it will frame my mindset going into those tough moments going forward as well. Because, you know, with a toddler, there are a lot of them happening at my house at the moment.

Next episode, we'll be talking about 3 to 4 years, all about their routines, friendships and prepping for kindy.

Until then, be kind to yourself and remember, if no one else has told you today, you're doing an amazing job. Bye!

Last updated: 18 November 2025