What to Say When Your Child Has a Bad Day: How to Listen So Your Child Will Talk
If you’ve ever found yourself scrambling for the right thing to say when your child walks in the door after school with a furrowed brow, a teary story, or just a quiet “It was a bad day…,” this post is for you.
As a parent, I know those moments can make us freeze. We want to help, fix, guide—but often, what our kids need first is to be heard. In this episode and blog post, I’m walking you through exactly how to show up in those tough after-school moments using positive ways to talk to your child, and why our response can shape their emotional development for years to come.
Why This Podcast Exists
You want to be the best parent you can be. So you read books, follow Instagram experts, scroll TikTok for toddler hacks—and still end up confused. You’re not alone. One of the reasons I started Educated Parent was because I kept seeing high-achieving, thoughtful, loving parents feel like they were failing.
Not because they weren’t trying, but because they didn’t know who to trust.
I created this show to give you real, expert-backed parenting tips for parents who care deeply but don’t have time to decode conflicting advice. Every week, I share tools and insights from both my clinical practice and my own kitchen table—and I promise it’s all rooted in science, not social trends.
Let’s Talk About Hard Days
When your child has a meltdown after school or spirals into a tangled story about how their teacher was unfair or a friend hurt their feelings, the goal isn’t to jump in with a fix. The goal is connection.
So let’s talk about some positive ways to talk to your child in the heat of the moment—when they’re upset, disorganized, and maybe not making much sense. Holding space without interrupting matters, and staying calm helps your child regulate.
This is one of the most powerful ways to learn how to help a child with big emotions. Because when our kids feel safe opening up—when they know we won’t rush, correct, or dismiss them—they start turning to us more often. That builds the kind of long-term trust every parent wants.
The 4-Step Framework: How to Listen So Your Child Will Talk
Here is the exact 4-step strategy I use with my clients—and in my own home—for how to listen so your child will talk:
Don’t interrupt, even when the story is messy or confusing.
Summarize what you heard to make your child feel truly understood.
Ask permission before asking questions, so it doesn’t feel like interrogation.
Save the advice until your child signals they want it—and if they don’t, stay present anyway.
This isn’t just a script. It’s a mindset shift—one that builds emotional safety and lets your child know they can come to you with anything.
Why It Matters
These small shifts in language and presence may feel subtle, but they’re incredibly impactful. They teach your child how to trust their emotions, how to trust you, and how to manage stress without shutting down. This is how to help a child with big emotions in a way that supports long-term resilience.
And remember: it’s okay if you don’t do it perfectly. I certainly don’t. What matters is that we keep practicing.
You’re Not Alone
If you’re looking for parenting tips for parents that are grounded in psychology, not just trending online—you’re in the right place. Whether you’re a mom in the carpool line or a dad wrapping up meetings before bedtime, these moments matter. And you deserve support that’s practical, real, and actually helpful.
Ready to get better at how to listen so your child will talk? Want to learn more positive ways to talk to your child during everyday moments that shape their emotional world?
This episode was made for you.
Listen to the full episode here and hit follow so you never miss a moment of support, insight, and expert-backed parenting help.
Because the best parenting doesn’t mean doing it perfectly. It means doing it with intention, connection, and confidence.
You’ve got this.
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Leah Clionsky 00:00:03 My name is Doctor Leah Clionsky and I'm a licensed clinical psychologist. Owner of thriving child center and asset experts, child psychology practices, and a real life parent of two young children. I am the same as you. I am invested in being the best parent possible and raising thriving children. I also get overwhelmed. I make mistakes and I forget what works. I do have three unique parenting advantages that you may not have a PhD in child Clinical psychology. Over 15 years of clinical experience working with families and a network of other experts that I can text for parenting advice whenever I'm lost. I'm here to bring my expertise and my expert network to you, so that we can solve your everyday parenting dilemmas together. I am so glad you're here. Hello, my name is Doctor Leah Clionsky and I am the host of Educated parent and I'm very, very excited to be here today. I've been having this dream of having this parenting podcast for literally years, so I am so, so excited to get started. So let me tell you what we're going to talk about today.
