7 Things You Should Know About Child Temper Tantrums
Temper tantrums can be a frustrating experience for parents. It’s an experience that can make you feel powerless as a parent. The tricky part about tantrums is that they can start small (complaining, whining, crying) and can escalate to yelling, throwing objects, and physical aggression.
Usually, a parent’s natural instinct to diffuse the situation kicks in. Oftentimes though you may find that your attempt to help your child calm down backfires.
With effectively managing temper tantrums, less is more. Your behavior as the parent during the tantrum is extremely important in teaching your child how to calm down and in reducing these outbursts.
Tantrums in young children to a certain extent is a normal part of their development. This is because they have not yet fully developed the necessary skills they need in order to learn how to self-regulate themselves. This is a skill that is taught.
In this blog post, you’ll learn how to guide your child in discovering their emotions and how to effectively manage them. You’ll learn the power of your behavior and attention in reducing tantrums and how to empower your child with important life skills such as regulating their emotions.
You’ll have a better understanding of common triggers, how to prevent tantrums, the benefits of increasing a child’s emotional awareness, and signs of when it may be most helpful to seek additional support.
Let’s dive in!
Tantrums to a certain extent are a normal part of development.
Tantrums are how children express what they are feeling. Young children are still developing language skills and are wanting a sense of autonomy. As language skills and emotional awareness improve children begin to learn that tantrums no longer serve a function in accessing what they want/need.
2. Sign of child needing support on how to better handle big emotions.
Tantrums can also be a sign of a child not yet having the necessary skills or knowledge to effectively manage a situation.
Imagine a four-year-old who has spent time building a tall tower they are proud of and then it accidentally falls to the floor. For a young child, this can feel like a big deal. They may feel frustrated, upset, and angry, as well as lose motivation to keep trying because this feels too hard. As a result, this can lead to yelling, crying, or even getting up and leaving the room.
On the surface, the way the child handled the situation is inappropriate. However, if we take a step back we understand that the child’s negative reaction stems from their feeling of frustration/anger, etc. and their inappropriate reaction to the situation is a reflection of them having difficulty understanding how to better handle the situation.
For a parent, this is an opportunity to teach. This child’s reaction to the situation is a sign that they need support in learning how to better handle these big emotions.
Much of effectively teaching children how to handle these big emotions happens before tantrums arise. In doing so you can prevent tantrums and have opportunities to practice exposing your child to these skills so that when they do find themselves feeling anger, frustration, etc. they have the practice in appropriately managing their emotions.
Below are common skills children may be lacking that may be the root of their tantrums:
Understanding and practicing using coping skills
Problem-solving skills
Communication skills
Needing guidance on how to handle certain situations
Needing increased practice in social situations
3. When managing a tantrum, less is more.
It is normal when you see your child upset wanting to fix the situation or how they feel. However, during a tantrum is not the most effective teaching time with your child. In fact, children are less receptive during tantrums and as a parent you are more likely to accidentally reinforce the tantrum if you try to intervene during this time.
Also, intervening during a tantrum sends children the message that it is not okay to feel negative emotions. This can be harmful in the long term because it is important for children to learn that all emotions are normal and okay. The key is to teach children to understand that emotions are information and that they do have control over how they handle them.
Your child will be most receptive to your guidance before a tantrum and after a tantrum. During the tantrum, your role as the parent is to remove attention from the outburst.
Engage in selective attention (ignoring) during the tantrum. Meaning ignore the behaviors you want to decrease and give attention (praise) to the behaviors you want to increase.
For example: You are engaging in play with your child and the tower they have been building accidentally falls to the floor. They begin to cry, yell, and say, “I don’t want to play anymore.”
Parent reaction: Ignore the unwanted behaviors (crying, yelling, child’s comment about not wanting to continue playing). Model staying calm and continuing to play.
Why?
In ignoring the negative reaction, you are teaching your child that those behaviors are not a helpful way to react to the situation. Children also learn through their parents' behavior. Model staying calm and continuing to play demonstrates to the child how to better handle the situation so that they can replicate the behavior.
Observe.
The key to changing child behavior is being intentional with your own reactions and behavior as a parent. You want to carefully notice how your child is reacting, so that you can appropriately guide them.
If you start to notice your child is staying in the room, grabbing the blocks, moving closer to you, starting to calm down, rebuilding the tower (or any positive behavior in the right direction) give that behavior ATTENTION.
In doing so, you are clearly teaching your child what behaviors will help them be more successful in handling the situation.
Teach.
After the child has calmed down you can say, “I know it must have felt frustrating that your tower fell after all the hard work you put into it. I love how you calmed down and started rebuilding.”
The statement above does three important things 1) validates the child’s emotional experience 2) labels the emotion 3) praise the desired behavior.
