HOW TO DEAL WITH TODDLER TANTRUMS

hi everyone I'm a Dean and welcome to playful pathways today I want to talk about something that anyone who's cared for children has had to deal with tantrums now these are most common in the toddler years but they can still happen even to older children if they're really overstimulated or emotionally overwhelmed by something so I'm going to explain a bit about what a tantrum is how to deal with them in the moment and how to work towards preventing them in the future a tantrum usually begins when a child is feeling emotionally triggered or overwhelmed so this could be by anger or fear or frustration or disappointment or even hunger or tiredness until the age of two children don't have the ability to control or regulate their emotions the part of the brain that can do this is the same part that controls language and logic and loves learning and it's only just beginning to develop and be wired up in the toddler years so when emotions become too powerful this logical part of the brain can easily go offline and the child can become totally overwhelmed by all these big unruly and uncontained feelings this is a tantrum when this happens you aren't dealing with a rational and communicative human being you're actually dealing with a completely dysregulated and emotionally overloaded animal the part of their brain that can really think about what they're doing or saying or understand what you're saying just isn't available to them so there's not much consciousness or planning that's why they might be on the floor kicking or screaming or doing all sorts of illogical things over what you think is just the smallest of provocations now the tricky part about being an adult dealing with a child in this state is that it can be really emotionally triggering for us too when your child is having a tantrum and they've completely lost control of their emotions it's really difficult for you to stay in control of your emotions and then we've got to dysregulated people clashing with each other this can easily lead to a downward spiral where parent starts shouting things like stop that right now which your child's illogical emotional brain can interpret as threatening this can then trigger those fight flight freeze or fall asleep responses which means that your child might end up punching or kicking or running away or even hiding under things now obviously once it gets to this point it is so much harder for everyone to calm down reregulate and return to their reasonable human selves so how do we avoid this worst case scenario so my first piece of advice is that when you see a child starting to lose control the first thing you need to do is make sure that you've got a really firm grip on your rational logical human brain the very act of acknowledging that you can feel yourself slipping is often enough but if it's not by all means take a few breaths or step away from the situation for a few minutes if you need to because it's only by first helping yourself to stay calm and regulated that you'll have any chance of helping them to re-regulate the next thing you're going to do is try to make an emotional connection with your child but be careful that you're not being too big or too loud in your approach you want to get download to your child's level or lower and get slow and quiet as you try and make this connection with them now making this emotional connection with them doesn't necessarily mean that you're going to be making a physical connection with them yet your child may not be ready for you to be sitting so close to them or touching them at this point so if they tell you with their body or with their words that they want some space then give them that if your child is kicking or hitting at this point it's really important that you set the boundary that this is not okay I am NOT for hitting but if you can offer a redirect to something that is acceptable so you might say I can see that you're so angry you want to hit something but I am NOT for hitting if you need to you can hit that cushion over there after this empathize and help them to feel loved and understood if you know the gist of what's triggered the tantrum then you can help them to understand it themselves by talking about what you've seen and heard you might say some like I can see that you're really disappointed right now because you hadn't wanted your cern wood to cut into squares but i cut it into triangles and that made you feel really cross because i didn't do it the way that you wanted me to give them the words that I don't have in that moment to understand and express what it is that they're feeling it's a bit of a practice skill but if you can get the hang of it it's really worth it because it's often that feeling of being overwhelmed by feelings that we don't understand or not having others understand us that can lead to a tantrum so connect with your child using a few empathetic words but not too many try to get close to them if you can and mirror your body to theirs so that means copy what they're doing with their body even if they can't understand what you're saying remember the language part of their brains may not be functioning very well at this point they'll still be able to see that you're trying to understand them you're physically trying to see the world from their perspective you can give your child a hug if they'll let you and once they start to find words and use them again repeat them or reflect them back to them so that they understand you're really listening once they're beginning to calm down and return to themselves then you can begin to talk more and try to build a picture of what actually happened it's really common that after a period of dysregulation children actually don't remember what's happened because the logical part of the brain is the same part of the brain that stores short-term memory and that is usually out of action in a tantrum a great way to begin this process of understanding especially with toddlers is to tell the story of what happened you can start off the story by saying what you saw so I was making a sandwich and I thought I would make it into triangles because that's what you had wanted yesterday but I didn't ask you if you wanted squares or triangles I just presumed it would be triangles but then you saw your sandwich and actually you had wanted the squares today but I didn't know that and this made you really cross and disappointed after this make sure that you leave space for your child to contribute their experiences or to correct your guesses about what they're feeling or about what triggered the tantrum in the first place this conversation doesn't have to last long just a couple minutes might do the trick without these kinds of debriefs it's really easy for your child to walk away with a bit of an emotional hangover because they've just been through this deluge of feelings and they can't make sense of them or understand why they arose you can help your child to put the whole scenario into a logical order in their brain which will help them to stay in control and learn from the experience once they've done this once they understand what happened then you can talk about behavior and consequences if they're applicable now I've mostly been talking about young children here but really this can happen to any of us at any age if your child hasn't slept well or eaten well or if there's been a lot of change or they've been really overstimulated then they might be more easily triggered the more we support children during their early development the better we need to give them the words to understand their thoughts feelings and experiences so that they can stay in control and reregulate more easily hopefully after some time you will get to the point where you can sense when you're approaching a danger zone and you can get in there with a few quick empathetic words and hug and it will all be over before it starts there was a lot to take in there and I hope you found it useful if you'd like to know a bit more about the brain and why it is that toddlers have tantrums then have a look at the other video on this subject or if you'd like to download my guide to remembering these points then head to my patreon page where patrons can download this and other resources finally if you like my videos then please press subscribe and have a look at the others on my channel thanks for watching and hopefully I will see you soon bye

Channel: Playful Pathways

Views: 39,647

Keywords: play, playful pathways, aideen, aideen mccartney, children, parenting, parenting advice, playful parenting, parenting tips, family, play therapy, play therapist, vlog, video blog, kids, creative ideas for kids, creative play, tantrums, behaviour, discipline, toddler tantrums, how to stop tantrums, why tantrums, disciplining toddlers, behaviour management, TODDLERS

Id: LBp9f7hllU0

Length: 8min 9sec (489 seconds)

Published: Thu Jun 21 2018