Leah Clionsky 00:01:14 The first thing I'm going to do is introduce myself in more detail. This is the podcast called Educated Parent. I need to tell you more than I normally would about my education, and also more of them than I normally would about my parenting. So you get to see both sides of me. The second thing I'm going to do is tell you what to expect from this podcast, why this podcast exists. My goals for this podcast, why it's here, and what you can expect when you listen. And then the third thing, my favorite thing I'm going to do today is I'm going to give you some specific advice to solve everyday problems. And the advice I'm going to give you is about how to have a conversation with your child when they come home from school and they tell you that something happened that upset them. This happens all the time and often in the moment. Parents are not happy with how they handle those conversations. So I'm going to tell you how I think you can have those conversations in a way that's extremely effective.
Leah Clionsky 00:02:18 So that is mostly going to be with the podcast will be about moving forward from this introduction. Okay. But first you have to know who I am. So my name is Doctor Leah Clionsky and I am a licensed psychologist with a specialty in child psychology. So I've been a child psychologist for a long time. Now, one thing that often confuses people when they hear about psychologists is that they're not sure what's the difference between a psychiatrist? A psychologist, a therapist. How are we different from each other? Which one of those things am I? Well, let me tell you. Okay. So a psychiatrist is a medical doctor. So this is someone who has gone to medical school, Earned an MD. And this is someone who may do therapy, but is usually going to be someone who's going to prescribe medication is something that they do well. So if I'm working with you or a therapist is working with you, and they realize that you need some medication to help you out or to help your child out, we can't prescribe that.
Leah Clionsky 00:03:17 We don't prescribe that. We're going to send that on to a psychiatry colleague that we trust. A psychologist is somebody who has earned a PhD in the field of therapy and research. So in my case, my PhD is in clinical psychology, and I earned it at the University of Florida. And in order to earn a PhD, you have to go to school for a long, long time. I often joke with my daughter. She's like, how much longer do I have to do homework? And I'm like, oh my goodness, you're only in kindergarten. I can't even tell you how many years I've had to do homework. So after I earned my college degree at Vassar College, I immediately went on and started at University of Florida, and you earn your master's degree on the way to earning your PhD in that program. So I was in school for four years. Sometimes people are in school for six years at that point. So I was in the University of Florida for four years. And when I went right when I started, I joined the child study lab doing a treatment called Parent Child Interaction Therapy, which you'll hear me talk more about in the podcast because I'm in love with it.
Leah Clionsky 00:04:26 Basically, I was learning right from the beginning, how do we help kids who are struggling with big feelings and acting out behaviors? And really, how do we teach their parents how to connect with them and set limits with them in a way that's healthy, in a way that's going to promote a strong relationship and generalize into better behavior outside of that relationship. So starting in 2007, right away, that's where I was doing research in parent child interaction therapy and then single and working with lots of families. So all through that four years, I was doing work with families and children and adolescents. And then when you finish with that, you go on internship, which is a lot like a residency match for medical. So that's how I ended up in Houston at Baylor College of Medicine, doing my internship. Then you get your PhD after you defend your dissertation, and then you have to do an entire additional year of supervised therapy and assessment before you can become an actual licensed psychologist. So I've been working with families since 2007.
Leah Clionsky 00:05:30 I was licensed in 2013. I worked at Baylor for a couple of years and then moved out into my own practice, Thriving Child Center. So I own a child psychology practice called Thriving Child Center. There are 16 of us total across both of my clinics. We work with children who are struggling with challenging behaviors. We work with children who are anxious, children who are depressed, children who have an ADHD or autism diagnosis, and we're helping them, or we're helping their parents help them. We do forensic work, which means we go to court, we do custody evaluations, and we do assessment for ADHD, autism and learning disability. So we're helping many kids and families kind of across the spectrum of needs. And then we have a specialty clinic called PCI experts. And in that clinic all we do is parent child interaction therapy. And we do it virtually in 43 states. So we are working with families all of the time and I absolutely love it. So that is my education. That is my clinical background.
