If ten strangers were in a room with you and your toddler and your toddler happened to have a temper tantrum, you would probably get ten different pieces of advice on how to respond to your wailing, flailing child. Some of the advice you might hear would probably sound too harsh while other suggestions might seem too lenient. As with parenting advice about any topic, the best thing that you could do in such a situation would be to choose the approach that seems to best fit your family and your child.
As a part of my never ending quest to explore the emotional life of toddlers, I have come across a book that resonates with me like no other that I have read. I am mentioning it here not because I think that it is how every parent should raise every child, but because it just might be as relevant for you and your family as it is for me and mine.
The book is called “Raising Our Children, Raising Ourselves: Transforming parent-child relationships from reaction and struggle to freedom, power, and joy” and it is written by Naomi Aldort. The principles in the book can be applied to relationships with any child, from babies to teens. Since I’m talking about toddler tantrums today, I should mention some of the advice that the author offers on that subject.
As much as we want to compensate, distract, or otherwise stop our toddler’s tantrum, Aldort encourages us to try a different approach. If we begin with the premise that a tantrum is a valid way to express intense, pent – up emotions and that it is actually a form of healing, we can understand that stopping a tantrum through coercion, compensation, or distraction does not allow that healing to take place. When your toddler begins to have a tantrum, make a mental note of how you feel about it instead of immediately reacting out of anxiety or anger. Then, focus your attention on your child. Stay near him and let him know that if he has something to say, you are listening. As you listen, validate your child’s feelings by expressing understanding about how he feels. You may be surprised to find that often, the tantrum was not really about what you thought it was about – for example, your child may have pitched a fit when you tried to dress her this morning. It could have nothing to do with whether she likes the clothes. As she screams and cries, she may tell you through the sniffles and the tears that she wants to make decisions for herself and she gets mad when you don’t let her do that. By the time that the tantrum has run its course, your toddler feels understood and loved and you have gained important insight into the emotions that drove your toddler to have the tantrum as well as whether there is anything that you can do to prevent tantrums over that particular issue in the future.