What’s Really Going On: Emotional “Discharger” vs. Emotional “Sponging”
When one child lashes out emotionally — yelling, blaming, melting down — they are discharging their internal distress outward. This might look like:
- “You’re so annoying!”
- “You ruined everything!”
- Shouting, stomping, or blaming others.
And when the other child absorbs it — crying, withdrawing, shutting down, or trying to fix it — they are becoming an emotional sponge, internalizing the other child’s big feelings.
💡 Core concept:
“When your child lashes out, they’re not processing their feelings — they’re projecting them. And when your other child absorbs it, they aren’t solving the problem — they’re carrying emotions that don’t belong to them.”
🧠 Emotional Development Behind the Behavior
Children don’t come wired with emotional regulation skills — these are taught and practiced over time.
- The “discharger” hasn’t yet learned to sit with big feelings or name them safely. This causes them to feel uncomfortable, like they want to crawl out of their skin and run away from feelings. Releasing and projecting their feelings gives temporary relief as the other person then reacts, distracting them from the original emotions. Now they have someone else’s tears or anger to focus their attention on.
- The “sponge” often called the peacekeeper, empath, or sensitive child has not learned boundaries around what feelings are theirs to hold and what feelings belong to others. They absorb the feelings of the other person often to reduce the tension or to increase safety within the environment so that the other person does not get in trouble.
🛠️ Coaching Tips for Parents: Supporting Both Children
👧 Coaching the “Discharger”
Goal: Help them understand their emotions and learn to regulate instead of project. This is part of Emotional Development and sometimes the little person needs some coaching and guidance to figure it all out.
- Emotional Awareness – a process of getting curious with your kids
- This starts with learning the language of emotions.
- Beginning with a few concrete short words such as sad, mad, happy and expanding to a more extensive vocabulary that defines the emotions better.
- You look mad/sad/happy
- Wow, that is a big emotion, how are you feeling?
- Beginning with a few concrete short words such as sad, mad, happy and expanding to a more extensive vocabulary that defines the emotions better.
- As you build the vocabulary you also help them understand the nuances between emotions, such as anger and frustration.
- This is also a time when you can start identifying the triggers that helped create the emotion. Reflecting on the experience
- You really got mad when someone took your toy
- You look happy that you have an icecream cone
- This starts with learning the language of emotions.
- Emotional Processing – this is the time for co-regulation where you sit quietly and confidently beside the person observing them having an experience.
- You are the observer and not a participant. What that means is that you offer safety and security while allowing the person to experience the emotions.
- Safety – I will keep you safe by providing boundaries on your emotional expression.
- I will keep myself safe by staying regulated so that one of us is logical and in control.
- Safety – I will keep you safe by providing boundaries on your emotional expression.
- You can guide the person through compassion, caring, and understanding – not feeling, joining in, or reacting.
- Things to say:
- It sounds like you are experiencing a lot of unhappiness
- You are certainly mad and I hear that
- Please try your best to keep your nervous system as regulated and calm as this will provide an energy/frequency to regulate to. Either they come down to meet you or you go up to meet them – the second can sometimes lead to disaster.
- You are the observer and not a participant. What that means is that you offer safety and security while allowing the person to experience the emotions.
- Allow for emotional expression by teaching alternative and safe releasing of emotions. Choices of behaviour may be difficult in the moment and that is where you can establish safe boundaries for everyone. “
It’s okay to be angry, it’s not okay to hurt someone else”
✔️ What to Say:
- “It’s okay to feel angry, but it’s not okay to throw that anger at someone else.”
- “You’re having a big feeling right now. Let’s figure out what it’s about.”
- “Your feelings are yours — and you are strong enough to feel them without hurting someone.”
🧩 Practices:
- Emotion labeling: “I’m feeling frustrated because I wanted more time.”
- Use a calm corner or feeling journal for safe expression.
- Teach the STOP-Name-Feel-Choose model:
- Stop before reacting.
- Name the emotion.
