Let me paint a picture..
It’s a normal day. You’re at home with your child. You’re moving through your morning routine and you already gave your child one message that it’s almost time to clean up. You’re coming in again with another message since it is lunch time. You tell your little one, it’s clean up time and begin helping them by putting one or two toys away just to show them how it’s done.
This is your normal daily routine. But for some reason today your child is just not having it. It’s time to clean up, but they’re refusing. They throw their body on the floor, begin rolling around, and a tantrum ensues.
Does this sound familiar? Take the clean up situation out and insert your own. Different day, same tantrum : /.
Well, it’s time to tackle these little instances of chaos with some tips that should help alleviate your child’s distress a little bit quicker and add some peace to your day. Let’s jump in!
*Pre-Work: Identify the Behavior
When your child has a tantrum, their behavior is in response to something. It can be avoidance or escape, attention seeking, discomfort, confusion, etc. The reason behind it may vary but the smartest thing for you to do first is see what exactly is triggering your child. Only then can you enact the strategies needed to help them get through that tantrum as fast as possible. That’s the goal!
Here’s a quick behaviors cheat sheet!
Avoidance/Escape:
- Having a meltdown to avoid i.e. cleaning up
- Having a meltdown to avoid i.e. going to lunch to eat something they don’t like
- Having a meltdown to avoid i.e. getting ready for bed
- Having a meltdown to avoid i.e. going to school
Attention Seeking: Having a meltdown simply to get your attention, this would be in place of using appropriate language and communication skills
- Can consist of crying, shouting, hitting, kicking, biting, throwing toys, etc. —> anything to get your attention
- Will usually go hand in hand with other behaviors like avoidance
Discomfort: Crying or shouting due to discomfort physically or emotionally
Confusion: Crying or shouting due to unfamiliarity including new environment, people, + situations
Obviously there are a lot of absolutely wonderful behaviors to speak of but we’re saving that for another post. This is just to help you try and manage those unnecessary kiddo tantrums as fast as possible, such as crying because they don’t want to wear a coat while playing in the snow.
So let’s look at a quick resolutions track:
- Avoidance/Escape: Let them work through it with my tips and your help
- Attention Seeking: Let them work through it with my tips and your help
- Discomfort: Go to them immediately as they are in actual pain, they need you! This is not a question
- Confusion: Go to them immediately as they feel unsafe and need you to help explain to them what is going on and restore comfort
Okay, so now that you know how to identify what us causing your child to tantrum, let’s look at some ways to combat this!
1. Have a Healthy Communication Routine
First things first, does your child have a positive communication routine they know how to use and can rely on? This is important. If your child doesn’t know how to communicate in a positive way, then how can you expect them to? That seems a bit farfetched right? So before even going into your bag of tricks to help simmer their tantrums down, you need to make sure they know how to move through these behaviors and feelings in a positive way.
This might seem a bit advanced but I promise you it’s not. You need to make sure you establish healthy communication patterns and boundaries with your child/children.
2. Practice Your Routine and Motivate Them to Follow!
Next, practice this positive routine. Make sure this routine is done on a consistent basis so that when your child is tantruming you can remind them of the positive behaviors you respond to.
Also, if you can motivate them to the positive side, and then you model that for them, it gives your child an out. Motivate!—> Model the positive—> Your child may copy you and calm down.
Basically, you want to provide your kid with as many outs as possible. This will shorten the length or their tantrum. Kids, especially young kids, are still learning how to self regulate, and they can easily get stuck in a tantrum situation without being able to get themselves out of that strong emotion. So give them an out! Remind them of what you will respond to and what that looks like by modeling it.
3. Incorporate More Positive Talk at the End
Lastly, you want to be your kids biggest cheerleader and advocate even when they’re not having the best of times. Honestly no one wants to be having a tantrum situation. Your child does not want to spend the next 30minutes crying and throwing themselves on the floor as much as you don’t want them to do that either. So the more you can be in their corner, only when appropriate of course, the more it will help them shorten that tantrum time.
Your child is still learning what positive communication strategies look like. Even if you have a positive routine, have taught them healthy communication boundaries, there are still going to be instances where they spiral and that’s okay! They are kids after all. But this is where you can bring in even more positive talk. Just like we mentioned motivating them in the prior tip, here, once you see them calming down, bring on the positive talk. They’ll see that you are responding to their positive turn around, you’re providing them with the positive attention they want, and with your positive talk, it might just be the last tool they need to turn that tantrum around.
*Summary
Alright parents! Now you have a few quick tips to help shorten your kids’ tantrum and hopefully make your day a little bit easier.
But.. let’s review really quickly!
1. Set yourself up for success by establishing a positive communication routine with your child.
If you need the tools for this, you can visit this post here!
2. Give your kid an out by modeling the positive behaviors you want to see and motivating them that they can do it! Kids are easily redirected, you’ll be shocked by how often this can work if done right.
3. If and when appropriate, and their tantrum is nearing the end (only once it’s nearing the end) bring on more positive talk to really just turn their mood around faster!
Of course once your child is done tantruming you need to talk them about how their feeling, what made them upset, what made you upset, and how you can work through it. But if we can do anything to help get you their faster, these three things will surely do that. So give them a try!
And as always, If you have any questions, comments, or ideas please share them in the comments section below with your fellow parents! And definitely subscribe to the newsletter for updates and ongoing happenings at TylekTeaches.com. The subscription link is just on the right hand side of this post. See you there!
Leave a Reply