Leah Clionsky 00:06:35 Now, one thing I will tell you is that even though I am an extremely educated parent, I am definitely not a perfect parent. So I think that's important to know. Right. And it's also important to know why that's not possible. And one of the reasons why it is not possible for me to be a perfect parent and to not necessarily do all of the things that I tell other people they should do is because I'm a human being with emotions, right? Like I have feelings. So in a professional context, if I am watching a tantrum or I am watching your child say something rude to you, I'm not feeling angry with that child. Right? I have emotional distance. This is what I do all day. I have my professional child psychologist hat on so I'm able to sit there. I'm able to watch and recognize that it's all developmentally appropriate and then be there, explain that to you and help you figure out how to react. But at home, I have a three and a five year old, so I'm in the trenches.
Leah Clionsky 00:07:37 And when one of my kids directs that anger at me, I don't have the emotional distance anymore. Right? I have a reaction. I'm a human being with a human reaction. And so sometimes I react in ways that I would not recommend. My best parenting actually happens when I'm able to remember the clinical part and bring it in in the moment. But I don't know any single person in the world who is a perfect parent. And, you know, in those moments when you do something and you're like, oh, I wish I hadn't reacted that way. I wish I'd handled that completely differently. I just want you to understand that there is no amount of education that will make that not happen, right? They will guarantee that you will be perfect. And so you should give yourself a lot of self-compassion, because every single child psychologist child therapist I know makes parenting mistakes that they regret sometimes. So it's good to know that so that you can give yourself that kind of grace. So now that we're talking about the parenting aspect, about me as a human, I do have an advantage when I'm parenting that a lot of other people don't have.
Leah Clionsky 00:08:49 So one of the advantages that I get to have is that when I am stuck as a parent, I am not alone because I have access to an entire network of educated parents. Why? Because when you become a child psychologist, you make friends with lots of other child psychologists and other people who are working with kids. Right. So if I'm struggling in my phone, I can go in. I can text a group chat of child psychologists, I can text child psychiatrists, I can text child occupational therapists, I can text child pediatricians, I can just text people that I need when I am struggling. And that is an advantage to have an expert network. So one thing that I'm really excited about in this podcast is that I want you to have access to those same people. So I'm going to be bringing in people from my expert network to help you and to help me, because I don't know everything. Do I know why children get the zoomies at night and run around right at bath time? No, I do not.
Leah Clionsky 00:09:52 Does my friend Emma, who's an occupational therapist. Know why and what to do about it? Yes she does. So guess who's going to come on the podcast and tell us all what to do? So I plan on being educated myself by this podcast and that makes me incredibly excited. So I did mention that I've been wanting to start this podcast for a while, and that I wanted to tell you why I decided to start the podcast, and the reason why. It seems very important for me for you to get advice to help you solve everyday parenting problems from educated parents, is that the parents that I work with are extremely stressed out, right? And I think that's true. Across the board. Parents feel really, really overwhelmed in the past. In the past, parents often felt like they knew how to parent, but in general. But they were coming in and they didn't know how to parent this child, this child with ADHD diagnosis, or this child with a strong willed personality or this child with anxiety.
Leah Clionsky 00:10:52 They didn't know how to parent that child. Because of all of the things going on. But what I have noticed in the past five years or so is that the parents who come in feel that they do not know how to parent anyone at all. Like they walk in and they're like, I don't know how to be a parent. And that leads to a lot of distress. And I think that the reason why everyone is feeling so confused and guilty and overwhelmed is that we have the internet and social media and much too much information at our disposal, and we don't know what to do with it. It's sort of reminds me of when you decide you want to eat healthy, and then you ask the internet what healthy eating is. And the answers are so overwhelming and confusing. So one person says plant based diet that's healthy eating. Go vegan. And then another person says, no, go carnivore. That's actually what you should be eating. Forget all of those things Carnivore is going to make you healthy.
Leah Clionsky 00:11:55 And then someone else says, no, it's the Mediterranean diet. And then someone else talks about the keto diet. And then someone says, just trust your gut and eat whatever you want within moderation. And then someone else says that they should only be eating, you know, juice cleanses. And then like by the end of this, you sit down to eat. You don't even know what to eat, and you don't know who to trust, and you feel guilty for not knowing. And then you also feel guilty for whatever you pick because you remember the other person who told you that you should have done something else. So this, I think, is what happens with parenting. You know, we go on, we trying to solve this dilemma. Our friends don't know how to solve the dilemma. We're afraid that we're going to traumatize our kids because we've been told that we were traumatized. And so we have to not ask our parents because that would be too challenging. So we can't trust our parents.
