Taming toddler tantrums

Pre-emptive strikes, diversions help defuse outbursts

Arkansas Democrat-Gazette/DUSTY HIGGINS
Arkansas Democrat-Gazette/DUSTY HIGGINS

Joan Barnes knows the last few minutes before 4-year-old Brody’s computer time ends are the quiet before the storm.

“You can rest assured that if it’s time to get off the computer he will have a meltdown that results in him falling on the floor and saying he does not love this and I’m very ugly,” says Barnes, a North Little Rock mother of three. “He comes up with some doozies for how he expresses the way he feels.”

Temper tantrums are a normal part of everyday life for parents whose youngsters are learning the ways of the world around them.

Barnes, whose other boys are 12 and 14, has dealt with her share of tantrums, but she still feels the sting of embarrassment when her youngest throws a fit in the store checkout line because he has just gotten the news that he can’t have any candy.

Seasoned by bitter experience, she knows how to deal with these outbursts and can step back - which often serves to diffuse his ire and silence his clamor.

“He’ll throw a screaming fit, and he’s laying down on the ground and everybody is watching him. As long as I don’t give him too much attention or say too much to him, he will usually get back up and come with me,” she says.

Megan Kumpe, a pediatric nurse practitioner at Best Start Pediatric Clinic in Springdale, says that’s one of the best strategies for putting the kibosh on a true tantrum.

“You make sure they’re safe and they’re not going to hurt themselves, and then you ignore it,” she says.

“You don’t want to walk away completely, where you can’t see your child, but you can just kind of step back or kind of move them away and just ignore the behavior. What they’re looking for in that moment is for you to give in and give them what they want.”

Sometimes it’s more effective to divert a tantrum before it starts.

“I think a lot of times parents see temper tantrums as intentional, as far as the child trying to be bad,” Kumpe says. “A temper tantrum is often a symptom. There’s a root cause for why the child is acting that way. Are they tired? Are they hungry? Are they frustrated? Are they angry - is it just a true temper tantrum ?”

MISSING WORDS

Prime time for temper tantrums is generally ages 1 to 3, a key period for language development.

“If they want something specifically but they don’t have the word for it yet, that can cause a lot of frustration. That’s really where we see baby sign language coming in helpful. They can learn a few words or phrases - milk, more, up, water, down, hold me,” Kumpe says. “These things are very basic to adults but those are vital words for toddlers and older infants to have.

“If they’re making a sign that they know, you can say, for example, ‘Do you want water?’ And the child can shake his head yes or no. And a lot of times you’ve got a temper tantrum averted because it helps improve their communication skills.”

Opting out of errands as nap- or lunchtime approaches also can avert meltdowns. And distracting a child who is on the verge of an eruption also works, if the timing is right.

PICK YOUR BATTLES

Experts agree that offering rewards or giving in to whatever the child wants to stop a tantrum in its tracks is a dangerous idea. But Erin Welch, a mother in Emerson, has found that giving in to prevent one is not always a bad thing.

She knows the orange sippy cup and the camouflage one are the same sort of cup, for instance, but she also knows that her 4-year-old son, Sawyer, prefers the camo cup.

She wouldn’t expect him to fall on the floor kicking and screaming if he didn’t get his camo cup, and that’s partly why she lets him win that battle. Staying flexible keeps her in control without making her a tyrant, and it helps her son feel he has some power, which consequently helps keep him on his best behavior.

“I don’t want to always be getting on them about something. I feel like that’s one of the things that I can just let him choose for himself. It kind of builds them up, I think, when they can make some decisions for themselves.”

Giving kids choices is indeed a way of preventing tantrums, Kumpe says.

“You can say, ‘Do you want to brush your teeth before bath or after bath?’ Don’t say, ‘Do you want to brush your teeth,’ because that’s going to be, ‘No!’” she says.

Allowing children to make choices is important for lots of reasons, it turns out.

WITHIN LIMITS

Dr. Debbie Cerrato, a pediatrician with a practice in Cabot, points out that a parent’s most basic job is to teach children how to make choices within boundaries.

