How to help children deal with overwhelming emotions

This post was one of the first I ever wrote on The Awakened Parent, back when it was known as Free Your Parenting.  I found it recently as it’s been Pinned on Pinterest and been linked to from there. Happily for me, I have found it a really helpful reminder as it’s certainly something I’d let slip a little with one of my children, so I thought it might be useful to re-post it with a more accurate title. Enjoy!

Ann writes: I would really welcome your input. I’d love to know what I can do to help my five year old daughter who cries about every little thing. She’s a really lovely caring little girl but I despair that the minutiae of daily life can bring her to tears. Her socks, the way I do her hair, even the odd numbers being left out when counting in two’s can leave her inconsolable. I really feel for her and try to rationalise that the little things are of  so little consequence  but my little girl doesn’t seem to want to be comforted. How can I help her “go with the flow” a bit more?

Hello Ann

Oh gosh, I can really sympathise with this! Sensitive children can be very frustrating to parent at times. Something I’ve learnt in my struggle to understand my sensitive child, is that what makes her so caring and loving is the same thing that makes her so easily upset by things that, to me, seem so little and unimportant. That fine-tuned perception of other people’s feelings often goes hand-in-hand with heightened emotions – ‘highly strung’ would be a common description of such children (and adults!).

A couple of thoughts spring to mind when it comes to your little girl. Firstly, by reminding yourself that the things that seem inconsequential to you, are clearly not so to her, you may find it easier to empathise with her. Her feelings about her out-of-place hair are as real and overwhelming as your feelings might be about going to an important meeting with your lipstick smeared across your face. Except that you have the maturity and experience to be able to put your feelings to one side for long enough to try to rectify the situation. Your little girl is too young to be able to do that, and needs you to hold her feelings for her. And that means accepting them, which I’m sure you are trying to do anyway. But if someone said to you: ‘Your lipstick really isn’t important, stop worrying about it!’ but all you could think about was what a twit you must look, and you had to spend the whole meeting suppressing the feeling of embarrassment, it wouldn’t make you feel any better, and might make you feel stupid, even

Trying to rationalise a child’s feelings when they’re in the midst of them is rarely helpful, because they’re so caught up in them that they can’t think logically. I would suggest that she might find it helpful when she gets so upset if you can just hold her, or be with her, and remind her you love her, until her emotions are calmed enough for her to work out how to fix it herself

Secondly, children can be very frightened by the power of their emotions. There is a brilliant children’s book we have called ‘Angry Arthur’, by Hiawyn Oram. Arthur loses his temper because he’s not allowed to watch tv, and his anger breaks up his bedroom, his house, his street, and so on until eventually he’s floating in space on his bed having destroyed the universe and wondering what made him so angry in the first place. When we let children’s strong emotions dictate how we behave, I think it can frighten them and make their emotions even more overwhelming for them because they think their emotions have power over you: the adult who is meant to be their stable rock. I’m not suggesting that we never change our minds when children produce a good calm argument as to why we should, or that we shouldn’t offer help when it’s needed, but it may be that doing it in response to an emotional meltdown doesn’t help the child learn how to manage her emotions and may simply make her feel frightened of how powerful her emotions are. If she senses that she upsets you as well when she gets upset, then she has that to worry about as well

It may help your little girl if, when she gets disproportionately upset about something, you focus first on helping her to deal with her emotions, which have taken over, in her subconscious, as the primary problem; and then, when she’s calmer, help her to work out whatever it was that triggered those big feelings

You may find that if you can see yourself as her emotional mentor – being there whenever you can to absorb some of her pain while she’s too young to dissipate it on her own – that she gradually starts to find her own ways of managing her emotions without suppressing them, and without letting them hurt anyone – herself or others.

Emotional first aid for parents

I get inspiration for my posts from many places. Sometimes it’s from reading the news, or reading parenting blogs or forums. Sometimes it’s from conversations with other parents, and others from my own life. Most times, whatever it is that triggered the initial thought, I find that the same themes emerge from everywhere parents talk and share.

However, I often find myself admiring other parents for their apparent unflappability; how amazingly calm they are. I know many parents who I simply can’t imagine ever shouting at their children, or feeling despairing.

And yet, and yet…well, we all know that the parent who never loses it is a very, very rare species, if one that even exists at all. Maybe parents who are fortunate enough to live in more natural communities, where there is less isolation, and less pressure on parents to be the sole carers for their children?