Leah Clionsky 00:12:44 We can't trust our friends because they're stuck. So then we go to the influencers and they tell us all these contradictory things, and here we are feeling panicked and overwhelmed and lost and guilty. That is horrible. That is a terrible situation to be in. And so my goal is to give you information that you can trust to solve your everyday parenting problems. Let's give you some information from actual experts. That's not all contradictory. Will the information that I provide in this podcast sometimes contradict things you read on the internet? Absolutely. Write some stuff on the internet I really don't agree with. So I'm going to tell you my opinion, and my guests will tell you their opinion about things that we feel are really effective based upon our long experience working with families and sometimes our personal experience as parents who are trying to implement some of those things at home. But you deserve advice that you can trust, and you deserve to have actual practical solutions to your problems that do not come from some combination of influencer and ChatGPT.
Leah Clionsky 00:13:54 And my commitment to you is that every week when you join this podcast, you're going to hear from real people who also have real expertise about how to solve a real problem that you will probably have, because these are common parenting dilemmas that we're going to be talking about on the podcast. So with that, let me jump in to our current parenting dilemma. All right. So here it is. This happens to me regularly. So your child comes home from school and they start just telling you that they had a bad day. And then they start describing an incident from their day. So I'm going to make up an example. Okay. So let's say your child comes home from school and they say to you mom or dad, like, I had a really bad day. The teacher doesn't understand me. And it was all Jeremy Ah's fault. And then it was in math class and I'm so mad. And you're just like, sitting there and being like, oh no, my child is distressed. Something happened to them.
Leah Clionsky 00:14:59 And the way that they're telling you, the story is also not linear. So you're sitting there listening to them tell you this story and it doesn't make sense, and you're feeling anxious and you're wondering how you're going to help them. Can you relate to this situation? This is a common situation that is definitely going to happen. So let me tell you what you do when your child comes home and says all of this to you. The first thing that you are going to want to do is probably to interrupt. You're going to want to jump in because the story doesn't make sense, and you have questions and you want them to be answered. So they say, I have a really bad day and my teacher doesn't understand me. And there you are. You're involved. What teacher was it? What happened? Why don't they understand you? You're just like in there. Like I will solve your problem quickly. Common urge. Completely understandable, is something that I want to do as well. But the problem is, if you interrupt right in that moment, you have now, like, completely set your child off in a different direction.
Leah Clionsky 00:16:09 They didn't get a chance to feel heard, which is really important. One of the core important parts of all relationships, all good relationships, is that everybody feels that they were heard. So even though you are sitting there not understanding the exact story because your child is telling you from their child brain, which is like, if you can't see me, my fingers just went all over the place. Right. It's non-linear. So they're telling you this non-linear story. It's understandable that you were confused, but if you jump in, you're just going to throw off their whole flow. So they're going to, you know, not remember where they are in the story. And they're also going to feel that you are not listening to them, and that's because you are not listening to them if you are interrupting. So the first thing you are going to do, even though it may be hard, is you are going to commit to yourself that you will not interrupt what they say until they get to the end. Even if it takes a while and even if you don't completely understand.
Leah Clionsky 00:17:12 Also, you know, because it's tempting to have your phone put your phone down, just make sure you are completely focused. So stop what you're doing. Listen to their story until the end, but really listen and see if you can kind of get a sense of what's going on based upon what you're saying. You know, I have a lot of conversations with kids in therapy that sounds sort of like this. They tell me about something that happened, and in my mind, I imagine I'm putting together this puzzle. I don't really know how the pieces fit. Sometimes they give me no context to begin with. So I'm like sitting there just trying to understand what is happening based on that information. Okay, so you have the first step. You are not going to interrupt. The second thing that you are going to do is after you listen, you are going to summarize what you think that they are saying. Now here's the beauty of summarizing. When you are summarizing the things you think that they are saying, they will correct you if you are wrong.
