Emotional Endurance on the Road and in Real Life

On the road, in classrooms, and in conversation, kids show us how to respond to life’s sudden stops - and keep going.

Every summer, I find myself on the road. Camp visits, weekday drives between clients and programs. This rhythm has become part of the season’s pulse. I spend these weeks listening, watching, noticing. I sit with kids in circles under trees and on worn-out couches, walk alongside them during transitions, and visit camps tucked in mountains and nestled by lakes. Every year, I’m reminded of how much wisdom lives in the moments we often rush through.

Recently, on a long morning drive home from a faraway client, I found myself thinking not just about the miles I had logged, but about the emotional terrain I’d been moving through. That day, something terrifying happened. I was in the left lane of the highway, driving at the highway pace, when the car in front of me came to a complete stop. Not slowing - just a sudden stop, out of nowhere, on a road where every other car was still moving at full speed. My car’s sensors reacted instantly, braking hard. I slammed on the brake too, heart pounding, my body tightening before I could even register the danger. The wheels screeched and smoked from the force. As I glanced in the rearview mirror, I saw another car barreling toward me. My hands locked on the wheel. My chest felt like it was holding my breath hostage. There was no time to think—only to swerve. Somehow, through instinct and grace, I moved safely into the next lane.

Once I was steady again, I pulled over to the right lane and kept driving. My hands were trembling. My breath had gone shallow. My arms ached from gripping so hard. I took a long inhale, then another. I exhaled fully. I turned off the music and let silence settle in. A few miles down the road, I called my husband. Then my best friend. I needed to hear familiar voices, to say out loud what almost happened, to feel tethered again. My body had protected me before I even understood what it was protecting me from. The recovery came after.

That moment has stayed with me. Not because I did something extraordinary, but because it reflected how suddenly life can shift. It echoed how quickly we can be asked to respond - not with perfection or calm, but with instinct shaped by practice.

Children experience these moments too. Emotional pileups they never see coming. A friend excluding them from a game. A sudden wave of fear or shame they don’t have words for. A classroom expectation that stretches too far. They don’t always have time to prepare. What they need is the ability to move through it. To know what’s happening inside them is real. To know that someone is staying close.

This is where endurance begins.

In fitness, endurance is the ability to sustain effort over time. To keep running, moving, or pushing forward, even when muscles ache and breath shortens. It’s not about speed. It’s about staying in it.

Emotional endurance is the inner strength that allows us to face painful feelings without collapsing under them. Similarly to physical endurance, it is built over time, through effort, through awareness, and through recovery. It is the capacity to recognize sadness, frustration, fear, or shame… to name it, feel it, and still keep going. To keep going not by pushing it away, but by staying present, breathing through it, remembering that we are not broken because we feel pain. Emotional endurance invites us to trust that we can move through what’s hard, return to ourselves, and emerge - not untouched, but still whole. It is a quiet kind of faith: that we are strong enough to remain open, even in the presence of struggle.

At one camp this summer, I’m asked to support a child described as defiant. He refuses instructions. He talks back. He mutters under his breath, rolls his eyes when corrected, and walks away in the middle of conversations. The staff are worn thin. One afternoon, I find him sitting alone on a bench behind the dining hall. His shoulders are tense. His face is closed off. He kicks at the dirt with the toe of his sneaker, again and again, creating a shallow groove. I sit beside him, offering presence, and inviting him to breathe with me. I don’t ask him to explain. I don’t try to fix.

After a few minutes, without looking at me, he says quietly, “I don’t like that I do this sometimes.” No apology. No excuses. Just a small door cracking open.

That moment matters more than any behavior chart or consequence. It is the beginning of something deeper: a child noticing himself without judgment. A child staying present in his own discomfort long enough to be seen. He doesn’t need to be punished for having a hard time. He needs someone to stay nearby while he figures out how to return, and the tools that help him do so.

I saw it again this summer with a preschooler whose behavior had been labeled as disruptive and destructive. I meet him during a week of camp where nothing seems to stick. He runs out of the room without warning. He climbs into toy containers and covers his arms in paint. He knocks over towers built by other children. He ducks under tables and refuses transitions. His small body moves with urgency that looks wild from the outside.

