Let’s face it – temper tantrums suck. There, I said it. I know that I don’t like it when I am out and about and I see temper tantrums. I don’t like it when my children have temper tantrums. Responding to temper tantrums is a time-consuming process. It takes a lot of patience and require us as parents to step up and use that time as a teachable moment. Now, as I sit here writing this, I am by myself and able to think logically about temper tantrums. However, in the heat of the moment, that takes a lot more effort. Trust me, I know. I’ve been there. In fact, earlier this summer, my son had an epic temper tantrum while we were on a vacation in a public place. It was glorious. Full-blown crying, hitting and kicking, being a wet noodle when I picked him up. Can you see this in your head? Got a visual? I hope so.
The episode started because he was told that he could pick out one toy while we were at a local attraction. However, it needed to be a small item, as it would have to go in his bookbag. As an almost five-year-old, my son loves Legos. While looking at the toys, they had several very large (read expensive) Lego kits. When my husband and I told him “no” and explained that he needed to pick a smaller toy, he became very upset. Despite showing him different options that met our criteria (a smaller set and at a certain price point), he didn’t like the choices that we offered him. His behavior escalated. He went from whining and demanding to crying, yelling, and kicking. Bet you didn’t think that someone who has dedicated her life to working with children would have something like this happen, right? Nope. It did.
At that moment, I knew, no matter what I said or did, it was not going to help my son. I needed to help him calm down. It wasn’t going to happen inside the store. Using my superhuman mom strength, I scooped him up and carried him out of the store like I was holding an open bag of feral cats. He continued to be upset. Once we were outside of the store, we sat on a bench, and I held him. I rubbed his back and waited for him to calm down. I told him once or twice that I loved him and that I would be more than happy to talk to him once he had calmed down. Then, I waited without saying anything else. After a few minutes, he calmed himself down. Once he was calm, I was able to tell him that I was proud of him for calming down and using his big boy words to talk to me. I listened as he told me that he was upset because he really wanted a new Lego set. We had told him that he would be able to pick one out. I acknowledged his feelings and appreciated that he was upset with not being able to pick out the toy of his choice.
I recently completed a self-paced training on Positive Discipline and am a Certified Positive Discipline Parent Educator. One of the biggest things that stood out to me was this quote from Jane Nelson, “Where did we ever get the crazy idea that in order to make children do better, first we had to make them feel worse.” As parents, our job is to teach our children. This isn’t just about the academics. It’s about the life skills that go into it too. By helping our children with identifying their feelings and developing problem-solving skills, we are equipping them for more. We are helping to shape them so that when they are older, they are able to do this on their own.
Here are the tools that I use to help with responding to temper tantrums:
- Lots of patience
- Follow-through
- Quiet reassurance
- Physical contact/hugging
- Model deep breathing
- Create a teachable moment
- Provide an opportunity for practice
Wondering what happened next? Once my son was calm and we reviewed the expectations, we went back to the store to look at toys. He displayed all of the appropriate behavior and was able to select the toy without me having to remind him of the rules. Later that day, we spent time building with a new Lego set.
3 things that I know about ALL parents:
- Parents love their children.
- Our child’s behavior is not a reflection of us as parents. As parents, we can only control our behavior and how we respond to those around us. When children display big emotions, our job is to help them navigate through them.
- Our job as parents is to help our children develop skills to help them understand their feelings and problem-solve when presented with a challenging/new/fill-in-the-blank scenario.
