If you have a child you have seen a temper tantrum. Today, we're going to talk
about how to deal with your child's temper tantrums. -Vicki, you said in the
intro if you've got a child, you've dealt with temper tantrums. That's probably the
most important first place to start. This happens. It's a normal part of childhood.
It's going to happen. -And it's always going to happen in young children. Always. And it
sometimes happens in older children. -Or even adults. We've talked in other videos
about the 3 stages of moral development. If you haven't yet reviewed
those, please hook into that. teaching children responsibility is one of the
titles that you can look for here in the positive parenting playlist to get an
overview of those 3 stages. That's important because regardless of
the age of the child, the stage of moral development is what determines their
behavior and that's going to really help to clear up a few things. So, we encourage
you to go take a look at that if you haven't. -So why do kids have temper
tantrums? -Let's start with just the basic developmental expectation because young
children particularly have a very difficult time regulating their affect
or emotions. -So, whatever they feel, immediately just comes at them so strong.
-It can overwhelm them and you'll see this as your your child takes on an
emotion. One of our neighbors was holding his little daughter who's about 18
months old and I've had a little crush on this little girl for a while. She's so
cute. And she had this big alligator tear right here stuck on her eye. And I just
interacted with her and I said, "Milly, what's with the tear?" And she's just
barely learning how to talk. And she... And I could just see the effect just
starting to overwhelm her. She said, "I miss mommy."
She just burst out into this flood of emotion. Which normally, as adults
it's not going to happen to us. I mean, maybe it will from time to time. But the whole
point is, for young children, they cannot regulate that. -Well, especially one more
piece as the dad had just said," Thanks a lot." You know, because it does
take a lot of effort sometimes to get for a child especially to regulate and
to rein in that emotion and the smallest thing and trigger it. And that's where
the temper tantrums come from. -Right. -So, it's a normal developmental thing. Now,
how are we going to help our children with that? -Remember, at first a tantrum,
comes because the child can't regulate their behavior. -Right. -Their emotions. They
can't regulate their emotions. And so they just kind of pile up and come out
in a tantrum. Right? But depending on how we respond or deal with that tantrum,
they can then become not just an emotional ear regulation but they can
actually become manipulation because we paid them off for having the tantrum.
-This is behavioral psychology. You can reinforce a behavior without meaning to.
In other words, if you give them the payoff... Let's... Let's say that you're at
the grocery store and your child starts throwing a tantrum because they want the
piece of candy. Remember, they can't regulate their emotion and so they feel
it and it's real for them. -It's real. If they're wanted it and they're not getting it.
-They're not pretending to be distressed. -Disappointment is so overwhelming to them. -So,
the emotion comes out. Now, how's mom feeling at that point? A little
awkward. A little uncomfortable. We're out here in public and so what is she likely
to do? Anything she can to calm this kid down, right? So, she's... If she gives the
child what the child wants, that reinforces the behavior. And this is kind
of a trap for parents because we want to end the behavior. Or kids are
training us to give them what they want. So, be aware of that and they're not
doing it maliciously. It just happens to work. So they do it. Sometimes, you'll know
you're on the right track when things get a little worse.
I know, I'm sorry. But and it's because especially if there's been
a pattern of reinforcement of that behavior, the child might start thinking
at some level. "Oh, man. This always used to work with mom. I must be losing my touch.
I better turn up the volume." And then they crank up the volume. And if you cave
in at that point, it makes it even worse. So, we could get into all the behavioral
psychology behind that. But basically, you want to take away some of those payoffs
that they're getting for the Tantrums. So, there's two things I wanted to hit right
here. We talked about this being how do you deal with your child's tantrum, right?
-Right. -I think we have kind of 2 things we're talking about. 1 is a normal
tantrum as they start to develop. And the way that we deal with that is really
important. We're going to want to try to buy a little time. Just kind of pause. We got
a model from some calm behavior. Some calm response. Calm face, calm voice. What
is it you always say about. How long will it take? Go back to that. -Oh, you know what?
That was our friend Craig. -Yeah. -When his son Aaron was just... I don't know. Maybe
3-4 years old. They were in the car and Aaron was throwing a temper
tantrum. Just going Banzai there in the backseat in that car seat. And Craig
simply asked him, "Aaron. How long do you need for this tantrum?"
And this little kid comes up with "2 minutes!" He said it all upset. And he's
still having that emotional overload that we talked about. But you know what?
Craig just accepted that. He's like, "Okay." And he just chilled. He just wait. And you
have to buy some time. Because it takes a little while for that to calm down
physiologically. -It's real, physiologically. It is real. -Yeah. -This affect that's out
of control. -But you know what? Having bought the time, Aaron very shortly after
that said, "Okay. I'm done." Which I now these results are not typical. We're not
guaranteeing that that's going to happen with your kid.
But by buying a little bit of time gives them some space. And it also says, "You
know what? You're going to get through this." -It's going to be clear. -It actually give them
some power and time to learn how to get in control of their emotions. -Which
part of what we're trying train them to do anyway. -We're hoping they
learn. So, the second part I was talking about is the child who has a pattern of
tantrum. Now, how do we deal with that? And you may write just before that it might
get a little worse. It's always... You always are going to have more of a storm
before the calm. So, when you are now ready, I have
inadvertently built a a bit of a tantrum monster. And I am NOT saying your child
is a monster. But you know, sometimes we force the child. The child is tantrauming
on a regular basis, right? They have learned that that is one of the ways
they get what they want. We have to reinforced it. Not even in realizing
that's what we've done. And so, you have taken control of yourself because
remember that's the only person you can control. That's hard enough. -That's... Yeah.
And now, I'm going to try something different.
Just be ready. Be ready for it to get worse before it gets better.
And expect that. Now, refer back to some of our other videos about how to control
your anger. Because if your expectation is that it is going to get worse before
it gets better, you don't have to respond in an angry
way. You can Kate keep calm. You can model the calmness. You can model all of the
different thinking patterns that we've been teaching you in these videos. You'll
be able to roll with it because now it matches your expectation and you're
ready for it. -Right. -Temper tantrums. There's a lot of
different things we deal with as parents. Thank you for being a conscious positive
parent. We're honored to be on your team. Please join us at
parentingpowerup.com.
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