Speaker 1Hello and welcome to the How Not to Screw Up Your Kids podcast. So, pour yourself a cuppa, find a comfy seat and enjoy the conversation. Today's episode, Diffusing Tantrums Without Losing It, is all about how we tackle those inevitable moments that happens to all of us, every single one of us it happens, when our children, I don't know, figure of speech, lose the plot, or their emotions get the better of them, or they feel debilitatingly overwhelmed by their feelings in a given moment. Now, we might typically think of tantrums with those sort of the really young years, you know, those sort of toddler tantrum type situations, but the reality is that this can happen to any child at any age and any stage. In fact, I would almost argue that it can happen to us as parents too. So, I know that this is a big one, generally speaking, whenever I do any podcast episodes that talk about managing big emotions, or emotions just generally, they end up being the episodes that are the most often downloaded. So, I feel like I could do this regularly and you would still get a nugget of something new that would help your child. So, I think the first thing that's really important to state is that this happens to everybody. Everyone does. And so, if your child seems to be doing this regularly, particularly when this happens publicly, I think that's, there's a lot of shame that we attach to ourselves and maybe that sort of fear of judgment when our child just gets overwhelmed by their emotions in a public space. And I think if we can kind of take from this episode, the notion that it, just because it's happening to you publicly, it doesn't necessarily mean that no one else is having the same struggle. Some children do sort of hold on to things in a public setting, and then the explosions happen at home. So, first of all, just take it that this is happening to everybody. And I want to sort of tackle it with three threads, really. It's, you know, why do they, why might they be happening in the first place? Because I think a lot of the time is that we, if we understand why it might be happening in the first place, there may well be sort of measures that we can put in place. help our child so that they don't even get to that point so why they happen is a really helpful thing to do and I like to focus in on this notion of us equipping our children with skills so if we know when we look at why this happens for some children we can then scaffold those skills rather than being focused on I have this specific problem what do I do is this a whole idea of looking at the skills gap we want so the first thing is you know why do they happen how can we potentially prevent them and then what can we do to manage them in the moment because they're going to happen and being equipped is super helpful you know being forewarned is forearmed so it's that sort of that sort of notion so my hope is that if we start with understanding why they happen and then putting in place as many factors that we can to avoid them in the first place you can understand why they happen and then putting in place as many factors that we can to avoid them in the first place you can that they were given at birth to their developmental age. So when I talk about why this might be happening, don't automatically assume that I'm talking about a young child. It's just simply what stage of development is your child. So why do they happen? One of the classic reasons why we get these big tantrums is that our children find it difficult to communicate their needs, whether that's emotional, it's their emotional needs, but also their language. So they haven't yet developed that. So you might instinctively think, oh, well, Mary-Anne's talking about toddlers and really young children, preschool children. But that isn't the case. You can have a 16-year-old who has difficulty communicating their needs. For those of you who have got a 16-year-old, this will resonate. You will know that because some children, some teens, some young adults, some adults even, don't communicate their needs. So really think about this as a stage, not specifically an age. So they may well happen because you have a child who struggles to communicate their needs emotionally. So they don't have that emotional vocabulary. They're not used to using emotional vocabulary. They can't label their emotions. And then they can't, they don't have the language skills, not that they can't speak, but they don't have the language skills to communicate and say, this is what I'm feeling. I'm feeling like I'm in a situation where I'm not able to communicate my needs. So I'm not feeling overwhelmed. I'm feeling really angry and frustrated. And they can't communicate that directly to you. So think about that. So if we've got a 16-year-old, if we've got a three-year-old, whatever age our child is in the stage that they're at, and this resonates with us about them not being able to communicate their needs, then that becomes a skills gap, whether that's a young child or whether that's an older child. And then that gives us a real focus in the background. We're understanding, right, this is happening because this skills gap needs to be filled. I still need the help, Mary-Anne, in terms of how I manage it in the moment, but I now understand what skills I need to focus on building. So that's one of the reasons why it happens. Another reason why it may well happen is our children wanting a sense of autonomy, wanting a sense of agency, wanting a sense of control. So, you know, children want to be able to feel like they're making their own choices. Again, any agency. And for some children, this need for