There's a reason that people refer to the age two-years-old as the terrible
twos. And that's because that's usually around the time that temper tantrum
starts. If they're going to. Sometimes there's a baby that's really colicky and
then they're really calm when they hit their toddlers --their toddler ages. And
sometimes I've noticed that it works the other way around too. Sometimes they're
such a calm baby and then they hit those toddler years and they just are like
shot out of a cannon. And everything is exciting and everything is bigger than
life including their frustrations and their anger and their emotions and
everything else. So, those are usually the parents that say, "Oh, we are in the
terrible twos." Because usually that child before was not as much of a handful when
they were younger. So, what do we do about those toddler tantrums?
Well, this video is all about how to prevent those toddler tantrums before
they even start?
Toddlers are capable of more than their parents often think. In fact, they can
learn communication skills. They can even learn how to self-analyze. Which some
people think is a pretty mature skill to learn. Even though their prefrontal
cortexes of the brain are quite small, they are still learning cause and effect
and some of that cause and effect can be pointed at analyzing themselves. This is
good to know because this means that they actually can make progress on
controlling those toddler temper tantrums. In this video, I'm going to tell
you the story about three-year-old Julie and her amazing successes. Then we're
going to talk about the best way to stop those toddler temper tantrums before
they even start. And as part of that method, I'm going to share with you
Julie's parents calm plan. The other day some friends of mine who have a little
3-year-old daughter named Julie told me that Julie was doing an incredible
job of learning self-government. And of course I was very excited about this
because I love self-government and that's something that I teach and I
taught Julie's parents how to do. Well they explained that Julie was so good at
all of the four basic skills. So, we teach these 4 basic skills. In fact, these
children's books each teach those 4 basic skills. They teach following
instructions, accepting no answers, accepting consequences and disagreeing
appropriately. Disagreeing appropriately, 3-year-old Julie who's like actually
just barely three is disagreeing appropriately with her family. That means
that she knows how to look at the person, keep a calm face, voice and body, say that
she understands the other person's point of view, share her point of view, listen
to what they have to say, say okay and drop the subject.
That's awesome. Little Julie, if only she had enough words to teach this
to you. But I'm just going to tell you her experience. So, her parents said that she
knows all 4 of the four basic skills. She also is really great at analyzing.
They were able to tell me that she knows exactly when someone is calm and isn't
calm. This was something they taught her. It wasn't something she was just born
knowing. Now, of course, some people might have a little bit more of an intuitive
nature when it relates to seeing what a person's feeling. But even so, Julie's
parents pulled her aside and said, "This is what calm face looks like. This is
what calm face doesn't look like, right? This is not calm. This is calm. This type
of voice is not calm. This type of voice is calm." And so they gave her those
examples and they practiced being calm, being not calm so that she would know
the difference. So, when the parents are not being calm, guess what little Julie
does? She says, "Dad can I disagree appropriately?" And then dad immediately
knows here comes Julie from the mouths of babes, we are going to be taught now what
we should be doing correctly. And so, he'll say, "Yes." And she'll say, "Dad, right
now, you're upset. You're supposed to be calm." Oh, ouch. But it's a good ouch, isn't
it? To help each other along the path to calmness and better communication as a
family. Little Julie, age 3 could do this. Another thing that Julie knows is
she knows that her family is working on learning something called
self-government. And she knows that the reason they're working on learning
self-government is so that they can be a happy United Family. Julie thinks this is
a good goal and she's in support of it. Now, that doesn't mean Julie's perfect
every second of the day. But she is unified with her parents intentions and
they're working on it together. This tells you what toddlers are capable of
doing. So, when did Julie's parents start teaching her
about following instructions, about calmness what it is what it isn't? And
about this big term self-government or self-control? They started teaching her
when she was 2 years old. And she started working on it. And she
learned things quite quickly. Of course, at first, some of the words were a little
bit of a mouthful and they had to simplify them just slightly. But she was
able to learn the concepts and to self-analyze herself. These are vital
steps for helping that child conquer those tantrums that can happen when
they're toddlers because of frustration and not being understood before those
tantrums even start. Julie was taught not simply managed. And there is a difference
between the 2 of those. Many people think that toddlers just need to be
managed. Tell them no, keep them away, lock
everything up. It doesn't mean you can't have safety locks on things and stuff
like that. Sometimes it's smart to have those things. But if we just think of
changing their environments so that they don't find problems, then they're not
really learning anything. In fact, in some ways, they're being disabled because they
don't get the opportunity to ever learn, "No, this is something I don't touch. This
is something I don't say or I don't do." They miss out on all of that confidence
and empowerment that comes from learning how to control yourself.