Leah Clionsky 00:18:11 So this is how I usually present this to kids. The thing that you are saying is very important to me. I know this story is very important. I want to make sure that I actually really understand. So I'm going to tell it back to you, and I want you to tell me the stuff I didn't get right. So it puts me as the one who might get it wrong, not them as the one who didn't explain clearly. And that makes them way more open to that process. So then I'm saying, all right, something happened at school and it happened with Jeremy. And they're like, oh no, it's Jeremy H. I'm like, oh, Jeremy H. It happened with Jeremy H. And your teacher got upset. Yeah, she was upset because she thought Jeremy H and I were cheating, but actually, Jeremy H was just talking to me. Oh, so you were just sitting there and Jeremy H just started talking to you? Well, I did ask him a question first.
Leah Clionsky 00:19:02 So, like, you were able to just get in and just kind of follow their thought process, but clarify everything that is going on, which is extremely helpful. All right. So you're going to commit to not interrupting. The second thing you're going to do is try to connect by retelling them their story, retelling it until you get the details. Stay patient. The third part is when you're allowed to ask questions. Why can't you ask questions earlier? Great question. This is why often when we ask children questions, we are being critical. We are criticizing them. Think about it. Did you make a good choice or a bad choice? That's a critical statement. Why did you do that? Do we ever say that when they did something good? Was it Wasn't really his fault. See how all of these questions are critical? If you really think about them. And what that means is that your child is very, very sensitive to being asked critical questions, they are primed. So even if you ask a question that is like you have the best intentions in the entire world, they may perceive you as being critical.
Leah Clionsky 00:20:09 So that's why you save your questions until you have listened to them, gotten as much information as you can without the questions, and then you can say to them, I've listened to everything you've said to me. I still do have a couple follow up questions so that I really understand. Is that okay? They say, okay, now you can ask your questions, you know, did you explain to the teacher what really happened? Has this happened before? Right. Then you get to ask your clarifying questions. So between all of those things, you're able to get a really clear picture of what's going on. And then whether or not you have to do anything about it. You know, the fourth thing, because there are four things here, is you're not going to jump in with advice giving. You know, you may say to them, what do you think we should do about this problem? Or do you want to me to listen more and talk about your feelings, or do you want some suggestions about what we can do about it? You know, the real goal of this conversation, just so you know, is actually not as much about solving this problem, but about teaching your child that when they come to you, you know how to listen to them and you care about them, and you respect the things they say.
Leah Clionsky 00:21:25 And if you have that kind of communication with a child or a teenager, when things are rough, when they run into a bad, a real bad situation, they'll trust you, they'll come to you, they'll tell you, and that's what you want. That is a good relationship with a kid. They trust you. They trust you to respond in a caring, compassionate way. And now you've also taught them how to listen respectfully to other people. So go home. Give it a try. Do I always do this perfectly? No I don't. Let me tell you though, when I remember right, when I put that clinical hat on my head and I remember to use these strategies, I have much better conversations with my kids, even my little kid, even my three year old. I'll have a much better conversation with him if I do a version of this, than if I just jump in with too many questions. Well, I am really excited that you're here. I'm really excited that you joined me today.
Leah Clionsky 00:22:21 You know, I'm hope that you're able to come again. If you feel like this is helpful to you, if you're excited about this podcast, please tell your friends, please write a review. Please connect with me on Instagram @educatedparentpodcast. Please connect with me. And I'm just excited to continue to support you and to bring on some really awesome guests, and I hope you have an absolutely fantastic day. Thanks again for spending time with me on Educated Parent. If this episode helped you feel more confident in handling those parenting curveballs, hit follow so you never miss an episode. Know a parent who stuck in the endless cycle of conflicting advice? Send this their way because we all deserve parenting strategies we can actually trust. And hey, if you have a minute, leave a review. Your support helps other parents find real, expert backed solutions instead of just another opinion online. One last quick reminder. This podcast offers general advice, but every family is different. The advice offered in this podcast is not medical advice and is not appropriate for every family.
Leah Clionsky 00:23:30 If you need personalized parenting support, connect with an experienced clinician at thriving child center or picket experts. That's it for today. Thanks for listening and I'll talk to you next time.