autonomy and control and agency starts really, really young. Others, it's later on. But it is something which all children will want at some point because fundamentally, you know, we're working reverse engineering. We're working with the end in mind. Our children fundamentally want to have a certain element of independence from us. And so it may well be that we're seeing these huge tantrums as a result of a child's feeling constantly suppressed and not feeling that they have any agency or impact on what's happening in their lives or any sense of control. So it can be control. So think for your particular child, if you're seeing these tantrums regularly, does that resonate? Are you, like me, a control enthusiast who's reflecting on this and thinking, yeah, I do tell my children often that they need to do this and this. And actually, I'm not going to do that. I'm going to do that. And actually, I wonder if I could relinquish some of that control and give my children more choices. And the choices, obviously, are still within the parameters of what we would like them to do. But we're giving them a sense of that agency. So the difficulty communicating their needs, wanting control, it can be learnt behaviour. So this idea it's been a conditioned response, which they've learnt and they've learnt that it works for them because either they get their own way or they get their own way. And so I think it's a good idea to think about that. And I think it's a good idea to think about that. And I think to avoid an unpleasant situation or a situation that they feel fearful of, or they get the attention they crave. Now, quite often people will say, oh, that's just attention seeking. My argument with the attention seeking is, OK, that may well be the case, but that's telling you something. The fact that a child feels that they need to play up, act up, have a tantrum, they're giving a window, they're giving, there's a lens into their world. And so rather than see it as a discipline, behavioural issue, I would encourage you to try and look behind the behaviour and think, what need is being unmet here? What is it that my child is trying to communicate to me about what's going on in their world that I can then begin to scaffold the skill or change the way that I'm responding because now I understand a little bit more about what they're going through. So think of those times that you've conceded maybe to something. When we go back to this idea about behaviour, think of those times that we've conceded to something because our child has had a full on meltdown, particularly in public. And to avoid a scene, we've simply said yes. So being aware of the triggers may help us combat this. And we'll talk about more of this in a minute. But if it's a learnt behaviour, I think that's where we have to sort of reflect on, could it be learnt? What are the instances that they've had tantrums and how have we typically responded to that? And then we can then look at unravelling it. And the last one in terms of why they happen, and this isn't an exhaustive list, but these are the most common, the four most common reasons why they happen is that it could just simply be that you've got a child who finds it difficult to manage their emotions. And sometimes we refer to this as emotional dysregulation. In other words, what happens is that they experience an emotion and they don't yet have the skills within them to be able to identify the emotion and then to choose an appropriate response. So again, we'll talk more about how we can then scaffold and support if that's the case. But again, if you've got a child finding it difficult to manage their emotions, again, regardless of their age, then the skill that we're scaffolding here is around their emotional literacy, their emotional understanding and us being able to help them when they're feeling emotionally dysregulated by us being emotionally regulated. So we provide that container to help them transition through it rather than trading their emotion and trying to sort of take it away from them because to get rid of that discomfort. All children need to experience and understand that emotions are a transitory state. They experience it for a small or a period of time. Small is probably the wrong word, but all emotions are experienced for a period of time. They come and they go. If we take those emotions away by trying to pacify, our child in the moment, they don't learn that emotions are transitory. And instead, we inadvertently teach them that emotions are things that you want to avoid at all costs and or I'm the person that's going to remove them for you. So those are the reasons why they might happen. So let's look at how we might prevent them. So I really think the work that we do here, the time that we spend around the preventative piece, which is really, really important in education piece, can have a massive difference to the outcomes and the reduction of meltdowns. So some of these suggestions will be really super, super easy for you to implement. Others are going to take you some time and to be honest with you, a huge amount of effort from us. They're going to be time consuming, but they are so, so worth it. So just think of how much time, just as a sort of to help you put this into perspective, think about how much of your time you already have to spend and invest in dealing with those tantrums in those moments. And instead, what I'm asking you to do is you're obviously, when we're starting the work on prevention, you are going to also be dealing with the tantrums in the moment because it's not, we're not going to get quick fixes immediately. So it is going to