But here, in the West, where we parent on our own, compare ourselves to other parents, compare our children to other children; where we ‘lie’ about how easy we find parenting, if not overtly, then by omission – by simply not being honest about how bloody hard it is to keep your temper with your children at times? No, I don’t think the perpetually calm parent exists in our culture.

I’m not blaming parents for not telling the world and his wife how many times they shouted at their children today – who wants to even remember the shitty parts of the day, let alone relive it in all it’s gory details? Add a good dose of good old parental guilt into the mix and you have some pretty compelling reasons not to share how badly we’ve behaved as parents.

However, what would you say if another parent told you about their shitty day; about how they had to walk into the next room and scream into a cushion to stop them hitting their children; about how they screamed at their children, swearing and raging?

I know some parents are so ashamed of their own losses of temper that they pretend to themselves that they would never do that, and would somehow manage to react shocked at a ‘less’ perfect parent: shocked with a light dusting of smugness.

The parents I like most are the ones who breathe an inner sigh of relief that they’ve just discovered they’re not the only ones who screw up from time to time; the ones who offer a hug, kind words and the reminder that all we can do as parents is to apologise, dust ourselves off and start again. Are you one of these parents?

Whichever type of parent you are, today I offer you this: an emotional first-aid kit. With the awareness that very little can be solved by out-of-control emotions, but very much can be solved by harnessing the power of strong feelings, I want to share some of the tools I have learned to use to minimise major screw-ups in our family, and I’d love it if you could add yours in the comments. I’ve put ideas for ‘preparing’ yourself or your home in advance in italics.

1. Breathe

Yeah, I know, we’ve all heard this one: “Take a deep breath and count to ten”. I don’t know about you, but when I was younger and was advised to do this, I would grit my teeth and mentally stamp my foot through every single number and still be as cross at ten as I was at one!

No, what I mean is to really breathe. If you do yoga and know ujayii breathing, do that. If you don’t, you may find it helpful to learn. It’s a very simple, but effective way of breathing, and the very act of concentrating on your breath can really calm your mind, never mind the positive effects of getting more oxygen moving around your body. If you can’t find someone to teach you, then work on simply lengthening your breath. Count your natural breath, and see if you can make each out-breath one second longer than your in-breath.

If you are able to practice breathing in this way at least once every day, then your body will also learn an association and will start to circulate those calming hormones each time you start to do so. Your breath will naturally begin to lengthen, even in every day life.

Fast breathing is not only a symptom, but a cause of stress, and is part of a self-perpetuating cycle, so practising ujayii breathing daily (known in yoga as pranayama, but breathing practice is in no way confined to the tradition of yoga!) not only  gives you an easy tool to access when the stress levels start to rise, but also makes you less likely to ‘lose it’ in the first place.

There is even a yogic breathing technique that is designed specifically to cool you, either physically or emotionally – the calming, cooling breath. Ask your yoga teacher if you don’t know this technique and would like to learn it.

2. Remind yourself of the simple mantra: who is the adult in this situation?

When we are able to catch ourselves in the act of behaving in the same way as our children do when they’re losing their tempers, the question ‘who is the adult in this situation?’ can be a good, sharp reminder to grow up and act our age.

When I was going through a stressful patch recently, and having read Naomi Aldort’s book recently, I taped up a piece of paper on the wall with this very question that she mentions: “who is the adult in this situation?” so that I could take a look at it whenever I felt my anger was about to overwhelm me…it even helped if it already had overwhelmed me!

3. Go outside

Have you ever witnessed that phenomenon of a newborn baby in the midst of a furious screaming fit, seemingly unsoothable by rocking, slings, music, even the breast who suddenly stops short and relaxes nearly instantly once taken outside? I have many a time. There is something about the change of atmosphere, the feel of fresh air on your skin and in your lungs that just seems to really break a cycle of stress.

It’s not just the fresh air that helps – being in nature, even if that is a patio with some planted up containers and a tree in the distance, can bring us back to the part of us that isn’t controlled by emotions.

And don’t worry about the weather – a raging storm can be wonderful to roar into and rain on your face is cooling.

Just make sure you are able to get outside if you need to – have a pair of shoes handy if you can’t bear to go bare-foot, although I’d argue that bare-foot is even better to rekindle that connection with our higher-selves. Plan ahead how your baby, toddler or child will be safe if you need to go outside for a few minutes without them.

4. Retreat to a calming space in your house

Obviously this requires some preparation. I do yoga in my bedroom, sometimes every morning, sometimes just once a week. I have a little ‘altar’ in that space – somewhere to place things that remind me how I want to live. When I practice yoga, I also burn incense, and the aroma lingers all day long. When I go into my room in the middle of the day if I’ve done yoga that morning, I can literally feel my breath and heart-rate slowing and I nearly always sigh. The last vestiges of the incense in the air, and the calm, peaceful, connected energy of the space bring me back to myself and visiting my ‘altar’ reminds me of the intentions I had that morning.

