The Ultimate Tantrum Tamer

Most of the adults I know have a hard time deal­ing with big emo­tions. Watch me try to par­ent in the gro­cery store and you’ll wit­ness an adult mis­han­dling a vari­ety of feel­ings. Yet we often expect chil­dren to keep it togeth­er under the most demand­ing cir­cum­stances. Their lit­tle brains are still grow­ing though, and the part respon­si­ble for emo­tion­al reg­u­la­tion won’t be ful­ly devel­oped until they reach their mid-twen­ties. So when your child los­es it, he isn’t try­ing to embar­rass you or make you crazy. He sim­ply lacks the skills nec­es­sary to man­age those big feelings.

In addi­tion to reduc­ing ten­sion between adults as dis­cussed in last week’s post, empa­thy is also an effec­tive way to respond to our kids’ tantrums and is cen­tral to teach­ing them to cope with those pesky things we call feelings.

Whether it’s some­thing small like want­i­ng a cook­ie or an earth­shat­ter­ing issue like hav­ing to wait her turn to use the swing, her tantrum is show­ing you that she needs your help. Respond­ing with your own melt­down is coun­ter­pro­duc­tive. It’s like scream­ing at your child, ​“WE DON’T SCREAM HERE!”

There are many caus­es of tantrums and like­wise, many strate­gies for respond­ing to them. Ignor­ing, walk­ing away, putting a child in time-out, or tak­ing away a priv­i­lege are all com­mon respons­es. I’m not here to tell you to stop doing those things, espe­cial­ly if they are work­ing. But if they aren’t, an empa­thet­ic approach can be a game changer.

How to Empathize with a Child When You’d Rather Run Far, Far Away

Empa­thy with kids should be sim­ple, as few words as pos­si­ble. It doesn’t include set­ting lim­its, giv­ing choic­es, crit­i­ciz­ing, or cor­rect­ing. It also doesn’t include swear­ing, beg­ging, or weep­ing, but I’m not here to judge. Lit­er­al­ly and men­tal­ly set aside what­ev­er you’re work­ing on — your phone, the dish­es, the gro­cery cart — these things will wait. Make eye con­tact with your child, get down to his lev­el, and speak calm­ly and qui­et­ly, but try to match his ener­gy so he can hear and see you under­stand­ing his expe­ri­ence. Give your atten­tion to the big feel­ings lurk­ing behind the tantrum behavior.

Empa­thy Examples:

• “You’re mad that she broke your Lego tow­er. Mad is a big feeling!”
• “Your face is like this and your hands are like this (mir­ror child’s body lan­guage). It’s hard to con­tain those big angry feelings!”
• “You feel hurt because she inter­rupt­ed you.”
• “Oh man, pick­ing up is tough. You want to go out­side right now.”

Many par­ents, myself includ­ed, feel tempt­ed to fol­low up with ​“but…” and launch into a lec­ture about how the child is wrong and then start giv­ing them direc­tions or dis­pens­ing con­se­quences. That might be okay for some kids. More often though, this serves to reignite the orig­i­nal explo­sion and before you know it, you’re in round two. Leave it at empa­thy which allows your kid­do to feel under­stood and sit with those big emotions.

Use empa­thet­ic state­ments until you see her vis­i­bly relax; her face and shoul­ders will soft­en. Typ­i­cal­ly, cry­ing will shift from angry and defi­ant to sad as she hears you say­ing what she doesn’t have the words to tell you her­self. She may start to seek phys­i­cal com­fort or be more open to your touch. Dur­ing this phase, your goal is to recon­nect with your child, reas­sure her that she is safe. Ask­ing her fact-based ques­tions – nam­ing ani­mal sounds, solv­ing basic math prob­lems, spelling fun­ny words (hip­popota­mus or ker­fuf­fle are good picks), or list­ing what she had for break­fast – can help to re-engage the ratio­nal part of her brain.

When your child is calm again, that’s the time to talk. You can fig­ure out what she needs to do to repair the sit­u­a­tion and what she can do next time she feels upset. Use ques­tions to redi­rect dur­ing this part though, as a demand­ing or bossy tone will take you right back to square one:

• “I won­der what you can do to fix this?”
• “You were angry she wouldn’t share so you hit her. What do you think you could do next time you feel angry?

Some par­ents wor­ry that using empa­thy dur­ing melt­downs is let­ting kids get away with bad behav­ior. That’s not the case. Chil­dren need to be held account­able for their behav­ior and it is appro­pri­ate to address that once every­one is calm. Empa­thy is about hon­or­ing feel­ings, not cav­ing to the behav­iors caused by them.

When Empa­thy Doesn’t Work

Par­ents often report that their chil­dren get more upset when they start try­ing to use empa­thy. There are a few rea­sons for that:

1. Your child is accus­tomed to peo­ple respond­ing to his behav­ior in cer­tain ways. If you typ­i­cal­ly yell in the face of a tantrum (hey, we’ve all been there!), but you sud­den­ly start chan­nel­ing Moth­er There­sa, it’s going to seem spooky. He may increase the inten­si­ty of his behav­ior to get the old response he’s used to. If that’s the case, empathize with his con­fu­sion. ​“Mom is talk­ing weird, you expect her to yell but she’s being calm and that’s strange.” Don’t give up though, roll with the resistance.
2. Your child may be too esca­lat­ed. If that’s the case, bite your bot­tom lip and be qui­et­ly present. You can say things like, ​“I’m here,” ​“You’re safe,” or ​“I know.” If empa­thy isn’t work­ing, you’re not going to get very far with threats or com­mands either so just being the calm in his storm is fine. If you respond to his melt­down with safe­ty and warmth, you’re show­ing him that you can han­dle his big feel­ings which makes it seem pos­si­ble for him to han­dle them too.

Note: These tips were writ­ten with tod­dlers through pre-teens in mind but you can adapt them for teens as well . Just adjust your words and tone, you know, so you’re not, like, a total dork. 

Using an empa­thet­ic approach with your chil­dren reg­u­lar­ly has an accu­mu­la­tive effect on their emo­tion­al devel­op­ment. You might not see the ben­e­fits right away, but over time you will begin to see them label and work through their pow­er­ful feel­ings with few­er outbursts.

A bit of val­i­da­tion though: It is not pos­si­ble to be empa­thet­ic with your child every moment of every day. You are going to do it wrong, for­get to do it, and just plain lose your cool from time to time.

It’s okay, par­ent­ing is hard and you have big feel­ings too.

Until next week,

Nik­ki

*The con­tent of this blog should not be con­sid­ered an alter­na­tive to qual­i­ty men­tal health care and is intend­ed to be a source of infor­ma­tion only.