On the surface, it seems like defiance. Underneath, it is something else entirely—a nervous system that hasn’t found its rhythm, a child with high sensory needs whose body is constantly seeking grounding.

The environment hasn’t changed, but the approach does. We teach him to notice when his body feels too full or too fidgety. We offer language he can use to ask for help, and tools to meet his needs—heavy work, short sensory breaks, a quiet corner where he can sit out without being sent away. His body doesn’t need punishment. It needs safety. He needs permission to regulate rather than perform.

This is why emotional language matters. It gives shape to chaos. So many of the behaviors we rush to fix are children trying to say, something inside me doesn’t feel right, and I don’t know what to do about it.

This isn’t limited to any one type of child or community. I’ve seen it in highly structured religious environments and in secular classrooms. In New York, in Tel Aviv, in Haiti after the earthquake, where children sat in a makeshift school and practiced naming anger, fear, and grief for the first time. The faces change. The nervous systems respond the same.

It reminds me of Paul Ekman’s research, which found that certain emotional expressions—joy, sadness, fear, anger—are universal across cultures. They show up before we learn to speak. Emotional experience is human before it is cultural. The children I meet in one place are, at some deep level, just like the children I meet anywhere else.

In my work with parents and educators, I often say: your role isn’t to eliminate your child’s distress. It’s to stay with them through it. Listen for what lives underneath the behavior. Offer structure, language, and trust. Perfection isn’t the goal. Presence is.

We teach emotional endurance in small, steady ways. Through bedtime check-ins. Through pausing before we react. Through modeling how we talk about our own hard moments. Through staying close when things feel messy. Regulation doesn’t begin with correction, It begins with relationship.

This summer has reminded me again: resilience doesn’t always look strong. Sometimes it looks like trembling and trying anyway. Sometimes it looks like a child returning to the group after storming away. Sometimes it looks like swerving just in time.

When we witness those moments - and name them - we help build something lasting. We help build emotional endurance. Something they can carry, even when the road gets hard.

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Building Emotional Endurance: What We Can Do

Emotional endurance doesn’t happen all at once. It is something we grow through practice, presence, and the permission to struggle without being abandoned. Here are a few ways to help children begin:

• Help kids name their feelings. Use clear, accessible language to connect behavior with emotion: “It looks like you’re frustrated,” or “That felt hard, didn’t it?” Anchor it in the body. Say what you see: “Your shoulders are scrunched up.” “Your hands are tight.” “Your eyebrows are doing that thing they do when you’re upset.” Help them connect sensation to feeling, so they learn to recognize what emotion feels like inside their body.

• Calm the nervous system before correcting behavior. Children can’t reflect until they feel safe. Begin by soothing, not speaking. Breathe slowly together. Count backward from five. Offer stillness or gentle movement. Sit nearby with quiet presence. Wait until their body is ready before trying to teach or guide.

• Teach body awareness by naming what you see. Say what their body is doing: “Your hands are jittery.” “Your feet are tapping fast.” “You keep rubbing your arms.” Invite curiosity: “Is your body telling you it needs something right now?” or “What would help your hands feel calmer?” This helps them build a map of their internal world.

• Offer tools, not shame—and explain their purpose. Sensory strategies and calming practices only work when children understand why they’re using them. Say, “This is here to help your body feel safe.” “This is something we can try when things feel too loud or too big.” Make the plan predictable and collaborative. The more a child understands the “why,” the more empowered they’ll feel using the “what.”

• Model your own recovery. Let children see that even adults get overwhelmed—and come back from it. Say, “I felt stressed earlier, so I took some deep breaths,” or “I went for a walk to help myself reset.” Show that regulation is a process, not perfection.

• Stay. Your calm presence is the most powerful tool you have. When you stay close—without judgment or rush—you show a child that their hardest moment is not too much for you. That’s how trust is built. That’s where emotional endurance begins.