Practising yoga daily isn’t for everyone, but try to find a space in your home where you regularly do something peaceful – give yourself an aromatherapy foot massage with the same oils every time (then you can burn a little of the same blend to calm you when you need it); meditate; do reiki; whatever floats your calming boat. 

If you don’t have anywhere big enough to do anything like this, then consider creating yourself a small sacred space – a shelf in the kitchen will do – that you can clear of clutter, and use to keep things that carry meaning to you. Make a commitment to yourself to visit and tidy your ‘altar’ every morning, maybe while you drink a cup of tea. Light a candle; burn some incense or essential oils; put a flower or leaf on it and then try to remember to come back there to reconnect when anger threatens to cloud your wisdom.

5. Ask your children’s help

I think this is possibly one of the most powerful tools. Children know what it’s like to be swamped by emotions and to feel that there is no way out, and they usually appreciate their parents’ honesty and genuineness about their feelings.

Personally I see parenting as a sort of apprenticeship. Sharing our own shortcomings with our children, and also ways of managing them is one of the most effective ways of teaching our children how to manage their own.

I have a copy of Oliver James’s Love Bombing to review soon, but from what I’ve read of it so far, I would think this technique could be applied very effectively the other way around. Last week, when I was very tearful and snappy, I suddenly remembered that tribe in Africa who knows that when someone is acting anti-socially, what they need is to have their self-esteem raised, and they go and tell them wonderful things about themselves, giving them as much love as they can. I was feeling very sorry for myself that I had no one who could do that for me right in that moment.

But how short-sighted of me? I had four beautiful, loving, empathic children who would, I knew, be honoured to be able to comfort me the way I try to comfort them when it is they who are losing it. I lay on the floor and said ‘hey girls, who wants to have a big love bundle!?’. Sure enough they all snuggled round me and showered me with kisses. It was the most blissful thing in the whole world, and calmed my mood for the rest of the day.

6. Love yourself

Isn’t that a really, really difficult thing to do when you’ve just behaved in a rather disgusting way? But you know hating yourself only makes things worse. Yes, being loved by others is helpful, but loving yourself unconditionally really is the key to peace in the midst of chaos.

Do something loving for yourself. Go and tell yourself in the mirror that you are loved; that you’re a good mum or dad; that you are capable of resolving situations peacefully – whatever affirmation works for you.

If you are able to repeat positive affirmations to yourself every morning after you clean your teeth, they’ll work even more effectively in the moment…and may even reduce the need for them in the first place.

But be careful with some actions that look like you’re ‘loving yourself’. Gorging on sugary treats feels like you’re being kind to yourself, but actually you’re not. Sugar is addictive, and can make bad tempers and depression worse. The same is true of caffeinated drinks, alcohol, the internet and cigarettes. Think about reaching for some honey-roasted nuts and seeds or a herbal tea instead. Choose a repetitive craft like knitting or do yoga instead of turning that computer on.

If you already have an addiction to sugar, caffeine, the internet, alcohol or nicotine, lovingly start to work towards reducing them – as you take less, you’ll begin to need and crave less. Trust me, I know!

I hope some of these ideas are helpful to you – please feel free to add your own ideas in the comments.

Why sticks and carrots don’t work with tantrums

He’s got to learn he can’t get what he wants by behaving like this!

Hands up who’s heard this by someone (or even by yourself) in relation to a child having a tantrum? I’ve said it many times before my more wise, inner voice could be heard above the racket my initial reaction made.

My initial reaction is based on the cultural conditioning that says that children who are having a tantrum are trying to get their own way, and that it is as simple as that. Unfortunately tantrums aren’t that simple. They’re complicated, and messy, and they don’t follow normal rules of engagement.

Let me be clear: I am not talking about a child who stamps her foot and huffs and puffs when she’s not bought that Barbie doll she so desperately wants, the child who behaves like this because in the past pouting has got her precisely what she wants.

I am talking about the tantrum that is more like an anxiety attack. The tantrum that happens when a child’s feelings become so huge and terrifying that the child no longer has control and is in a state of panic.

Any adult who suffers with anxiety attacks knows how frightening they can be. Transpose that to someone who is only a few years old, and it suddenly makes sense why tantrums evolve so suddenly.

