Managing Toddler Tantrums
Toddlers are little whirlwinds of emotion, sensitivity and curiousity, and thanks to their developing brains – are totally uncontained, unregulated and unable to control their impulses.
Think of toddlers as all accelerator (big, intense emotions) with no brake (ability to manage these emotions, consider consequences, make good choices or shift their thinking).
As a parent, your whole life, effort and existence revolves around serving this little person. So it can be so easy to take tantrums personally – “I have sacrified everything for you, serve you meals six times a day, are the reason you are still alive, clean and healthy and you repay me by kicking me for slicing your sandwich the wrong way?!”; “Have a raised a sociopath? Why would my child smile while they go ahead and do the exact thing I just politely requested they not do?!”.
To help preserve your sanity, and provide you with some tools when you are completely bewildered by the shifting moods of your toddler, I’ve put together some steps to consider:
1. REFRAME
Understand their stage of development, rather than react to their age-appropriate behaviour as if they are our peers. Yes it is totally unacceptable for an adult to assault a waiter if they serve their drink in the wrong cup. However, it is NORMAL and EXPECTED for a toddler to be unable to regulate their emotions and behaviour. Their little brains are just not capable of this.
Don’t take it personally – this behaviour does NOT mean your child doesn’t love or appreciate you. They do, more than you know.
Challenging behaviours come from discomfort.
2. SHIFT YOUR EXPECTATIONS
You don’t need to change their emotion. You don’t need to prevent tantrums. You don’t need to keep them happy all the time. When your little one is having a tantrum, your role is to keep them safe, and wait for the storm to pass. Interfering, or getting triggered yourself often just intensifies the storm.
3. EXPLORE THE FUNCTION
There are different types of tantrums:
i. System breakdown (fatigue/hunger/overstimulation/constipation/sickness)
ii. Learning (pushing limits to see what happens in order to learn what they can do and make sense of the world).
iii. Connection (sometimes children learn that the best way to get connection is through misbehaviour).
iv. Emotional release (sometimes tantrums are just a way of discharging stress from the body. These are much more likely to occur with ‘safe’ people – like caregivers, at home).
Try and record when and where they are happening and what the trigger was. See if you can notice a pattern. Understanding the function can help address the behaviour more effectively, and set them up to succeed.
4. BE WITH
Your number one job in a tantrum (and in life) is to “be with” them in their emotion. Not change it, not try and reason with them or discipline them (the time for reasoning and learning comes later). Your child needs to feel heard, seen and understood.
Acknowledge what you think they may be feeling – validating their emotion. You want them to know you get their message.
“You’re feeling frustrated. It’s so hard when you don’t get what you want isn’t it”.
“You’re disappointed that we had to leave.”
“You’re upset because that didn’t work out the way you wanted it to.”
“I know you’re not happy about it, but the answer is no.”
“I can see that this is hard for you.”
Normalise and provide safety:
“It’s okay that you feel this way”
“You are safe. I love you.”
“I’m here to help you”.
Accept their emotion. This is my child’s emotion, it’s not about me – I can let it be.
5. HAVE FIRM, CONSISTENT LIMITS
Try and respond the same way each time. By giving in to demands in the face of a tantrum every now and then, but saying no at other times, you’re actually making the behaviour more likely to occur in the future.
6. STAY CALM
This is so so hard when you’re activated and emotional yourself – especially when all you want is for someone to feed you 6 meals a day, bathe you, dress you and cuddle you!! – but it is so important. Work out a way of keeping your own emotions in check when you notice you’ve been triggered by your toddler’s tantrum. A few deep breaths, an affirming mantra, leaving the room for 5 minutes until your blood cools, smelling lavender oil or sucking on a lemon are just some of the strategies that might help. By all means rant and rave in your bedroom later and scream into a pillow – but be the duck on the pond with your legs furiously paddling underneath, out of sight.
