Childhood in an Overstimulated World

We rarely talk about how sensitive our bodies and minds are to the environments we move through. Modern life is filled with rapid inputs — noise, screens, shifting demands, constant micro-decisions — and most of us don’t recognize how these layers of stimulation shape our mood, patience, and energy.

When I was a child, I didn’t exactly “learn” how to identify how I was feeling. There wasn’t much emphasis on naming emotions or understanding internal signals, and in some ways I got away with it. The world moved slower. There was far less competing for my attention, which meant I could often figure things out organically simply because nothing was getting in the way.

Kids today don’t have that luxury. They’re navigating an environment of constant stimulation: digital noise, rapid transitions, social comparison, and information overload. They often don’t have the language to say, “I’m overwhelmed,” so overstimulation shows up as irritability, shutting down, or sudden emotional swings. Adults experience the same signals — we’ve just learned to ignore them or misinterpret them as something else.

That’s why, in our home, we keep an emotion wheel on the fridge. It’s a simple reminder that emotional awareness is a learned skill, not an innate one. It encourages all of us — adults included — to pause long enough to ask, What’s happening around me that might be affecting how I feel?

With practice, this becomes a tool: a way to center ourselves instead of automatically accepting or ignoring the emotional states we end up in. We can’t control the amount of environmental stimulation around us, but we can get better at noticing how it shapes us — and choosing a healthier response before the moment gets ahead of us.