initially require a huge amount of work from you. But the more we do on the preventative piece, the less we will end up having to do in the managing in the moment piece. So it's a hundred percent worth it. So let me talk you through, I'm going to talk you through quite a few here. So the first one is in terms of how do we prevent them is we want to teach our children and equip them with the skills to communicate their basic needs. I'm feeling this, I need this. So for pre-language children, or children who are still in those early stages of communication, the research has shown that if they are equipped with basic sign language, so language that allows them to communicate they're hungry, they're tired, they need a nappy change, they're thirsty, just basic needs, nothing overly complicated. What we've, what the research has found is that that significantly reduces the incidences of toddler tantrums. So if you've got a child whose language is not yet, so it's to do with the amount, the words that they're able to use, then teaching sign can be super, super effective as well as teaching them, you know, and having conversations with them. So that's what we can do for our very young children. Beyond that age, it's about us teaching our children ways to communicate their needs effectively. So it will come from this idea of, you know, I can see that you, I wonder if you might be feeling this, you I understand that that might be really frustrating and that can be really difficult sometimes to communicate that. And then it, so we're acknowledging emotions on a regular basis and we're beginning to equip them with the vocabulary that they need. But it's also when we're talking about this teaching bit for our older children, remember age and stage, it's also about us modelling and almost narrating as we experience emotions, as we work through our own emotions themselves. It can be really powerful to be doing that for them as well, because children are much more likely to do what they see than what we say. So we want to teach effective ways to communicate. If you're listening to this and you've got a teenager, you've got a 15, 16, 17 year old, a younger teen who is just simply not communicating. They're just, maybe they've always been that way, or maybe you found as they've transitioned into these older years, they've communicated less and less. With these children, teaching them effective ways to communicate is not going to be the same as a younger child where we're sort of really being super instructive and in those moments having long conversations around emotions or building activities and resources around emotions. With our older teens, it's much more around acknowledging the lens that they might be experiencing life through at opportunities that present themselves rather than us contriving. Older children and older teens who struggle with their emotions do not want us to sit down and have a long lecture with them about, well, you seem to get really angry and you always seem to do X and you explode. And then it creates all of these challenges within the home. It's much more about where those moments arise, just acknowledging, even if they've not necessarily said anything and they've come back from school, for example, and they're exhausted. It's just like, it must be really difficult having to kind of put on that smiley, happy face all day. At school when sometimes you're just not feeling it. So it's those moments you're teaching effective ways to communicate by just acknowledging how they might be experiencing the world based on the knowledge that you have of what they might be going through. So that's the first one in terms of how we can prevent it is equip them with that. The second one is becoming aware of the triggers. And this often happens really from just being having a bit of a reflective process of just observation initially, and then putting things in place. So we want to fundamentally when we're talking about triggers is anticipating the triggers for each of our children, and they'll be different, and modifying things to make it easier. So for example, if you have a child who finds doing homework challenging or going to bed particularly difficult, it may be that doing homework is an organisational task difficulty thing, which is triggered when we ask them to sit down and do it. So instead, modifying the trigger by maybe scaffolding the process of doing homework might take that away. So we might help them get the task out, understand what is being asked of them, talking through how they might get started, and then leaving them to complete it. So these are the children, for example, where we think, goodness me, homework is such a battle. But it may not be the homework itself. It may just simply be, do you know what? You're telling me that I need to do homework when I don't even know how to start, because I find that process of organising my thoughts or reading, looking at what's being asked for me, that process of starting it is where my trigger is. Whereas actually, when I know what I'm doing, I can crack on with it. So it's understanding that the trigger is that lead-in bit rather than the homework itself. So for example, if you've got a child where there seem to be triggers around going to bed, and this idea of like, you know, come on, it's bedtime, that might trigger a meltdown, because maybe it's not the bedtime that's the issue. It could be that your child finds the transition from doing what they are enjoying downstairs to being alone in their room, or transitioning away from a super busy brain that won't keep quiet about things that have happened during the day. So helping