Why do children sometimes seem to overreact? Neuroscience suggests emotions may come less from what happened and more from the gap between expectations and reality. Learn how parents can help kids build emotional resilience.

Recently, while working with several immigrant families, a few conversations have stayed with me. On the surface, we talked about their children’s academic performance, independence, sense of responsibility, parent–child conflicts—even questions like, “Why aren’t our children working as hard as we did?” But as we explored these concerns more deeply, I began to hear a more profound question beneath them: When we spend our entire lives building a world for our children that is