Well, little Julie has this confidence. Her parents created a plan for how they
were going to help her conquer the desire to have a tantrum
before she even started getting in to having tantrums or breaking into that
phase. Tantrums and toddlers usually lead into whining complaining crying. There's
many things that in are involved in a temper tantrum. But after the toddler
years, comes a new phase which often involves whining or getting even more
aggressive because they're bigger. So, if we can stop the toddler temper tantrums,
that's a mouthful I keep almost slipping over it. If we can stop those before they
even start, then we also have made great strides in stopping some of those later
behaviors that follow after those toddler temper tantrums.
So, here's Julie's plan: Step number 1, Julie does not go to timeout. Now, I know
that's weird. Julie has a calm down place. Timeout is a
consequence. The consequence is to remove the child away from people so that they
feel that they're not being socially acceptable or they are taught through
that timeout experience because you're not doing something that we like then we
don't want to be with you. That's the message that comes with a timeout. Julie
does not have timeout. She has a calm down place. So, if Julie starts to go
completely out of control, if she doesn't use her skills that she has been taught,
which I think most of the time she does, but she's still a toddler. She's still
little and probably quite impulsive. So, she's not going to be perfect every day.
And we do need to embrace that as parents of small children, right? Well, if
she doesn't use her skills then her parents have told her that they would
take her to a calm down place. This is just a trigger spot. It's a place that
triggers her to get calm. That's why it's called the calm down place. They gently
walk her to the calm down place and she stays on the calm down place which could
be a little stool at the edge of the counter. It could be a little mat or a
cushion on the couch. wherever they chooses best for her but usually not in
her room with her toys. Not around other people or other distractions. She needs
to have it be a place where she's just focused on getting calm. Because Julie
needs to recognize that she made a choice to get calm. She can recognize
that choice even when she's a little tiny toddler. So, she's told that she's
going to stay in this calm down place until she's calm. And one of the ways that her
parents know that she's calm as if she can say that
OKAY. And she can have a calm face voice and body. Which is something that they
have practiced before. So, this is the first part of their plan. If things get
really bad, where does Julie go to trigger her to
make a change in her brain to do something different? And that's Julie's
calm down place. The second part of Julie's plan is that she knows how to
accept a consequence and correction from her parents. They've taught her that. So,
remember one of those 4 basic skills is accepting a consequence. This is a
very motivating skill. If a person gets the opportunity to accept a consequence
or accept a correction, then they can learn self-government. If parents just
take things away, that's not accepting a consequence. Accepting a consequences
being able to calmly say OKAY and following through with a task that is
assigned to them. In our family we use extra chores as the negative consequence
the majority of the time. So, does Julie's family.
So, when Julie is corrected, her parents go through an effective teaching skill
set which has 7 steps to it. And then Julie gets the opportunity to accept a
consequence which is again a skill set that has multiple steps to it. Part of
this consequence is staying calm so she keeps a calm face voice and body. She
says okay that she accepts that she earned an extra tour. And then she gets
the opportunity to do that age-appropriate chore. But another key
part of this especially for toddlers, this is vital and that is she gets to
have practice time doing whatever skills she first messed up correctly multiple
times to make sure that she really understands the skill. When they're
toddlers, the front part of their brain, the prefrontal cortex is so very small.
