How to Explain Embarrassment to a 5 Year Old: What the Research Says

Explaining embarrassment to a five-year-old
requires age-appropriate language,
concrete examples, and an understanding
of where five-year-olds are developmentally.
At five, children are developing the
self-awareness that makes embarrassment
possible — and beginning to navigate
the social world in ways that make
embarrassment increasingly common.
Understanding how to talk about embarrassment
in ways that genuinely make sense
to a five-year-old is practically
useful for any parent.

This article covers what the research
shows about explaining embarrassment
to young children — what five-year-olds
can understand, what language works,
and what parents can specifically do.

What Five-Year-Olds Can Understand
About Embarrassment

Research on emotional development —
including work by Michael Lewis at
Rutgers University — finds that embarrassment
emerges around age two to three as
self-awareness develops. By five,
children have enough self-awareness
and social understanding to experience
embarrassment regularly — but their
understanding of it is still concrete
and experience-based rather than abstract.

Five-year-olds can understand:

That embarrassment is a feeling —
like other feelings they know.

That it happens when we do
something in front of others
that feels silly or wrong.

That the feeling is uncomfortable —
and that it passes.

That everyone feels it sometimes.

Five-year-olds cannot yet fully understand:

Complex explanations of social
evaluation and self-consciousness.

Abstract concepts like reputation
or social standing.

The neurological or psychological
mechanisms of embarrassment.

How to Explain Embarrassment
to a Five-Year-Old

Simple, concrete language. Research
on emotional language and development
finds that concrete, specific
language — connected to physical
experience and familiar situations —
is significantly more accessible
to five-year-olds than abstract explanations.

Simple explanation of embarrassment:
“Embarrassment is a feeling
we get when something happens
in front of other people that
makes us feel silly or wrong.”
“It can make your face feel
hot and red.”
“It can make you want to hide.”
“It’s an uncomfortable feeling —
and it always goes away.”

Connect to their own experience.
Research on emotional learning
finds that connecting new emotional
concepts to the child’s own
experience significantly improves
understanding and retention.

“Do you remember when you
tripped in front of your friends
and your face went red? That
feeling was embarrassment.”
“When you forgot the words
in the school play — that
uncomfortable feeling was embarrassment.”

Use stories and books. Research
on bibliotherapy and emotional
development finds that picture
books that feature embarrassment —
with characters experiencing
and recovering from it — provide
concrete, accessible emotional
learning for five-year-olds.

Good approaches with books:
Read together and name the emotion:
“How do you think she’s feeling
right now? That looks like embarrassment.”
Connect to their experience:
“Have you ever felt like that?”
Focus on recovery: “What
did he do when he felt embarrassed?
Did the feeling go away?”

Use puppets or role play.
Research on play-based emotional
learning finds that acting out
emotional experiences — through
puppets, dolls, or role play —
helps five-year-olds understand
and process emotions more effectively
than verbal explanation alone.

Simple role play:
“Let’s pretend — Teddy just
tripped in front of all his
friends. How is Teddy feeling?
What could Teddy do?”

Normalize it explicitly and simply.
Research on normalization and
emotional development finds
that explicitly communicating
that embarrassment is universal —
in simple, concrete language —
significantly reduces its distressing quality.

“Everyone feels embarrassed
sometimes — even mummies and
daddies and teachers.”
“I feel embarrassed sometimes too —
here’s a time it happened to me.”

Sharing a genuine, age-appropriate
personal embarrassment story —
with a light tone and clear recovery —
is one of the most effective
normalization approaches available.

Focus on recovery. Research
on emotional resilience and
development finds that emphasizing
recovery — that the feeling
passes — is particularly important
for young children who may
experience uncomfortable feelings
as endless.

“Embarrassment is uncomfortable —
and it always goes away.
Nobody feels embarrassed forever.”
“Even when something embarrassing
happens — after a little while
the feeling gets smaller and smaller.”