them to separate from us, maybe, and that transition or quietening their busy brain will then transition, will then reduce their meltdowns. So it's really thinking about, rather than looking at the big piece, so, you know, I've got a child who has a complete meltdown when I ask them to come off their device. I have a child who has a complete meltdown if I ask them to put on their shoes. I have a child who has a complete meltdown if I ask them to do their homework or ask them to help around the house. Try and step back from the actual request and the task itself, and ask yourself, what is it about me asking them to help out, me asking them to put on their shoes, me asking them to go to bed or come to the table, or me saying no that is sparking this? Because it won't necessarily be exactly what you expected. There'll be something nuanced within that that will be leading it. So being aware of those triggers doesn't mean we're then going to, you know, stop asking our children to help out around the house, or we're going to stop asking our children to put their shoes on, or go to bed, or do their homework. Absolutely not. But we, might be able to modify the way we make that request, which responds to the underlying unmet need that is triggering it in the first place. The third one is just giving your child plenty of positive attention. So this idea about descriptive praise, you know, I like the way you say thank you when you get a snack. I saw you sharing your toy with your sister, and that was really kind. I noticed that you got stressed out. I noticed that you got stressed on with your homework tonight, even though you had a long day at school. So describe descriptive praise is about finding those moments where we say what we see and that's really great because that all children love praise don't we all adults love praise too and when we focus on the competency and the skill that we have seen them execute so their behavior rather than the outcome that acknowledges them and also rather than us lecturing about what we want them to do more regularly we give them that information by doing it and particularly if you've got a child who's really struggling with big emotions who tantrums regularly by doing that descriptive praise piece what happens is we are filling that skills gap we're teaching them about you know effective ways to express their needs because we're praising them and using that language so that can be really really helpful as well as giving your children choices where you can but within the parameters of what we fundamentally the boundaries with which we want our children to live by remember if we go back to this idea about why they might be happening in the first place if our children feel that they have no sense of agency and no sense of control then by giving them choices where we can then that helps them feel that they've got some impact some agency some autonomy over their lives the fourth one is about thinking carefully i say this with love thinking carefully before answering your child's request i say this as we often find ourselves in that saying no to something instantly and creating a battle which we afterwards might think about god was that worth the battle so when we're juggling multiple things and we're trying to get i don't know we're trying to get one child's shoe on we're trying to make sure that we're fully dressed to leave the house we want to try and make sure that our children have had their breakfast and then our child makes a request we can find ourselves going into that auto nope we haven't got time no we're not going to do that no you can't do this not because we always necessarily even want to say no if we had more time we may make a different response so it's about when we're juggling multiple things it can be tempting to just respond to our child as it's just that one thing that we can get off our to-do list or they're nagging or we just want to sit it down so give yourself permission to think say i hear what you've said i hear what you've asked i'm going to finish what i'm doing and then i can give you my undivided attention because that way we can really respond to what they're asking rather than find ourselves an autopilot now you may find that your children will say as my children used to say quite often it's like oh that just means you're going to say no anyway and it's i think it's important when they say that that we just say i'm not saying that i'm going to say no i'm just simply saying that at the moment i am doing lots of different things and i can't really the attention that your request or your ask merits so i need to finish this so i can then give you my undivided attention and then consider what my response might be and it may well be that you'll still say no but it's a really great exercise for our children to i answer you know to understand this notion of a i don't have to respond to super quickly if we think about the the sort of the proliferation of tech and children's desires for instant answers instant gratification notification that are constantly coming up and requiring them to make an immediate response by us saying do you know i'm just going to press pause on that request because i'm going to deal with this we're modeling some really great qualities for them later on to be able to call upon that is all about actually i'm just going to take i'm going to consider this for a moment now this can be difficult for younger children because younger children are very much in the moment i mean all children are in the moment but with really really young children it can be super super difficult it is however really worth