How to Stay Calm When Your Kids Have Big Emotions
Welcome to the Joyful Mom Podcast!
In this episode of the Joyful Mom Podcast, Megan opens up about the real-life challenges of recording while raising kids—especially when big emotions are running high in the home. She shares honestly about being in the thick of a tough phase with one of her children and reflects on the reality that parenting often comes in waves, with each child needing different levels of emotional energy and support at different times.
Instead of focusing on how to calm your child, Megan shifts the conversation to something even more powerful: learning how to regulate yourself first. She explains how your own stress, anxiety, and mental overwhelm directly affect your capacity to handle your children’s big emotions. When your brain is already full—worrying, spinning, or overstimulated—it becomes much harder to stay grounded. She talks about the importance of clearing stress from your mind, not your life, so you have the emotional bandwidth to respond thoughtfully instead of reacting from overwhelm.
Megan also offers simple, actionable tools for staying calm in the moment—like box breathing, grounding techniques, stepping away to reset, and her favorite “inhale… exhale… release” practice. She closes with a compassionate reminder that if you're listening, you’re a good mom who’s trying, learning, and doing the work. You’re not alone in the hard moments, and it’s absolutely possible to become the calm, grounded adult your child needs—even in the chaos.
If you want to learn more about how you can clear anxiety more automatically by rewiring how the mind is working and processing things, go to my website www.meganhillukka.com where you can click on a link to register for my free training, where I will show you what you need in order to do this.