- Feel it in the body.
- Choose what to do next.
- Stop before reacting.
👦 Coaching the “Absorber” (The Sponge)
Goal: Help them set boundaries, separate their own emotions from others’, and build resilience.
This stage of emotional development shifts the focus toward others — helping children build awareness of other people’s feelings and emotional expressions. While it mirrors the steps they use to recognize their own emotions, this process is external and more visual in nature.
To avoid overwhelming the child, especially those who tend to absorb others’ emotions, it can be helpful to start with faces in books or story characters rather than real-life interactions. This approach builds empathy in a manageable, safe way.
For example:
- “This person looks angry because their eyes are narrowed and their lips are pursed.”
- “This person looks happy because they’re smiling.”
This is also an ideal time to introduce a key emotional boundary:
“You can notice and care about how someone feels, but you are not responsible for their emotions.”
It’s a delicate balance. We want children to understand they can impact others, but also to know they are not accountable for others’ emotional states — especially if they tend to be the “absorber” type. For those children, the central message becomes:
“You are not responsible for making everyone else feel okay.”
✔️ What to Say:
- “It’s kind to care how someone feels, but their feelings are not your job to fix.”
- “When someone’s upset, you can notice it — but you don’t need to hold it inside you.”
- “You’re allowed to feel calm even if someone else is having a hard time.”
- “Their emotions are about them, not about you.”
🧩 Practices:
1. Name What You Feel — Not What Others Feel
Purpose: Helps them stay grounded in their own experience.
- Ask: “What are you feeling right now?”
- Use sentence stems:
- “I feel ___ when someone else is upset.”
- “I want to help, but I know it’s not my job to fix it.”
- “I feel ___ when someone else is upset.”
2. Create an “Emotional Bubble” or “Raincoat” Visualization
Purpose: Gives them a playful and safe mental image for separating their feelings from others’.
- Teach them to imagine a bubble or a raincoat that keeps others’ feelings from soaking in.
- Say: “You can care about how they feel from inside your bubble.”
📖 3. Use Storybooks or Pictures to Practice Emotional Observation
Purpose: Builds empathy and recognition skills without emotional entanglement.
- Look at a face or scene and ask:
- “How do you think they feel?”
- “What do you notice about their face or body?”
- “Can you feel with them, without taking it on?”
- “How do you think they feel?”
🗣️ 4. Practice Saying “That’s Not Mine to Carry”
Purpose: Helps set emotional boundaries in real-life situations.
- Role-play scenarios where a sibling or friend is upset.
- Teach them to say calmly:
- “That looks like a big feeling. I care, but that’s not mine to fix.”
- “I’m here if you want to talk, but I’m not going to take this on.”
- “That looks like a big feeling. I care, but that’s not mine to fix.”
✍️ 5. Feelings Journal or “Me & You” Page
Purpose: Helps distinguish between their feelings and someone else’s.
- Draw a line down a page:
- Left side: “My Feelings”
- Right side: “Their Feelings”
- Left side: “My Feelings”
- After a conflict or emotional moment, help the child sort what was theirs and what belonged to the other person.
👪 Family Coaching Approach: Teach the Whole Household
Encourage parents to normalize emotional coaching as a shared learning journey:
- Use phrases like:
- “In our family, we’re learning to name and own our feelings.”
- “Feelings are messengers — we don’t dump them on others.”
- “Everyone is allowed to feel, but everyone is also responsible for what they do with their feelings.”
- “In our family, we’re learning to name and own our feelings.”
- Create a shared emotional vocabulary wall or feeling chart.
- Do weekly “check-ins” where each child gets to express, reflect, and repair if needed.
🎯 Final Note for Parents
“When one child discharges emotion and the other absorbs it, neither is emotionally regulated. One is externalizing, and the other is internalizing. Emotional regulation means learning to hold your own feelings without passing them on to someone else.”
Helping kids build these skills early is a gift they’ll carry through every relationship they’ll ever have — including with themselves.