persevering with because it teaches them to delay that sense of gratification and it also gives us a sense of pause and allowing us to then respond in the way that we want to to that request number five is about knowing your child's limits so that we don't over request from them and we don't over expect them to behave in a particular way in a given situation so knowing their limits in terms of their resources knowing their limits in terms of attention knowing their limits in terms of them being able to regulate and manage their emotions and across all of those sort of different situations so that what we do where we can is we don't set our children up to fail and don't put them into situations that they are not going to be able to manage because it's you know their bucket is already full and then we're asking something from them that is just too much now that really is a case of experience but usually we begin to pick up i can see in my child's pattern of behavior that actually me doing this one other thing is just going to tip them over the edge now that isn't knowing our children's limits doesn't necessarily mean that we're not that we're always going to be able to say actually i don't i'm not to do this particular thing because my child's at capacity because sometimes they have to just get in the car because we have to go and pick up their their sister from nursery or preschool or we've got to take the other sibling to a party and i've just we've just got to bundle them all up together sometimes we just can't do that but if we know our child's limits and we're able to plan a little bit with our day we can potentially find opportunities for them to recharge to decompress so that we are less likely for that bucket to overfill and then we get this overwhelm of emotions that they then can't manage and can't regulate and then the final one as you would expect and i've sort of alluded to this anyway is about modeling this calm regulated and it's not about being controlled or controlling but it's about being aware that our children are looking at us to demonstrate how do we manage these big overwhelming feelings so where possible it's making sure that we model and we show up in a regulated way and we can only do that if we have intentionally made sure that we have been able to empty our own stress bucket that we have been able to take care of ourselves so that we're then able to take care of our children so these are the things in terms of you know why do they happen how do we prevent them now we can move on to how do we manage them in the moment now when it comes to how we manage those tantrums those overwhelming big emotions in the moment we want to remember first and foremost that we're responding to the behavior behind the emotion remember the four typical reasons why children or teens may have tantrums and meltdowns in the first place so there's you know that we've talked about before this idea that you know it could be difficulty communicating their needs wanting control it could be learned behavior it could be difficulties just managing their emotions and being dysregulated so by responding to the emotion behind the behavior we're much more likely to come out with a more positive outcome so do not respond to their big emotions and behavior with big emotions and behavior yourself because it's literally like pouring petrol onto an already burning fire whatever teachable moments there are and consequences the heat of the moment is not the time to go through all of that remember that you know when our children are in a tantrum whatever age they are they are operating from their back brain their emotional brain their logic problem solving decision making rational thinking happens in the front brain so trying to respond with with front brain language to a child who is in a tantrum is not the time to go through all of that it's not the time to respond with with front brain language to a child who's in back brain is is a is a recipe for for just an absolute disaster so try and resist and instead we're focusing in on that we can always have that conversation afterwards our top priority in that moment is to calm the situation and in my views sometimes that might mean that we need a quick win yeah so it may be that a quick win in essence for me is something that manages to diffuse the situation very quickly but doesn't necessarily equip our children with any skills and sometimes we just got to do that I wouldn't recommend we do this all of the time because my first the quick win can sometimes be that distraction can work wonders but distraction is a way of trading our children's emotions for so when we're not allowing them to fully experience those emotions so I wouldn't recommend that you do that all of the time but sometimes distraction can be absolutely brilliant and can be in that moment absolutely what what is helpful to do I just wouldn't encourage you to do that on a regular basis so that's number one that's one of the things that we can do to manage the situation in the moment so the second one is about ignoring the behavior if the behavior is vying for your attention and trying to pull you in to something that is then going to trigger something explosive and And so it's about trying to diffuse. use that situation in that moment. So now there are some parenting books or advice that talks about you remove the child. Now, I personally am not a big fan of that. I think it's much more about removing yourself. So when a child is feeling massively overwhelmed, what is really important is that we help contain that. And containing is not about putting them somewhere where they just get on