The second your child feels that he’s lost control of his feelings, and that his emotions are now completely in charge, he panics, and this sets off a downward spiral. To a tantrumming child, the potential power of his feelings is beyond comprehension. For all he knows his anger could bring his house crashing down round his ears, or make the world split in two, or – worst of all – destroy your love for him.

But he is panicking too much to think this rationally – all this is subconscious. Consequently, rational, conscious ways of dealing with issues with children don’t work when a child is in a tantrum.

Most of us know this from experience, but still we keep on trying the old ways because, as the quote at the top says ‘he can’t be allowed to get what he wants by behaving like this’, and it’s quite right. Of course you can’t allow your child to learn that by screaming and hitting he can have what he wants.

But this is not the goal of a child in full tantrum. The child in full tantrum has probably forgotten all about what started him getting upset. All he can see, think and hear is his rage and fear.

What can make the spiral get worse is hearing the person he loves most in the world telling him things that simply give him proof that his rage has now ruined everything: ‘if you don’t stop that now, you’ll have to go on the naughty step’ (i.e. away from me); ‘if you carry on like this then you won’t get your treat later on’. And these are approaches that are ‘sanctioned’ by many parenting ‘experts’.

What about the times we are also not talking from our rational, compassionate minds? What about the times we spit ‘I am sick of you behaving like this’ or when we walk away saying ‘see you later, then’?

‘Sticks’ make tantrums worse. There is no doubt about that. And carrots? Carrots probably don’t make things worse in the moment, but they possibly make things worse long-term, because they are a distraction. They aren’t an acceptance of feelings. They aren’t the solid rock of love that a tantrumming child needs. They are a way to discount your child’s feelings and bury them under something else – sweets, television, a story (although I have to say that potentially a story is a reasonable distraction if it happens in loving arms on a warm lap).

And actually carrots frequently don’t work anyway, even when it’s the thing that caused the meltdown in the first place. Have you ever said ‘yes, fine, you can watch Peppa Pig yet again’ only to find your child is still screaming and in the way and refusing to co-operate?

Obviously we don’t always have time to give a tantrumming child what he or she needs – someone loving sitting with them, accepting their feelings and not being affected by them, and time. But I feel that it’s important simply to recognise that this is what a child in the midst of a tantrum needs – not sticks, and not carrots, but time and love.

There are other things that influence why a child frequently is at the mercy of her feelings, so it is always worth exploring ways to help your child not get into a tantrum so easily. Have a look at my Tantrum  Check-list for some ideas about this.

However, as I and many other parents have discovered to their detriment (and that of our children as well!), it’s all well and good knowing ways to avoid tantrums, but it’s impossible to avoid them all, and it’s useful – no, empowering – to know that, whatever you’re told, either by someone else or by your own culturally conditioned mind chatter, sticks and carrots don’t work, and may make the situation worse.

Image credit: Forest Runner, Flicker

Disconnection, love & parenting

Whatever your beliefs, it’s hard to argue against the idea that most, if not all, the world’s ills can be blamed on, or at least are made far worse by a pandemic disconnection from our fellow human beings. It is far easier to mistreat someone, or something, if we see ourselves as entirely separate from them.

However, whether you view it as a hippy-woo universal spirit style connection, or simply the sociological fact that each and every individual is undeniably a part of something far larger, the truth is that we really are all connected to one another – we are all a single individual expression of a beautiful whole.

This connection is recognised in many different traditions – some religions call it God, or the Divine; I guess physicists might call it energy (correct me if I’m wrong); sociologists may just call it community.

So what happens when one part of that whole has some injury? How does that affect everyone/everything else?

I think this is easier to picture if you think of each part of your body being an individual expression of your whole self. Your knee, for example, is just that – a knee. It is also part of the rest of you. If it’s injured, it causes the rest of you pain. Maybe just the part of you that is closest to it at first, but it may spread to other areas – maybe your hips as you adjust your gait to compensate for the pain; maybe your emotions as you struggle to deal with day to day life.

I don’t know about you, but when a part of my body is injured, I tend to try to care for it as far as I possibly can. I don’t tend to injure it further by ignoring it (well, maybe I ignore it for a while, but it generally just gets worse if I do), or by berating it, or by hitting it in anger or in the vain hope a good whack will miraculously heal it and stop it causing me pain.

Usually I pay it attention and look after it, until I’ve healed whatever injury it was that was causing the pain. I remind myself that my knee is a part of me, and I should treat it as such – being disconnected from it makes it worse.