Validation makes the child feel heard, seen, and understood. It helps normalize for the child that those emotions are valid. We want children to learn that all emotions are normal.
Labeling the emotion gives the child the word to describe what they were experiencing. This helps them understand what they are feeling, so that they can start to recognize it on their own. The more a child is able to understand their emotions the better they will get at managing them.
Bonus tip: Modeling is a powerful way to teach children. When you are experiencing an emotion label it to your child and explain how you plan to cope with the emotion or problem-solve the situation.
Praising the desired behavior shows approval and highlights for the child what the expected/appropriate behavior is. This gives the child an opportunity to learn. With consistent praise for these desired behaviors your child will depend less on tantrums and engage more in the appropriate behaviors they have learned to handle these big emotions.
Bonus tip: When praising your child be sure to give specific praise. Label the specific appropriate behavior. Children learn best when we are specific.
Read on to learn more about how to use praise effectively.
4. Positive Reinforcement.
Praise can be an extremely helpful tool for teaching children about their behavior and preventing negative behavior. However, in order for praise to be effective you need to be specific.
Be careful with praise that sounds like “good job, that was amazing, great idea”, etc. Young children need us to be specific and clear as this is how they learn best.
You can use praise to teach your child your expected behaviors and with consistent praise you will reinforce those desired behaviors and decrease the problem behaviors.
In order for praise to be most helpful, make a list of your child’s behaviors you would like to change. This will help you be intentional about how you use praise so that you can actually improve the behaviors that are important to you.
Next, figure out what the opposite of that problem behavior looks like. What would you prefer your child do instead or how would a child exhibiting that appropriate behavior be doing?
Then match a specific praise you can use that will teach your child the desired behavior you want to increase.
Example:
5. Prevent tantrums with daily 1 on 1 time with your child.
It is common for children to seek out their parent’s attention. Some children will use certain negative behaviors to get attention from their parents. They do this because they rather get attention even if it’s for getting in trouble than not get any attention at all.
PCIT research shows that parents spending 5 minutes a day playing with their child can help improve cooperation in children and continue to improve the parent-child relationship. This type of play is special in that during these 5 minutes you want to follow your child’s lead and flood them with positive attention.
Much throughout the day parents have to give direction and guidance. It’s normal for children to want a sense of control and practice their autonomy. Allowing your child to take the lead during these 5 minutes a day gives them a feeling of control within your parameters. It also gives you an opportunity to fully be present with your child.
Most parents share that it is challenging to fully be present with their child due to multiple things in their life they are trying to juggle. Children can sense this disconnect and can learn to engage in negative behaviors to get their parent’s attention. For a parent, you may feel that all you have time for is to correct your child’s behavior.
Try spending more individualized time with your child to connect and use the opportunity to teach them. Bring out your list of behaviors you want to work on and start pointing them out as you observe them during play.
Most children behave well during this time as they are receiving their parent’s undivided attention. Therefore, this is your opportunity to reinforce those good behaviors because they’ll be happening!
6. Look for triggers.
Usually before a tantrum, there is a situation that has occured before that sparked a big emotional reaction. In the behavioral world, we call this the antecedent.
Being aware of these triggering situations can help you better guide your child to teach them to recognize these signs and curve the negative emotional reaction.
Below is a list of common triggering situations for tantrums:
Child didn’t get what they want
Being told no
Ending something desirable
Transitioning to an undesirable situation
Unexpected change, transition, or change in routine
Wanting attention
Escaping a situation they find undesirable
Feeling anxious about a situation
Feeling hungry, tired, bored, or uncomfortable
7. When to seek professional support.
Below is a list of signs that may indicate when it would be helpful to seek professional support on how to effectively manage your child’s tantrums.
You are trying to avoid your child’s tantrums or them acting out.
Tantrums are happening most days of the week, daily, multiple times in a single day, and last long.
Tantrums are causing issues with you and your child or other family members.
You find it difficult to control your own emotions and reactions to your child’s tantrums.
Your child is hurting others.
Your child argues on most days with you and hardly ever cooperates.
Conclusion.
Temper tantrums are a normal part of development and a sign that children are learning how to deal with their big emotions.
Tantrums can be reduced with parental support and used as an opportunity to teach your child how to calm themselves down. Much of teaching children how to handle their emotions happens before or after a tantrum.
Label your child’s emotions to validate their experience and to teach them about emotions. Model expressing emotions and using problem-solving skills when you are experiencing an emotion. Spend 5 minutes a day playing with your child, following their lead, and giving them positive attention as a way to continue to strengthen your relationship with them and teach them appropriate behaviors.
During a tantrum model staying calm, ignore inappropriate behaviors, and use specific praise as a way to teach appropriate behavior.
If you want more help in managing your child’s tantrums and learn to feel confident in doing so reach out. At Empowering Families Counseling we are here to help!
What is something new you learned in this blog post?