“Children that have all the choices in the world and no boundaries become very entitled. They don’t respect authority, they don’t respect where their rights end and where someone else’s begin,” she says. “If you go to other end of the spectrum, though, and you’re all about the rules and the boundaries and the child never learns to make a choice, then it’s that proverbial kid that we all knew who was seemingly obedient and their parents were super strict and then the child went off to college and went hog-wild crazy because they were never given a choice and didn’t know how to go through that thought process.”

Making sure children understand that some things are unacceptable in certain circumstances is key to their success in life, says Cerrato, and it’s important to let them know they can make choices, and that they have to live with the consequences of those choices.

Cerrato coined the term “Big Mad” to describe what happened when her now well-adjusted 23-year-old son started behaving badly, especially in public, as a toddler.

“If we would see someone on TV or somebody when we were out - not when we were dealing with it because when they’re in the throes of a temper tantrum they couldn’t care less what you said - we would use these as learning opportunities,” she says. “We needed to get some visual images in his mind of what we meant when we said Big Mad. We’d go, ‘Oh, look, I think he’s having a Big Mad. ’ And then we would make some sort of negative association with it. We would go, ‘Oh, I bet that made his family sad. I bet they’re not going to get to finish their time at the park, or I bet they’re not going to be able to get that ice cream cone they were standing in line for.’”

Cerrato shared her terminology with Heather Wood of Benton. Wood and her son, Michael, 5, have talked about Big Mads for a while now.

HANG ON

While understanding limitations ultimately works to curb tantrums, it is powerless against a full-blown Big Mad. For those, Wood has employed another technique Cerrato used with her son.

“I would sit him down in my lap,” Cerrato says. “I would wrap my legs over the top of his little wiggling legs. I would hug him, where his arms were down. I would move my head to the side because they will head butt you in the mouth as they’re kicking and screaming. And I would refuse to raise my voice and I would be whispering in his ear and I would just do a slow, soothing rock, but my arms were just clamped. It was, ‘You have now lost all of your options.’ I would whisper in his ear over and over that I loved him very much but that he was going to have to calm down.”

This tactic wouldn’t be appropriate for all children, so it’s crucial that parents consider their children’s personalities and needs before trying it, Cerrato cautions. A child with a history of abuse, for example, could be distressed or confused by being held instead of being soothed by it. As with all things parenting, what works in one situation might not work in another, so it’s important that parents think about their children as individuals - who they are rather than who they ought to be.

It was effective for Michael, whose mother finds staying calm while holding a thrashing child to be key in calming her child. As an added benefit, holding Michael tightly sometimes turns a tantrum into a laughing matter.

“He thought his mom was being all crazy and squishing him,” she says.

HOLD THE LINE

Levity aside, laying down limits and following through with a plan is serious business, Cerrato says.

“You have to be ready, if you draw the line in the sand,to stick with it,” Cerrato says. “You have to set boundaries, and then you can’t move them.”

She has witnessed parents in her practice threaten to take away privileges and then not follow through.

“They say, ‘If you get up again, we’re not going to McDonald’s,’ and then the kid gets up again and they say, ‘I mean it, if you get up again we’re not going to McDonald’s.’ There are no boundaries - that’s like moving the wall, and kids need to know where the wall is,” she says.

“You have to be prepared beforehand, and once you set the boundaries you better be doggone sure you’re not going to change those boundaries.You give the kid a couple of choices, because they need to learn how to make a choice, and then you let them learn to live with the consequences. If it’s that you tell them if they get up again they’re not going to get ice cream, if they get up again then they don’t get ice cream.”

Barnes holds fast to the knowledge that when all else fails, staying cool and remaining patient through a tantrum will see her through.

“I don’t like the dirty looks, because nobody’s perfect and everybody knows little kids will freak out every now and then. If I could figure out how to stop the tantrums, I would do it,” she says. “I’m so used to it. I just go along with my business.”

Family, Pages 36 on 04/16/2014

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