7. MODEL HEALTHY COPING
Toddlers are sponges, and will mimic behaviours they see in the home, seemingly more of the ones you DON’T want them to pick up! The way you respond to them and others will become the framework they use to structure their own behavioural choices. NB: my husband has to remind me of this point ALL the time when I get upset because things haven’t gone my way.
8. BE BIGGER, STRONGER, WISER & KIND
This line is straight out of attachment-informed research that emphasises the importance of providing loving and firm limits for your little one. They need a secure base for exploring and making sense of the world, and a safe haven to come back to. They need a parent, not a friend. You will upset your child. I find it helpful to constantly ask myself “What I am teaching you?”. Because if you are never saying no and attending to their every request in order to prevent a tantrum, you’re teaching them that they will always get their way, and that they can’t cope with difficult emotions. By “being with” them in their emotional storms you’re teaching them that feeling a full range of emotions is normal and healthy, that they can cope with them, and that they are loved and not alone with them. This is all about building resilience which is one of the most important skills to develop.
9. LOOK AFTER YOURSELF
Don’t expect to navigate this extremely challenging period perfectly. It is not possible. You are constantly learning, so give yourself the space to work out how you can parent a strong-willed dictator. If you’re not attending to your own needs and looking after your own mental health, it is impossible to look after anyone else. Expect to make mistakes, expect to lose it at times, and make self-compassion a non-negotiable. Some parents find it very helpful to seek their own therapy to understand why certain behaviours within their children press their buttons so intensely. This generally takes you back to your own childhood, allowing you to process how you were parented in order to tweak your ideal parenting approach.
Key Takeaways:
· Toddler tantrums are a wonderful sign that your little one is developing as they should.
· When the lightning strikes – keep your child safe while you wait for the storm to pass.
· Be with them in their emotion – acknowledge, normalise and accept it. Your job is to keep them safe, seen and heard.
· Be calm, bigger, stronger, wiser & kind. And work out what you need to do in order to achieve that.
Parenting is so so tough! If you’re finding there is a gap between the parent you’d like to be, and how most of your days are going, firstly you are not alone, and secondly – there is help available! Seeing your GP for a referral to see a psychologist is one way to give yourself some extra support.
Helping Your Child Overcome Anxiety
Anxiety is one of the most common presentations we see in children. Other terms
used to describe anxiety are fear, nervousness and worries. Your child may be
scared of the dark or strange noises at night. They may be fearful of storms, spiders,
dogs or heights. They may be shy and feel anxious in social situations. They may be
worried about something bad happening and have a need to check things like the
locks on windows or doors. They may feel embarrassed when performing in front of
people, like delivering a speech or being on stage. Whatever the reason for your
child’s worries, there are several ways you can help them.
1. Help Them Stay Calm
When children are anxious, they may experience a number of physical symptoms.
These can include:
- Rapid heart rate
- Fast or shallow breathing
- Butterflies in the stomach
- nausea
- Feeling hot or sweaty
- blushing
- Feeling shaky
- Dizziness
- headaches
- Needing to go to the toilet
You can help your child by encouraging them to take slow, deep breaths. Counting
to 4 or 5 as they breathe in slowly through their nose and the same again as they
breathe out slowly through their mouths can help them calm down and reduce the
physical symptoms they are experiencing. Your child may need to do this for several
minutes until they begin to feel calm.
A relaxation exercise such as laying down and alternately tensing and relaxing their
muscles whilst imagining feeling relaxed and taking slow, deep breaths can also help
them feel calmer.
“Smiling Mind” is a free mindfulness meditation app that can be used with children to
help them relax and feel calm.
2. Encourage Them to Develop More Helpful Ways of Thinking
People who worry often make two thinking errors:
1. They overestimate the chance of something bad happening, and
2. They believe that if what they are worried about does happen, they will not be
able to cope with it. It will be ‘the end of the world’.
These thinking errors can affect how your child is feeling and what they do.
For example: your child hears a strange noise at night and thinks someone might be
trying to break into the house. They feel scared and may hide under their covers,
shaking, or come into your bedroom.
Thoughts -------> Feelings --------> Behaviour
You can assist your child to develop more helpful or realistic ways of thinking by
exploring alternative explanations.
