Tiny Humans, Big Emotions: How to Navigate Tantrums, Meltdowns, and Defiance to Raise Emotionally Intelligent Children

Tiny Humans, Big Emotions: How to Navigate Tantrums, Meltdowns, and Defiance to Raise Emotionally Intelligent Children is a parenting guide by emotional development experts Alyssa Blask Campbell, M. Ed. and Lauren Stauble, M. S. It presents their Collaborative Emotion Processing (CEP) method for supporting children’s emotional development.

Key details

• Parenting guide focused on toddler behaviour and big feelings
• Written by Alyssa Blask Campbell, M. Ed. and Lauren Stauble, M. S.
• Introduces the authors’ Collaborative Emotion Processing (CEP) method
• Covers situations including tantrums, outbursts and separation anxiety
• Includes scripts for challenging moments such as school refusal and bedtime resistance
• Aimed at caregivers, with particular relevance from infancy to age eight

Synopsis

Positioned within a shift towards conscious parenting, this book encourages caregivers to move away from minimising children’s emotions and towards helping them understand and process feelings. The authors share an approach intended to support emotional intelligence in both children and adults, with guidance for responding with intention during difficult moments.

It addresses a range of stressful scenarios, from tantrums and meltdowns to hitting, punching or biting, and offers practical scripts alongside tips intended to help regulate a child’s nervous system. The guide also focuses on recognising and managing difficult feelings such as anger, sadness, shame and anxiety, while aiming to strengthen the parent-child relationship and lay foundations for emotional resilience and wellbeing.