How to Stop a Tantrum

Tantrums are not fun. Every parent has a couple of stories to tell… of being out in public and suddenly finding yourself doing battle with a toddler or preschooler who just totally loses it. Within minutes they may be screaming, flailing limbs, refusing any type of effort to calm down and be reasonable. When this happens, the parent doesn’t have many options, other than to wait it out, threaten, plead. Once you’ve experienced a full-blown tantrum, you don’t want to experience it ever again.

This happened to me, and I came up with a solution that worked. With just a little bit of effort the tantrum can be diffused. Here’s how:

THE SOLUTION - TELLING THE STORY

Begin to tell your child a story about what he/she is experiencing. This technique is so easy to do. Here are the steps:

1. Begin with “Once upon a time…” This sentence alone will often grab his attention.

2. “…there was a little boy named _____…” Use your child’s name. This is very important. He needs to know your story is about him.

3. “…who was out shopping with his mommy…” Set the scene. Describe the situation. Describe the problem. Use details.

4. Mention your child’s feelings. Chances are he’s feeling anger, frustration, sadness, fear, or hurt. Make a guess. If you get it wrong, he’ll let you know. You can include your feelings as well, but describe his first.

5. Soon, he begins to participate in the story. He may ask a question, or clarify something you said. Repeat back what he says and include it in the story.

6. You’ll know when the crisis is over. He begins to breathe normally. His attention has shifted and he begins to take an interest in other things. Allow the conversation to move on. You can give him a hug if it feels appropriate.

WHY THIS WORKS:

Children love stories. And they especially like to hear about themselves.

But, most important, we all need to have our feelings heard and validated. Repeating back to our child what just happened and how they feel about it is a validation. Nothing is more comforting than to know you are heard and your feelings are understood.

For further reading: I’d like to recommend one of my favorite parenting/communication books. This book is awesome and has valuable advice for communicating and improving all your relationships:

How to Talk So Kids Will Listen & Listen So Kids Will Talk

How to Stop Your Children from Swearing and Using Unkind Words

Have your children started using some not-so-nice words? They may have picked them up from friends with older siblings, from TV and the movies, from all kinds of possible places (even you!).

Even “shut-up” and “stupid” can be hurtful. It’s nice to have a home that is completely clean of hurtful and unpleasant words. It’s not the words that hurt, of course, it’s the intent or feeling behind them that gets you.

THE SOLUTION:- Quarter-in-the-Jar Game

1. Find a small cup or jar and tell your kids that from now on, anyone who uses a swear word or a mean word has to put a quarter in the jar.

2. Have the family sit down and make up a list of “quarter-in-the-jar” words. Start with “all swear words” and add any other words or phrases that you find unpleasant or hurtful.

3. If someone slips and uses a nasty word, someone shouts “QUARTER IN THE JAR!” Then the perpetrator must put a quarter in the jar.

4. Parents too! If you don’t want your children using nasty words at home, you have to set an example and give up those words yourself. This solution will only work if everyone in the family agrees to the rule. And the kids love it when one of their parents have to put a quarter in the jar, too!

WHY THIS WORKS:

This is a game, and kids love games. They love catching you and their siblings using a nasty word. It’s fun.

It helps if they have an allowance or earn some money with chores. Once they have a little money in their wallet or drawer, they don’t want to give it up.

It won’t take long at all for everyone in the family to stop using nasty words. After a while, you won’t even have to contribute a quarter to the jar. The point is made. Everyone has become aware of the words they use and you’ll rarely if ever hear nasty words at home anymore.

Now, I’m not saying the kids will never use these words at school or elsewhere. But, I have to tell you, once you’ve begun this game, it’ll be rare. And the point is, you’ll rarely hear them at home!

How to Stop a Bully

One day when our daughter was in 4th grade, she came home from school upset. She told me a boy at school kept calling her names. He would often say, "You're a jerk!" Our daughter is very sensitive and even this relatively tame abuse made her want to cry. Whenever he did this, it ruined her day.

I didn't know what to say. I tried logic: "You know, he's probably unhappy about something else and he's taking it out on you."

I tried turning it into something sweet: "He probably has a crush on you and doesn't know how to show it."

Then, I tried giving her advice: "You know, if you can just learn to ignore it, he'll probably leave you alone. He probably does it because he gets a reaction."

At least some of these statements were probably true. And they all made her feel a little better. But, none of them gave her something to do about it. And the boy kept calling her names.

Then I had a brainstorm. I suggested that the next time the boy called her a name, she should throw a compliment at him! She looked at me with surprise, but I urged her to try it and she promised she would.

The next day at school when our daughter was on the playground with her class, this same boy came up to her and said, "Hey, you're a jerk!"

She stopped what she was doing, turned to him and said, "Well, you're... you're... you're a nice boy!" It was the first compliment that popped into her head.

"Huh?" said the boy.
"You're a nice boy," she repeated.
"Oh," he said. He looked at her strangely and then walked away. And he never called her a name again.

If you want to try this technique with your children, try the following:

1. Ask your child to think of three nice things about the bully. Write them down. It could be the color of the bully's hair or eyes. He/she could be smart or funny, have nice sneakers or a jacket, be good at art, anything.

2. If your child can't think of anything nice about this person after several minutes and some prompting, help the child make something up! Have fun with it! (Remember the boggart exercise from Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban ?) These first two steps are very important. These exercises not only give you ideas for compliments, but it shifts the way the child feels the bully. His/her perception changes. Two favorite books of mine, "The Secret " and "The Attractor Factor " teach that we attract people and situations into our lives in response to our thoughts and feelings. You'll be amazed at how quickly things change after these exercises.

