Intermountain Children’s Health’s “Talk to Tweens” is a free, emotional wellbeing toolkit for parents available at TalkToTweens.org.

(PRUnderground) February 10th, 2026

Pre-teen emotional well-being starts with spending time with them, talking to them – and encouraging them to talk to you. But how do you begin?

Intermountain Children’s Health’s “Talk to Tweens” is a free, emotional wellbeing toolkit for parents available at TalkToTweens.org. It has conversation-starters, ways to identify and talk with kids about their feelings, and help kids manage challenging emotions and situations.

“As a parent, you help your children learn skills to walk, talk, eat, and learn,” said Karlee Kump, community health programs manager at Intermountain Primary Children’s Hospital. “As they grow into tweens, they need new skills to navigate feelings and emotions – and you’re the best person to help.”

Rates of youth reporting that they feel persistently sad and hopeless has increased by more than 40 percent over the past 15 years. The good news is, they also want trusted, informed help, and are most likely to seek it from a parent. Here are some ways you can help them:

Emotional Health: Talk About Feelings

Emotional health is the ability to express feelings, adjust to emotional challenges, tolerate frustration, cope with life stressors, and enjoy life. Here’s how you can instill emotional health:

1. Identify Feelings: Feelings are information. What are they telling you about the situations and people around you? Expand your feelings vocabulary. Name your feelings and help tweens name theirs. Try saying, “I feel ____(emotion) because ____(situation), so I will do ____ or need ___.”
2. Accept: All feelings are valuable, and they all come and go. Sit with your child when they experience unpleasant feelings. Empathize with how they feel. “I’m sorry you feel ___” or “That sounds really hard.” Give them time and space to share with you.
3. Validate: Acknowledge your child’s experience without judgment. Help them plan how to handle intense feelings by identifying the feeling and healthy ways to manage it (breathing, movement, talking, journaling, enjoyable activity), and by asking for help when needed.

“We can also help our tweens build resilience by encouraging appropriate emotional risks, such as joining a club or trying out for a team, sharing disagreement about something, or speaking up about something important to them,” Kump said.

Social Health: Connect with Your Tween and Help them Connect with You and Others

Social health is having healthy relationships with friends, family, and the community, and having an interest in or concern for others. Here are some starters:

1. Connect: Family time is important, even as peers become more important to your tween. Talk about characteristics of healthy relationships such as mutual respect, trust, honesty, compromise, and healthy communication. Identify unhealthy relationships and characteristics like disrespect, control, and manipulation.
2. Interact: Interacting effectively with other people requires skills and practice. Encourage face-to-face interaction to help them learn to “read” people. Coach active, in-person listening skills, such as making appropriate eye contact and putting down devices, and learning how to politely disagree. As relationships come and go, help them practice managing emotions, resolving conflict, and recognizing their boundaries and strengths.
3. Guide Online Activity: Monitor your tweens’ social media accounts and talk about the interactions that happen. Being aware of what your tween is doing online can help you start conversations and build skills.

Conversation Tips

If you feel like your tween won’t give you more than a one-word answer, try this:

• Use open-ended questions.
• Be patient and comfortable with silence.
• Time your conversation when they’re relaxed, like mealtime, during an activity, or in the car.
• Start questions with “tell me” or “describe” instead of “how.”
• Use humor when appropriate.
• Be supportive and remind them that disappointment is normal and OK.

“The more you talk with your tween about feelings and relationships, the easier it gets,” Kump said. “You can also start with your child’s experiences, hobbies, movies or music they like to begin the conversation.”

For more information on emotional wellbeing and other ways to keep children safe, visit intermountainhealth.org/childsafety.

About Intermountain Health

Headquartered in Utah with locations in six states and additional operations across the western U.S., Intermountain Health is a nonprofit system of 34 hospitals, approximately 400 clinics, medical groups with some 4,600 employed physicians and advanced care providers, a nonprofit health plan called Select Health with more than one million members, and other health services. Helping people live the healthiest lives possible, Intermountain is committed to improving community health and is widely recognized as a leader in transforming healthcare by using evidence-based best practices to consistently deliver high-quality outcomes at sustainable costs. For up-to-date information and announcements, please see the Intermountain Health newsroom at https://news.intermountainhealth.org/. For more information, see intermountainhealth.org/ or call 801-442-2000.

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