Extrapolate that to the wider world. Most societies in the world punish and berate people who cause pain to their society, despite the fact that most people causing pain are labouring under some injury or other. Sometime’s it’s obvious – they’ve been abused as a child, or their parents died tragically young – but other times it’s not obvious. That doesn’t mean that injury isn’t there.

Some societies in the world actually recognise this formally, and members of their tribes acting anti-socially experience the exact opposite of what happens in most societies. Their friends, family, everyone crowds around to offer them love and positive affirmations, as they know that low self-esteem, disconnection from the rest of their society and injury to the self is what leads people to act anti-socially. They know that the answer is to heal the injury, not to punish.

This is, however, a very utopian view of the world. It’s not feasible in the slightest to suggest we suddenly open prisons and start hugging hardened criminals in the hope they’ll stop committing crime.

However, having looked at the small scale of this idea of connection and disconnection (i.e. our bodies) and the large scale (a society…or even the world!), let us now look at the medium scale: the family.

When we disconnect ourselves as parents from our children, when we see our family as a case of ‘them and us’, when we view our job as a battle of wills where we must come out on top at all costs, then a similar thing can happen. However wonderful parents we are, children suffer emotional injury repeatedly during their childhoods, and when they do they bring it to our attention the only way they know how – by causing us pain.

Most anti-social behaviour on the part of children is a subconscious cry for help. “Part of me is hurting, and I don’t understand it, and I need you to help me work it out and fix it” is what they’re subconscious is saying. Unfortunately, children rarely know they are even feeling injured, let alone knowing what it is that’s caused the injury, or what to do about it, and it’s often just as hard for us parents to try to work it out as well.

When we’re encouraged to be disconnected from our children, it’s easy to react on a very shallow level – carrot and stick; cajoling; frustration. However, as most of us can attest to, unless you actually frighten your child into behaving, it’s rarely an approach that works, and frequently makes it worse, allowing the pain to spread to the rest of the family, and then even further sometimes.

If, on the other hand, we view our families in a more holistic way; if we are able to view our children’s difficult behaviour as a sign, or a symptom of something far more profound than simply trying to annoy their parents, it’s easier to meet such behaviour with love, not anger. And it is love, not anger, that heals injuries and builds strong psyches in children.

I would like to add here that the idea that I always, or even mostly, meet my own children’s difficult behaviour with love is laughable. I am human too. I am tired; I get PMT; I get fed up with my relentless job; and I am entirely fallible. However, I do believe that the mark of a good enough parent is not perfection, but an open mind and an open heart and the desire to learn and to try better then next time.

So where I’m headed with my parenting right now is to try to stop taking bad behaviour personally, to try not to react with punishments and threats, but instead to try to see beyond the bad behaviour at the injury that is causing it and to work on loving that back to full-health instead.

Tantrum check list #7 – anxiety

OK, it may not be the fear of something that initially sets off a child’s tantrum, but, as we’ve already discussed in the other posts in the tantrum check list series, often the thing that triggers a meltdown is not really what’s behind the emotional outburst.

There is an endless list of things that could be worrying your child to the extent that the slightest thing removes all control she has over her emotions, and working out what it is can sometimes seem to be an impossible task.

Here are a few suggestions, but really, the best thing to do is to take some time when you and your child are calm and talk to her or him about life in general. Actually, don’t talk, listen. More than anything, a child who is feeling anxious about something needs to feel heard by the people she loves and trusts more than anyone else.

So:

Is your child due to start a new class at school?

Could there be someone at school who is upsetting him?

Is she feeling a bit overwhelmed about the prospect of growing up – maybe a birthday’s on the way and she’s struggling with a conflict between excitement and a desire to stay little?

Has he overheard a conversation between you and another adult that has worried him?

Is there something new coming up that could be worrying him? His first sleepover? A part in a school play?

Has she got her first wobbly tooth? This can be hugely exciting for some children, and terrifying for others.

And when you think you might have worked it out, you need to decide what to do about it…or not. On so many occasions I have found that the old adage ‘a problem shared is a problem halved’ really is true, particularly for children.

Sometimes the weight of carrying a fear alone can be to heavy for a child to bear, and the result is panic and tantrums, and sometimes even bad dreams, but by telling it to someone she loves can often ease the burden enough to settle those stressful feelings.

At other times, simply sharing the problem doesn’t help and an action plan is required. By this I mean sitting down and talking openly and honestly about what ideas you and your child – in fact, particularly your child! – can come up with that might help whatever is worrying him.

By taking any ideas your child has as seriously as your own, you are empowering him to begin to learn how to be more self-aware and how to manage his emotions with less and less of your input as he grows up.