with it. Containing is much more about this experience of I'm here. I love you. We're going to work through this. I know this emotion feels huge. Just know that you're loved and that I'm here with you and we'll get through this. So that's what I mean about containment is allowing the child to understand that they don't have to experience this big emotion on their own. You're not going to concede to anything that they particularly wanted. You're not going to rise to bait that is so that their explosion pulls you in and you get this massive vortex of just huge explosive behavior. It's much more the containment is about I'm here with you and we're going to work through this together. Because when a child is experiencing a huge emotion and remember, you know, what causes it is an inability to communicate their needs. By removing your child onto a naughty step or removing them and putting them into their bedroom to consider their actions or their behavior, you're really leaving a very vulnerable child who doesn't quite know what to do with these enormous feelings that they've got. And that can only exacerbate things. So yes, you might have a child who's kicking, punching, screaming, just hugely volatile. So you're not necessarily holding them, but you are helping them know that you are there for them and that they're loved and they're accepted and that this feeling will pass and you're there. That's such a big part of helping our children manage them in that moment. And we use very little language so that they just can feel and know that we're there. And that's why it's really important that we are level in our language, that we're not getting frustrated with them, that we just keep reiterating I'm here I love you, this will pass. So we continue that. So that's another aspect of the how do we deal with it in the moment. We can do all of the scaffolding a bit afterwards, but that's what we can do. Now, if you are in a public place and you don't feel brave enough, and I say that brave enough because the bravery here is about that fear of judgment. And there are, I have been in many a supermarket and I have watched a parent brave it out, have been sort of like, you know, allowing that child to have that complete screaming as they've just been happily continuing to do their shopping, allowing that child to work through that. But I know that a lot of us as parents feel that we can't do that because of this fear of judgment and this sort of idea of like, how dare that parent, such a bad parent, because they're letting their child scream. But when I've seen it, I've given that parent a smile and a, you know, to know that they're, you know, to go recognised rather than feeling judged, to know that they're supported, to know that they can feel that another human understands what they're going through. So if you don't feel that you can, because you're feeling that you're being judged by others, then with little words, use few, as few words as you can, don't go into logical brain, don't try and rationalise, but with as few words as you can, remove your child and yourself from that situation as soon as is possible. Remember, we don't want to reinforce the behaviour by giving it attention. So it becomes this learnt, you know, I have a tantrum and therefore I get what I want. Even negative attention, remember, can, you know, can reinforce a pattern of behaviour and entering into these sort of negotiations. So we use few words, we remove our child from that situation. We then provide the containment somewhere else, that containment, that containment may well be in our car, that containment may well be outside the supermarket, the containment might be in, to the side of the playground, if that's happening there, whatever it is, we provide that, and then we can have a discussion around the situation. But we're not trying to negotiate, we're not trying to reinforce that attention that's being demanded in that situation, because what we're trying to do is diminish that, if it's become a learnt pattern of, this is what I do in order to get what I need. And it's afterwards that we have that discussion, if necessary, and we always praise them as they begin to take that, go from that hugely dysregulated to then being able to feel calmer, and then be able to communicate their needs. You know, I'm really impressed with the way, you know, that was a really big feeling that you had there, and you, and I could see that you were really trying, that when you knew that I was here and that you were cared for, that you were then able to manage those big emotions and make different choices with your behaviour. So there's a, this is a big topic, so there's lots of pieces here. So my recommendation in terms of how you tackle it is, of course, how you manage it in the moment is probably what you need right now, because you're living and breathing this, but also reflect back on the why they happen, and look at the skills gaps that your child might have, so that you can prevent them in the first place, and build that into, as much as you can, into teachable moments, particularly for our older children, and also, you know, specifically teachable moments that you can sit down to do with your, with your younger children about that education piece. So I hope that that has been helpful in terms of giving you a framework for how you tackle that. Now, as ever, if you have enjoyed this episode, if you enjoy listening to the podcast, I would love it if you could follow, rate, and review this podcast so that others can find us, and we can spread the love. So, until next time.
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