Be Curious, Not Furious...Helping with Tantrums

Welcome to my video series, the first in my series is on taming tantrums and how to be CURIOUS, not FURIOUS! Below is a video with captions or for those of you who prefer to read the transcript is below:

Hi, this is Kelly from RespectfulParent.com, and today I’m going to talk to you about tantrums, strong feelings and how to get through those or how to prevent them.

The first thing I want you to remember is we’re going to talk about how to be curious, not furious before you go into handling the tantrum.

Sometimes kids will get fixated on something and the more you say no, the more the tantrum comes.

And so what do you do about that? First, you recognize first that they are really being persistent and really fixated on something and saying no isn’t helping. That’s not necessarily that I mean that you want to say yes, but you want to find a solution. So my question is, what does that do for you? What need does that fill? Because all behavior meets a need. What special value does that pink sippy cup have versus the blue sippy cup or the green? What is that doing for the child?

Sometimes you can figure that out and sometimes you can’t. But sometimes it’s they want to feel special, sometimes it’s just they’ve been told no so many times and that last no just sends them over the edge. “So why do you want the blue sippy cup? What does that do for you?” “It makes me feel good. It makes me feel special.” So they want to feel special. They want to feel like they’re important.

What To Do

So maybe there’s another way, if that one is dirty and you can’t wash it or it’s lost at school, that they can feel special another way. So you can ask them, “Okay, so that’s one way to feel special. What’s another way to feel special?” And then they can help problem-solve with you and be a little bit more in charge of their destiny and their autonomy.

And you just want to understand. So instead of saying no or deflecting and saying, “Have this one, have that one,” and trying to come up with all these ideas that will make them happy, let them think of it, what would make you feel special?

All you have to do is figure out what they are trying to do with that behavior. And then sometimes they can solve it on their own, but a lot of times the tantrum happens anyway, especially with young kids under four. They’re prone to that. Their executive function isn’t there, they can’t keep their feelings in control all the time, so it depends on how strong these feelings are, how strong the tantrum is.

Sometimes just sitting there and writing it out is the only thing you can do. Silence, because sometimes talking will make it worse. They just can’t handle any more input to all that they can… All their feelings are consumed in this tantrum and crying and they can’t hear what you say anyway, so don’t say anything. Just sit there.

Sometimes just acknowledging… “I know…. this is hard. This is hard.” Less is more sometimes with those big ones and with the littler kids.

However, when the tantrum happens, what happens is their lid flips, they get emotionally flooded. So once they start to calm down a little bit, you can reflect back what you think is wrong and how they’re feeling.

“You’re really disappointed, you really wanted to go to that friend’s house today. You really didn’t want to miss soccer practice and you’re sad.”

And so what that does is it engages the thinking part of their brain and helps them become more rational and help their brain integrate a little bit. So if you can name what they’re feeling, what you think they’re feeling… They’ll correct you if you’re wrong. “No, I’m not disappointed. I’m so mad,” or, “I’m not disappointed. I hate everything.” They’ll correct you and you can continue on from there. But that helps get them emotionally regulated and re-engage the brain.

The other thing it does is it helps them understand themselves. Sometimes when they’re so upset and they don’t know why they’re so upset, but you have an inkling and you can gauge if you’re on the right track by the way they react and then you can keep going with this train of thought. So it also helps self-awareness.

“So you’re saying you’re really mad. You didn’t want to miss that game. You wanted to go to that friend’s house and you can’t, she’s not there.” It helps them understand it. It helps them understand what they’re feeling and they can move through it a little bit faster.

When they say “I HATE YOU!”

The other thing is that sometimes they’ll say things that indicate they’re really upset. “I hate you. You’re the worst,” and you repeat back what you think they’re feeling. Not the words that you hear, but what you think those words mean. “You’re saying, you hate me. You must be really, really upset. I’ve hurt your feelings and you don’t like that at all.” So you’re modeling back a more appropriate way for them to tell you that without shaming them or blaming them or making it worse. Because when they say they hate you, they mean I’m really, really mad at you, and so you can give them those words without saying, use your words or anything that’s going to make it worse and make them feel a little bit demeaned. And this is laying the groundwork for empathy, for self-awareness, and for emotional intelligence.

So that is how we handle tantrums in our house. So far, so good. Does it stop all of them? No. Feelings need to come out. We’re not going to listen away all feelings, but accepting them and doing it this way makes your child feel accepted, makes them feel like they’re valued, and that their feelings matter.