3. The next time the bully treats your child badly, he/she can throw a compliment!

Why this works: First, there's the element of surprise. The last thing a bully expects to hear is a compliment. It's the opposite of the reaction he/she expects.

Second, and most important, a bully usually picks on someone who is sensitive and easily cowed. Once they treat your child badly, your child will likely see the bully as a threat. By making a list of likable traits in the bully (and everyone has something likable about them) you are changing those vulnerable feelings. The outcome of the next interaction has to change, too.

Food sensitivities

When my son was about two, I made the mistake of eating chili for dinner. I was breastfeeding, but nobody had ever told me to avoid spicy foods. Anyway, that night around 2 in the morning he woke up with projectile vomiting. We noticed because he was sharing our bed. Let me tell you, they call it projectile vomiting for a very good reason.

A week or two later, it happened again. We figured it out. No chili.

A couple of months later, I noticed that it took several extra hours to get him to bed on nights that I had chocolate chip cookies with my lunch.

Then, a chiropractor friend of mine suggested we take our son (and me, since I was still nursing) off dairy. Our pediatrician was getting ready to put tubes in our son's ears because of frequent ear infections. We stopped eating dairy and the ears cleared up, so the ear doctor decided not to do the operation. From then on, as long as we stayed away from dairy, no more ear infections.

As the years went by, we got in the habit of looking at food and what we were eating as possible culprits for all kinds of issues. With lots of experimenting, mostly trial and error, we found that fruit, of all things, made our son hyper. He could tolerate sugar pretty well, but one blueberry would have him bouncing off the walls.

When we went out to dinner, he would curl up into a ball on his chair after eating, until we stopped giving him soda with his meal as a treat.

His acne was so bad as a teenager, I was really worried he would scar for life. We tried topical treatments, but didn't want to medicate him, as he's so sensitive. Finally, we found the culprit - eggs! He stopped eating eggs, and all products that have eggs in them, and the acne cleared up.

I hear more and more about kids with sensitivities to foods. Adults too. When I changed my diet, I stopped having headaches, heart palpitations, constipation, itchy skin, sore throats... the list goes on and on. I hope that other parents will do as I did and look at what you're eating and feeding your family. Experiment with your diet. Pay attention to what you eat when problems arise. It just may be that it is your diet that is making you sick.

A little stirring up

Did you ever think you could watch a doctor close a wound with stitches? I found out it was possible the day my son, at the age of 2, was crawling on the hardwood floor and my 4-year-old daughter decided it would be fun to play wheelbarrow and picked up his feet. His chin hit the floor with a whack and started bleeding profusely. I quickly staunched the flow, covered it with a band-aid, called the doctor to say that I was on my way, dropped my daughter at a neighbor’s house, and drove over to the doctor’s office. It was not far, thank heaven. He cried all the way.

At the doctor’s office, I had to hold my son down while the nurse cleaned him up and the doctor carefully stitched up his chin. He needed three stitches, but it seemed to take forever, as though the doctor was moving in slow motion. I never took my eyes off his hand while he worked, inwardly astonished at what I was doing. Funny, the things we are capable of in a crisis.

Now, years later, I wonder if there were repercussions, like a ripple in a pond that forever flows outward from a disturbance. Did my daughter ever get over the guilt of knowing she was responsible for hurting her little brother? Is that why she was so protective of him from that day forward? Did my son ever regain his trust in the people around him who held him down and put needles in him? Is this why I always felt I had to watch my children like a hawk so nothing bad ever happens to them?

Or is this the stuff that is supposed to happen? Perhaps life just decided things were going along too smoothly there, and we needed a little stirring up. Perhaps we needed to be knocked a little off balance so we can learn to find that balance again.

Little dictator

What do you do when you have a child who desperately needs to have their own way? They try to run the family.

When our son was little, he was always trying to tell us what to do. We used to say jokingly, “This child is going to grow up and become a dictator of some foreign country.” There was this constant tug-of-war between what he wanted and what we wanted.

We heard the saying somewhere – “Pick your battles” – and used it often. We would dig in our heels only when it really mattered.

As he grew older, we discovered other techniques that worked, too: distraction, bargaining and finally - discussions; we listened to his point of view and he listened to ours. It was often easy to find a solution then. The best solutions were the ones we agreed on together. He would sometimes surprise us with a solution that we hadn’t thought of ourselves.

Our son is grown up now and recently I began to wonder if somehow my husband and I fostered this personality trait in our son. We both had a parent that was unusually controlling and being the second born in both our cases, we grew up feeling we had very little control.

Is it a coincidence that we produced a child who has the same needs and continues to create that same tug-of-war feeling in us?

Better or different?

Every child is different. And every parent realizes this shortly after the second child is born.

For us, the births were entirely different.
The sleeping patterns were different.
The ages they accomplished things were different.
I could go on and on.

Somehow the differences stand out. We had to make up our mind - do we judge one as better than the other, or just different?

We worried that our son couldn't compete with his sister academically, socially, athletically. She shone in all the easy and obvious ways. So, one day I sat down and made a list of his strengths.

He's energetic. Creative. Affectionate. Strong-minded. Confident. Imaginative. Funny. Focussed. He can draw. He can sing. He's a leader.

Once we knew his strengths, we could help him see himself in a whole new light.

It wasn't about who he was compared to his sister. It was about - who he was. Unique. Wonderful in his own way.

And with this we fostered tolerance and love of diversity. And a self-esteem that couldn't be shaken.