Again, often simply the creation of a plan can help, and you may find that enacting any of the ideas isn’t necessary. Actually writing the plan down can be a particularly powerful way of showing your child how seriously you’re taking his concerns.

Of course sometimes it is vital that action is taken – if your child is being bullied, for example, and if you and she are unable to come up with any helpful ideas of how she can manage the situation herself. Or if he really is so petrified of going on stage that it’s just not worth him doing it.

In these situations, it is also, in my opinion, important to show your child that you won’t force them to do something that is causing them so much internal stress. This sort of action builds trust, and can only have a positive effect on how your child learns who they are, and the things that are right for them to do.

I’d love to hear other parents’ experiences of anxiety-induced tantrums, and if you have any tips as to how to help your child with things they’re scared of.

And here is the page from which you can access all the other tantrum check list posts.

 

Tantrum check-list #6 – insecurity

This option isn’t a nice one to consider because we all want to think that our children are secure and happy in their lives. Hopefully we’re all doing all we can to ensure that they don’t feel insecure and the idea that we might not be succeeding can be unsettling and upsetting.

However, in my experience of my own children, and from hearing from many other parents, it is normal for children to have periods of insecurity, however stable and wonderful their home-life is. It is all part of the growing up process.

The problem is that feeling insecure can lead to bad behaviour and tantrums, which can cause a negative feedback loop, which just makes the issue worse.

Consider this scenario, firstly from the parent’s point of view:

Billy’s drawn on the walls. His Mum finds out and snaps at him, angrily, and tells him she’s going to take away one of his toys as a punishment. Billy starts to cry and shout, so his Mum tells him to go to his room for some time out. Billy refuses and just screams louder, his rage becoming a full-blown tantrum.

Now consider it from Billy’s subconsious point of view (and I stress the subconsious aspect of this simply because it is not a logical, rational reaction coming from the thinking part of Billy’s brain, but an instinctive, survival reaction coming from the more ‘animal’ part of his brain):

In a moment of boredom, Billy picks up a pen and draws on the wall, and then wanders off. When his Mum comes to tell him off, he fears that he has lost her love by doing something that is making her tell him he’s naughty and bad. He can’t cope with the knowledge that he’s ruined everything and has lost his Mother’s love, and panics. His heart and breathing rate go up, and he starts to cry and shout.

And then he realises he’s made it even worse, now, as she tells him to go away from her, and suddenly, for Billy, the world is coming to an end. He has broken his world. And, even more terrifying than that, if he, a small boy, has the power to break his mother’s love, then what else could his anger do?

This is clearly over-simplified, but hopefully you get the idea. The other thing it’s important to remember is that it’s easy to feel that, ‘of course my children know I love them, I tell them all the time’, but when a child’s rational brain is turned off because he is panicking,

he can’t hear the words – words can’t penetrate a panicked child’s subconsciousness. They need to physically feel your love.

Sometimes a tantrumming child has got too far to want to be touched, or held. I think, though, that the important thing is to be aware that your child has gone past the point where any sort of rational approach will mean anything to him at all, and simply needs to have you prove to him that you still love him despite his rage, and that the world is not going to come to an end. So if your child won’t be touched, then consider sitting near him calmly, and show him that you can hold his rage, and his behaviour hasn’t broken your love.

And the more times you can prove to your child that his behaviour, while it may anger you and lead to consequences, will never, ever stop you loving him, the sooner he will feel secure enough not to panic and tantrum when you tell him off. Until the next little patch of insecurity, of course!

Click here for links to other posts in The Tantrum Check List

Tantrum check list #5 – overstimulation

So, your usually lovely, happy little child is suddenly going through a real bad patch, melting down at the slightest provocation and you simply haven’t got a clue what’s causing it. One of the things that I’ve noticed as a cause of frequent tantrums is a life that has become just that much too busy for the child.

Children need time to just ‘be’, and this is something that modern children get far too little of. In fact, it’s not just children who need time to ‘be’. It’s a major factor in adult stress levels as well. We are becoming conditioned, as a culture, to think that we need to fill as many hours as possible of our children’s lives with activity of one sort or another.

They spend most of their day in school, then many will go on to an after-school club or extra-curricular activity, as well as having to squeeze in homework. This is exhausting in itself, so often all they have the energy for when they are at home is watching tv – an activity which is known to overstimulate the brain.

Compare that to children in a less frenetic culture, who will probably be working very hard to contribute towards the running of the family home, but who will have that activity interspersed with long walks when their brains are having to do very little work indeed; and time in the evenings to just chill with their social group. In addition, much of the work they do will be repetitive, simple work that allows your mind to wander.

