I think the term tantrum has gotten a bad rap. When anyone thinks of the word tantrum, most see a toddler falling to the floor as she wails at her caretakers to give her what she wants. Every human has tantrums. We never grow out of them. Tantrums allow us to release the emotional valve that keeps all our negative emotions bottled up in a socially acceptable manner.
Children experience healthy control of their own intense feelings when they experience, assimilate and integrate healthy control exerted by their caregivers. Children do not learn to regulate their emotions from lectures and “deep talks”, they learn it from the processes and experiences to which they are exposed. Parents must be able to contain their child’s intense feelings. What does it mean to be the container of your child’s emotions? I like to envision my arms stretched out wide around a child who is having a meltdown. When they are inside my wide arms, I provide nurturing touch, reassuring words and a sense that I am there with them to weather the storm. I don’t tell them there’s nothing to be upset about, or that they are overreacting. Instead, I validate how badly they feel, that I am with them while they feel it, and that it will pass like a wave from the ocean over both of us. It’s a great image, isn’t it? What about when our kids won’t be close to us during these intense feelings? Or what if our kids are physically too big to hold?
When our kiddo is too big to be held, or needs their physical bubble respected, we must switch to being an emotional container. This exists through our mere presence and energy. T must visualize our mere presence as the container for their emotions. We stay calm, we remain firm in any limit we have set and we give clear boundaries about what actions are allowed during their meltdowns. It can be helpful to first talk with your child early on about how to handle big, negative emotions like anger and frustration. This “front loads” your kiddo with tools to try before their little brains and bodies are activated by a stressful situation. Here’s what I use in my own clinical practice. I encourage the parents I work with to have these rules at home.
My three rules for managing anger and frustration:
- Don’t hurt yourself (words and actions)
- Don’t hurt others (words and actions)
- Don’t hurt your things (breaking something)
You can talk with your kids about examples of each of these poor choices: yelling mean words or names (hurting others), punching, or kicking the wall (it’ll hurt themselves and their things), or pushing others (hurting others). I encourage parents to remember that their child intrinsically knows not to break these rules, but they have been doing it because they haven’t been shown other ways to do it. Many of the kids I work with say “taking a deep breath just doesn’t work”. They’ve been told to handle big feelings by breathing alone. They are right, it won’t work. Kids (and adults), often need an outlet to release the intense energy they feel with negative emotions. So, let’s find safe and appropriate ways to do this. THEN they can take a deep breath and move on.
The kids in my practice enjoy learning about all the things that they CAN do with their anger. You’ll see that none of these suggestions break any of the three rules:
- Go to your room and punch a pillow.
- Scream into a pillow.
- Use a punching bag and tire yourself out.
- Go in the backyard and do pushups, run in place, or kick some very large beach balls.
- Tear up scraps of paper that nobody needs to use again.
- Listen to loud music and dance around in your room.
- Listen to soft music, cry, and write in your journal.
Lastly, you are the best teaching tools for your children about how to handle their intense emotions. Here as with many other aspects of parenting, you must practice what you preach. Find ways to let out your intense emotions so that others in the home do not feel unsafe. Talk openly with your kids about when you have handled your feelings poorly. Work to repair the relationship when you’ve exploded on your kids or others in the home. It is the acknowledgement and repair that creates resiliency in your relationship with your child. They’ll grow up knowing that negative emotions are not to be feared, but to be honored and managed.