Teaching simple coping responses.
Research on coping skill development
in early childhood finds that
simple, concrete coping responses —
practiced in advance — are significantly
more available in the moment
than those introduced during
an embarrassing situation.

Simple coping responses for five-year-olds:
Take a breath.
Remember: everyone feels this sometimes.
The feeling will go away.
Try a small smile — research
finds that even a small genuine
or deliberate smile activates
positive emotional circuitry.

What to Avoid

Complex explanations. Research
on cognitive development finds
that complex, abstract explanations
of embarrassment — involving
social evaluation, self-consciousness,
or psychological mechanisms —
are not accessible to five-year-olds
and produce confusion rather than understanding.

Dismissing embarrassment. Research
on emotional dismissal finds
that telling five-year-olds
not to feel embarrassed — or
that there is nothing to be
embarrassed about — before
acknowledging the feeling increases
distress rather than reducing it.

Making embarrassing moments
a bigger deal than they are.
Research on parental response
and embarrassment sensitivity
finds that parents who respond
to their child’s embarrassment
with significant alarm or distress
amplify the child’s embarrassment
sensitivity over time.

Try This This Week

Practice 1 — The Simple Explanation
What it is: A brief, warm,
concrete explanation of embarrassment —
introduced in a calm moment.

How to do it: This week find
a calm, relaxed moment — perhaps
during bath time or before
bed — and introduce embarrassment simply:

“Do you know what embarrassment
is? It’s a feeling we get
when something happens in
front of other people that
makes us feel silly. It makes
your face feel warm and red.
It’s uncomfortable — and it
always goes away. Everyone
feels it sometimes — even me.”

Keep it brief, warm, and matter-of-fact.

Why it works: Research on
emotional vocabulary and development
finds that introducing emotion
words — simply and in calm
contexts — significantly builds
children’s emotional understanding
and their capacity to manage
those emotions when they arise.

Practice 2 — The Story Connection
What it is: A deliberate use
of a picture book to explore
embarrassment — building concrete
emotional understanding through story.

How to do it: This week choose
a picture book that features
a character experiencing embarrassment.
During reading:

Name the emotion: “How do
you think she’s feeling? That
looks like embarrassment.”
Normalize: “Everyone feels
like that sometimes.”
Focus on recovery: “Did the
feeling go away for her?
It always does.”

Why it works: Research on
bibliotherapy and emotional
development consistently finds
that exploring emotions through
story — in a safe, engaging
context — builds emotional
understanding and resilience
more effectively than direct
instruction for young children.

Practice 3 — The Personal Story Share
What it is: A deliberate sharing
of one genuine personal embarrassment
story — normalizing embarrassment
and modeling recovery.

How to do it: This week share
one genuine, age-appropriate
embarrassment story with your five-year-old:

“I’m going to tell you about
a time I felt embarrassed.
One time I [simple, relatable example].
My face went red and I wanted
to hide. And after a little
while the feeling went away —
and now I can even laugh about it.”

Keep it simple, genuine, and
light in tone.

Why it works: Research on
parental modeling and emotional
learning finds that genuine
parental sharing of emotional
experiences — in simple, age-appropriate
language — normalizes those
emotions and demonstrates recovery
more effectively than any amount
of abstract reassurance.

The Bottom Line

Explaining embarrassment to
a five-year-old does not require
complexity — it requires concreteness,
connection to their own experience,
genuine personal sharing, and
consistent normalization that
the feeling is universal and temporary.

The five-year-old who has
a simple word for the uncomfortable
feeling that happens when something
silly occurs in front of others —
who knows that everyone feels
it and that it always goes away —
is significantly better equipped
to manage embarrassment than
one who has no framework for
understanding what they are experiencing.

Sources

Lewis, M. (1992).
Shame: The Exposed Self.
Free Press.

Denham, S. A. (1998).
Emotional Development in Young Children.
Guilford Press.

Gottman, J. M., & DeClaire, J.
(1997). Raising an Emotionally
Intelligent Child. Simon & Schuster.

Saarni, C. (1999).
The Development of Emotional Competence.
Guilford Press.