But why is it important to have this time out of life? Well, the practice of simply ‘being’ is, essentially, the aim of meditation, so let me tell you a bit about what we know about how meditation can benefit our lives, and you’ll probably be able see more clearly how too much activity can lead to tantrums.

Studies have shown that regular meditation can help to reduce activity in the sympathetic nervous system – the part of our control centre that manages our reaction to stress or fear (fight or flight). If our sympathetic nervous systems are working over-time, we make snap-judgements about situations, and react dramatically when there is no need to.

It can also increase activity in the parasympathetic nervous system – the part that is active at times of rest. This leads to positive changes in metabolism, heart rate, respiration, blood pressure and even your brain chemistry.

A child having a tantrum is basically either panicking (flight) or losing their temper (fight) so if a child isn’t having enough time to settle his sympathetic nervous system, and to work on increasing the work of his parasympathetic nervous system it follows that frequent tantrums will ensue.

Every child will have a different threshold for how much activity their brains can cope with, and that threshold can change as children grown and develop. Sometimes they can cope with a lot of activity, and sometimes with very little.

As a home educator who takes what we call an ‘autonomous’ approach (child-led), I have seen repeatedly (and not just in my own children) how children can have a seemingly insatiable need for activity for a few months, and then suddenly be overwhelmed by it, and need a few weeks or months of doing what looks like very little.

These periods of doing very little can, I have to admit, be quite terrifying for a home educator – I often ask myself if they’ve stopped learning completely, and if I ought to be forcing them into a strict structure – but these times are when they are consolidating what they’ve been learning in the frantic weeks beforehand. They seem to need this time to slow down and cogitate.

I’m certainly not trying to say ‘school and out-of-school activities are bad for children’, but what may be helpful if your child is finding life far more stressful than usual, is to take a look at what’s going on in their lives right now, and consider whether it may just all be a bit too much at the moment.

Can you cut any of it out? Can you find extra time to help your child relax each day? What about finding a children’s yoga class you could take him to? Or introducing some massage into your bedtime routine? If you no longer read to your child, consider trying to re-introduce some time snuggled up together on the sofa while you read to him, and he can relax into your arms and listen to your voice soothing and settling his brain.

What about a long walk after school, collecting conkers or blackberries? And, while you may need or want to impose an outright TV ban, consider encouraging your child to do something else pleasant like a long, warm bath with aromatherapy oils, or sitting on the counter in the kitchen chatting to you while you cook.

If you’re keen on the idea of meditation, there are books you can get to help you teach your child how to meditate, and consider suggesting to your child’s school that they take a look at this article about how a school in Australia noticed huge benefits to their pupils when they introduced regular meditation to the classroom (the school used Christian meditation, but there is no need at all for meditation to be rooted in any religion).

Hopefully, by using some of these ideas, you may find that the tantrums decrease in frequency and a bit more equilibrium can be felt throughout the family.

I’d love to hear if this article has been helpful to you, and also if you have any tips for how to introduce some ‘simply being’ time into your children’s lives, so please comment.

Click here for links to other posts in The Tantrum Check List.

Tantrum check list #4 – illness

I include this one because it’s something I, and many of my friends, are caught out by time and time again. We all know how grumpy we get when we’re coming down with an illness, often before we’re even aware we’re actually feeling ill.

Well it’s the same for children. The number of times I’ve bitten back the words, ‘what is wrong with you today?’ (sometimes unsuccessfully!), and the next night or day the poor child is burning hot and is snotty and snuffly!

So, although there is very little you can do about it, it’s a useful thing to have in mind, so you may be able to spare a little empathy for little one when their temper is far shorter than usual, just in case it turns out they’re ill. It’s useful, also, to bear it in mind so you don’t feel that horrible guilt for getting cross with them the day before!

Tantrum check list #3 – tiredness

We all know how ratty we feel when we’re overtired. However, not one to settle for anecdotal evidence, I’ve had a look and have been unsurprised to find plenty of evidence that fatigue affects mood adversely. It also affects concentration, and we need to be able to concentrate on things to make decisions easily.

I wonder if, for children, even very simple decisions can be difficult to concentrate on when you’re overtired, and being urged to make a choice can be just too stressful for your poor brain that’s working well below the level it should be, leading to a tantrum.

I don’t know about you as parents, but I know that I have been guilty in the past of saying to a stressed out child: ‘Come on! It’s not that big a deal! I just want to know if you want cheese or ham in your sandwich!’ And, of course, it just causes more tantrum, not less.

