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Find the cause!Apr 26 '00 Write an essay on this topic.My parent’s technique in dealing with Temper Tantrums: Warn once to stop, if it didn’t stop then we were off to the bathroom for a “talk”. Funny it never was talking, it was a swat (or two or three) on the butt. This never really made sense to me, okay I am already crying and you are going to inflict pain to get me to stop? I was confused! And vowed I would never cause this confusion in my own children. Though I don’t give into my children’s every desire, it just didn’t make sense to spank a child to get them to stop crying. I am more “old style-traditional” than most parents are when it comes to spanking (but that’s a different epinion, so I’ll leave that for another review). My theory on temper tantrums: The child can’t express how he truly feels, or has an overload of emotions, thus a temper tantrum. My theory on how to “cure” them? Well I think most kids will go through at least to some extent a “phase” where temper tantrums happen. Some children’s “phases” will last longer than others (i.e. My oldest son only had about a month long period where he had temper tantrums, my third, at age 5, still has them). To help you and your child get past a temper tantrum can sometimes be difficult but it can be done. What I do is first I try to figure out what the cause of the tantrum is (there has to be a cause! The tantrum is the effect. Every effect has a cause! Remember learning cause and effect in school?). Let’s say you think the cause is that the child is just very tired, and can’t keep control of their emotions because of this. This solution is simple, let them lay down to take a nap or just rest in a quiet room in disturbed. Move them if you have to, but get them someplace where they can be alone, and not harm themselves in the middle of a fit. Next scenario: You are in a store, the child wants a toy, and you say no, tantrum ensues. Gee, the cause of this tantrum is simple too! The child is angry and knows no other way to express themselves, other than the temper tantrum. Let’s face it, do you really want a 2 year old to explain to you “Mom, I am very upset with your decision on this matter, I think we need to reconsider things here.” They can’t say things as well as we can, the only way to get their point across is to scream and get your attention any way they can. The solution to this one could work any number of ways. But what I usually do is calmly (calm is the key in dealing with most temper tantrums) explain to the child (and please use language they clearly understand) why they can’t have the item, and continue on about your business. I have stuck mine in the grocery cart just so that I can get my shopping done; 9 out of 10 times they stop within by the time I hit the next aisle. Now with that, there have been times that my child has had a combination of the scenario’s mentioned above. Well, heck I’m in a store how the heck am I going to let them lay down? The one thing I have tried to do is to make sure that I don’t go to the store with them during their nap times or times that I know they will be getting tired, so most the time this cuts out that part of it. But sometimes you just can’t avoid this. When this happens. I finish what I need to do (albeit rather quickly) and get them out to the car where they can get a handle of their emotions without bothering others around us. Like I said my five-year-old still has temper tantrums, not usually out in public anymore but he still has them at home. When he starts his tantrum I calmly tell him that I don’t want to hear him screaming and to go to his room and “put it in the pillow”, then when he is calmed down he can come tell me what the problem is. My reasoning for this is that my five year old IS old enough to tell me what is wrong, and he just needs time to collect himself, and his feelings. Then I am more than willing to sit down and figure out with him what the problem is. If it is because he is tired he will usually go to sleep while screaming into the pillow. (I can’t tell you how many times I’ve wanted to scream into my pillow! LOL hmmm maybe I’ll have to do that the next time I feel overloaded. LOL) I would also like to make a note to those feel the deep need to make rude comments to the parents when they see a child in a store having a temper tantrum. Please don’t judge these parents, especially vocally! They are doing what they feel is right, and you may not know the whole story. Don't you think they are embarrassed enough? I have an autistic son (which I am sure many of you know about if you have read enough of my epinions <G>) anyway; he is very quick to tantrum. Yes, there are still causes to the tantrums, but they are much harder to figure out with him. Though he is seven he doesn’t talk much at all, and there are so many things that can set him off the deep end. He tantrums with any small change in his routine, this could be as simple as we didn’t spend enough time in the car (yes he knows time and distance to every place we ever go), to we didn’t enter the store through the same door we did the time before. It could be that there is a noise in the store he doesn’t like (it could even be something we don’t hear, its called over-sensory perception). Let me give you an example; I vacuum my house while he is at school, if it doesn’t get done before he gets home it waits until the next day, or for a time that he is outside, why? Because he hates the sound of the vacuum cleaner running, it took me forever to finally realize why he would break into fits whenever I vacuumed. Anyway, back to my point, there may be more to the circumstance than you are aware of, so please don’t make any passing comments such as “Maybe you should take control of your child instead of them controlling you.” Or “Looks like you could work on your parenting skills.” And yes I have heard these comments from others in stores when trying to deal with my autistic son. So please, keep the comments to yourself, we are doing our best!  |
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