For example: your child hears a strange noise at night. It might be a possum walking
on the roof, the neighbour’s cat or a tree branch brushing against the house on a
windy night. These more helpful thoughts can help your child feel calmer and they
may go back to sleep.
There are often plenty of alternative explanations that are likely to be more realistic.
Helping your child develop more helpful or realistic thoughts can help them stay
calm.
Helping them feel able to cope in certain situations is also important in managing
anxiety. For example, your child may worry about being late to school or making
mistakes in their schoolwork. They might worry about being in trouble with their
teacher. The belief is that they won’t be able to cope if they get in trouble. The reality
is often very different. Their teacher may be very understanding of the reason why
they were late to school and assist them in understanding mistakes made in their
schoolwork. Even if the teacher does comment about your child being late to school
or making a mistake in their schoolwork, it is not ‘the end of the world’ that your child
worries it will be.
3. Help Your Child Face Their Fear
Children who worry often avoid situations that they worry about. This may reduce
their anxiety in the short term, however, it strengthens their worry over the longer
term. Being able to face their fears gives them the opportunity to learn that the
situation isn’t as bad as they worry it will be, and that they can cope with it.
For example: your child may worry so much about giving a speech in class that they
avoid doing so. Encouraging them to experience giving speeches can help them feel
more confident and learn that nothing bad will happen to them. Often they worry that
the other children will laugh at them, the children won’t like their speech, or that they
will forget their words. The reality is often very different. No-one might laugh at them,
the other children might really like their speech and find it interesting, and they might
not forget their words. Even if someone does laugh or snigger, or they do forget
some of their words, it is not ‘the end of the world’. They can and do cope.
It is often helpful for children to learn to face their fears in a gradual way. An example
might be:
Step 1: Deliver the speech to Mum or Dad
Step 2: Deliver the speech to Mum, Dad and siblings
Step 3: Deliver the speech to grandparents
Step 4: Deliver the speech to a friend
Step 5: Deliver the speech to a small group of friends
Step 6: Deliver the speech to the teacher
Step 7: Deliver the speech to the class
The steps may be swapped around, depending on how difficult each step may be.
The idea is to start with the easiest step and build up to the hardest step. It can often
be helpful to repeat each step, until your child no longer feels anxious about doing
that step, and then move up to the next step. This step-by-step approach can be
used to help children face many of their fears. Depending on the steps and the goal
they are working towards, it is often helpful for children to stay in the step long
enough to experience their anxiety reduce, or vary the amount of time they stay in
each step to progressively longer amounts of time.
4. Reduce Attention to Worries
Focussing attention on worries often maintains the worry and can increase anxiety.
Helping children focus their attention on something else can assist in reducing their
anxiety. Imagine their worry is a plant and attention is like water. When we give
water to a plant, it grows and gets bigger. When we don’t water the plant, it shrivels
up and dies. When we give attention to worries, they get bigger. When we don’t give
attention to worries, they get smaller and, in some cases, they can disappear.
Encourage your child to think about happy or relaxing things. They might like to
recall a memory of a time when they felt really happy, like on their birthday or on a
family holiday. Help them recall that time in as much detail as they can by using their senses – What can they see? What can they hear? What can they smell? What can
they touch? What can they taste? This can help them focus their attention away from
their worries.
Doing an activity they enjoy can also take their attention away from their worries.
They might like to read a book, draw a picture, play their favourite game, jump on the
trampoline, or ride their bike. It is important that they think about the activity they are
doing, and not think about their worry whilst they are doing the activity.
5. Reward Your Child
It is often hard for children to overcome their worries and face their fears. Rewarding
examples of brave behaviour and their attempts to manage their worries can often
help with motivating them to try harder. These are some examples of rewards:
- Verbal praise
- using stickers or a point system that they can exchange for a tangible reward
- time spent together doing a fun activity
Children can also say positive words to themselves. For example: ‘That was hard,
but I did it!’ or ‘I did a great job’.