Of course the other option is just to take the decision out of their hands, but then we risk causing a larger tantrum because of the whole control thing (I’ll be writing another post on ‘control’ in the Tantrum Check List series).

So what can be done about it mid-tantrum? Well, probably not very much, except for lots of love and understanding. Taking a step back and thinking about what the experience is like for your child can be immensely helpful, and can at least stop you fuelling the fire even more.

And then it’s just a case of doing what you can to prevent further tantrums through the day, which can be very hard work for a parent, but probably worth it. Listening to a screaming child and trying not to scream back is also very hard work!

Try offering decisions with your child on your lap, calmly and quietly and with the understanding that they’ll need a little longer than usual to made a choice. Try making sure that whenever you have to leave somewhere, you get down on their level and cuddle them and give them plenty of time to understand what’s going to be happening.

It does sound a little like how you’d deal with a toddler, but remember that your child’s brain isn’t functioning at it’s full potential if they’re overtired – it’s probably functioning a good year or two below what it normally does, if that makes sense.

I’ve heard that other parents find it frustrating to hear tiredness being blamed for children’s bad behaviour, as if they should learn to control their temper better, tired or not. This can be difficult if you are feeling sympathetic towards your child, but don’t want to excuse their behaviour to other adults as being because of a bad night’s sleep. But try to keep it in mind that your child’s well-being is more important than other parents opinion of you or your child. I know how difficult that can be!

The other thing I find helpful to remind myself of is the fact that yes, my child should be able to control her temper but no one learns anything over night, and if she could do it now, despite any biological issues affecting her mood, then what would be the point of a parent? My job is to help her to learn these things – to learn strategies for coping when she is more irritable than usual, and to become more self-aware so that she can notice her temper being an issue before it causes any problems.

So think about talking to your child as soon as you notice there’s an issue. Not in a ‘telling off’ kind of way, but in a ‘I can see that you’re finding things quite difficult today – you seem to be losing your temper more than usual. I wonder if we can find a way to help you calm down before you start shouting or hitting? Would you like to come to me for a big cuddle every time you feel your temper rising?’ You may be surprised and find that she comes up with some really good ideas herself for dealing with her temper.

Consider making something like this mind jar with your children as well. I haven’t done this yet, but I think it sounds like such a fantastic idea. If you do it, let me know how you get on.

My last tip is a rather obvious one: try to make sure your child gets enough sleep and rest! Another thing that’s often easier said than done.

Click here for links to other posts in The Tantrum Check List

Tantrum check list #2 – thirst

This is something that there actually is an evidence base for. If you want me to put some links to research, just say so, but it’s fairly safe to say that there are lots.

Essentially, mild dehydration has been found, on numerous occasions, to cause mood swings, irritability, inability to concentrate and impairment of cognitive function. If your child is having a meltdown (or lots of them!) and hasn’t drunk enough, then it is not surprisingat all that they are not managing to react appropriately to a situation that wouldn’t normally bother them.

The problem, again, is how do you get them out of a tantrum once you’ve realised that, actually, all you’ve seen them drink that day is one glass of milk at breakfast time! I think the only thing you can do, as with the food, is offer them something you know they love so

much that they can’t resist it. Anything to get their hydration levels up so their synapses can swell up nicely again and start firing properly!

The next thing is to work out a way to ensure that it doesn’t happen again – or at least doesn’t happen again too frequently! This brings me, again, to the reason these tantrum check list posts are on my 2-8 years posting day: because older kids do have tantrums, and they’re often harder to sort out.

With toddlers, we parents are in sole charge of their drinks, and it’s easy to make sure they get enough, but as they get older, children want, and need, to take more control over the regulation of their diet. In addition, they’re likely to spend more time away from us than when they were toddlers – even if they’re home educated and not away from you in school every day, they’re likely to be out playing with friends, or attending after-school classes, or simply just busy elsewhere in the house.

I’ve tried all sorts of things to get my children to drink regularly. Two of them are excellent at knowing when they’re thirsty and will help themselves, one is still a toddler, and the fourth just does not remember! One of the strategies we’ve come up with is to fill drinks bottles at the beginning of the day, and encourage them to try to finish them by after lunch…and then to re-fill them for the afternoon. But we usually lapse, and we get more tantrums, and it takes me ages to twig that we’ve got a dehydration issue going on!

So, does anyone else have any more tips for how to get your kids to drink enough so that they don’t get mild-dehydration-induced tantrums?

Click here for links to other posts in The Tantrum Check List