So, we need to think in terms of training them
more than expecting them to have desired results immediately. I think parents
sabotage themselves and their child's happiness by expecting that their child
would just know how they want them to act. No. They have to be trained and it
takes time. That brings me to the third part of Julie's plan which is the pre
teaching that occurs. Julie was pre taught about everything. She was pre
taught the skills she needed. She was pre taught how the parents would do the
corrections. She was pre taught that she would get the opportunity to do those
practices as part of her negative consequences in her corrections. She was
pre taught where her negative consequences would be that they would be
little age-appropriate, extra chores and she was pre taught where her calm down
place would be. When she would go there and when she would be able to leave. The
parents taught her all the skills that they would use to help her.
This liberates Julie and her parents so that nobody needs to have anxiety when
somebody accidentally misbehaves. Which is going to happen with toddlers all the
time. I know there's somebody out there
thinking, "Yeah, but what if your child will not stay in the calm down place?" I
know. I get that question asked to me all the time. I had 2 children that didn't
want to stay in the calm down place. One after I helped him stay in the calm down
place, maybe 2 times he was fine. But there was another one that I had to help
stay in the calm down place quite a few more times before he decided this truly
was a good and okay place for him to get calm. Some children, especially toddlers,
think it's funny to be oppositional. One of the reasons they do that is because
we often times laugh at them and even tell their funny oppositional stories to
other people. There are some people that even videotape their children being
oppositional and let the world laugh at the children. But the truth is that
behavior is not good behavior and makes a problem in the relationship with the
parents especially in the long term. So, it's important that the family address
every behavior the moment it occurs and not laugh at it but treat it as
something that needs to be conquered. So, these oppositional children, when they
are in the calm down place or when you initially take them to the calm down
place, they might say, "No, I'm not staying." Or they might just wander off when your
lot not looking. Or they might run away and make you have to run after them try
to catch them and then we have this toddler chase thing and they think it's
incredibly funny. All of these things they're doing are called power struggles.
And it's important that you don't give in to power struggles. But it's also
important you get them to that calm down place so that they know this is the
place they have to learn to go to to get calm and to self assess themselves. So,
what I tell my children is that if they're not being calm, I will gently
take them by the arm and I will take them to the calm down place. If they try
to pull, I'm not going to pull too. I'm just going to keep gently taking them by the arm.
But I'm not going to release my hold either. Which means they're going to come with
me to the comb don't please. And I'm going to tell them, "Now, you can either sit
on the calm down place yourself and get calm and just say okay or I'll have to
hold you here." Now, if I hold them there, I have to make sure that my heart is in
the right place. I have to feel calm not like I'm wrangling some child and not
stressed or emotional. I have to think, "This is okay. They'll get calm. You can be
calm." And I'm probably gonna say something to my child like, "Do you want
mommy to hold you?" And they'll say, "No." I'll say, "Mommy doesn't need to hold you
if you can be calm. Just choose to be calm." So then, if they can say, okay then
I'll let my hands go and they can stay there. Sometimes, when you've been using
the calm down place for a toddler for awhile, they'll get calm before they even
need to go to the calm down place. It became a very common occurrence for me
to correct my son and him to go out of control and then for me to say, "Oh, Porter.
You're whining. It seems like we need to go to the calm down place." And I would
gently take him by the hand and take him toward the calm down place and then he
would go, "I'm calm, mom. I'm okay." And then I would praise him right there. Guess
what? He didn't need to go to the calm down place. The calm down place is not
negative consequence. This is powerful. Little children absolutely need the
security of having that calm down place so that they know there's a place where
they can make a change. And Julie had that. I don't know how often Julie's had
to use her calm down place. I didn't ask her parents that. But I do know that they
are incredibly impressed with the strides that Julie has made. And with her
understanding of herself and of self-government. Julie and her parents
have given each other permission through this plan to stay calm and proactive all
the time. Instead of reactive to tantrums which a lot of people do. I want to give
you a gift that I think will help you be more calm
too. So, that you can have more calmness in your family like Julie's family. I
have a gift for you. It's called the Calm Parenting Toolkit. And if you going down
in the description below this video, you'll see a link to that Calm Parenting
Toolkit. This is going to be a vital resource for your family. As you're
working on conquering tantrums and increasing the calmness in your own
parenting and in your children in the coming years.
you