When Ina Chung’s son was about 3 years old, he started having meltdowns. It usually happened on field trips with his preschool class or when the other students screamed or behaved rowdily. After COVID-19 forced everyone indoors, he began having panic attacks that lasted hours on end. “I was flabbergasted,” Chung, a stay-at-home mother and former teacher, told me. “I had no idea what I was doing. It was exhausting.”

Like many stressed-out moms during the pandemic, Chung was scrolling through Instagram when she came across Dr. Becky, the parenting super-influencer perhaps best known for coining the term Deeply Feeling Kid. DFKs, as she calls them, are children who struggle with emotional self-regulation and become easily agitated or overstimulated. They just feel things more intensely, Dr.

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