How to Calm a Temper Tantrum in 5 Simple Steps
Hi, today I’d like to share with you 5 simple steps to calm a temper tantrum.
There is nothing more stressful for parents than being faced with a temper tantrum. Your child can go from playing happily to major meltdown in the space of seconds. This happens a lot with young children as they have not yet acquired emotional maturity — the learned ability to put the breaks on extreme emotional reactions — but also with teenagers and pre-teens who have not only strong hormonal triggers, but are also trying to figure out who they are and can be highly sensitive on issues of independence, appearance and their social life.
I am going to share with you 5 steps to diffuse a tantrum that you can apply to avoid escalation and regain calm as fast as possible. Escalation is when a parent argues back, often losing their own temper which pushes the child to respond even stronger. This generally ends in a screaming match combined with a shopping list of punishments that your child scoffs at. The conclusion? Parents are stressed and feel guilty over punishments/shouting while kids feel misunderstood and belligerent.
5 Steps to Calm a Temper Tantrum
- It’s not personal!
The first thing to understand is this is not personal. Your child is having an emotional reaction to something and it is your job to help them through it. The problem of escalation often arises when parents themselves have an emotional reaction to the tantrum — ‘that is so unfair, I give her everything’, ‘my kid is not like the others’, ‘what am I doing wrong’? Remember, your child or teen’s brains are not wired to maturity, so tantrums are in fact a normal part of life!
2. Be their coach
This is something that follows on from not taking the tantrum personally. As soon as you can disengage your emotional reaction you’ll be able to keep you cool and try to find ways to help your child calm down. You can think of yourself as being their emotional coach. Your job is to help them diffuse the tsunami of emotion they are feeling. I will be sharing more tips on how to do this in future posts.
3. Apply Active Listening
This is a very helpful way to diffuse a tantrum without escalating or punishing. Your child is having an emotional reaction, so address the emotion. They will expect you to stay in the tit for tat of a fight, but if you start asking questions about how they feel, this can help your child shift down a gear. Remember children want to be heard and have their feelings validated. This doesn’t mean you have to condone misbehaviour, but try to seek the source of the reaction in order to diffuse it. ‘Did losing your toy make you feel sad’ or ‘I can really understand how disappointed you are to see your friends tonight’.
Top tip: it is always best to address misbehavior after the situation has calmed down. That way you can discuss with your child how they can react differently the next time. Often children will volunteer ideas and admit they are wrong once they feel heard and safe.
4. Avoid minimising their emotion
Whatever the child is feeling is the most important thing in the world to them at that instant. Even if to you it seems like an overreaction — such as foods touching each other on a plate or not being allowed to go outside to play with friends — the anger they express is a measure of the real emotion they feel. So avoid comments that invalidate their feelings, such as ‘you are overreacting’ or ‘don’t be ridiculous’.
5. Resist giving in to demands
This one is fundamental to diffusing tantrums in the long term. Kids know that the more noise they make and the more pressure they put on, the more likely you are to give them what they want. How do they know this? Because it has worked before! As long as kids get what they want, even on every other occasion, you are teaching them that tantrums work. So if you want to reduce the behaviour you must stay calm, firm and explain kindly why it is not going to happen.
A little extra tip… try saying that you are going to think about it. For older kids, you can even say when, ‘I’ll let you know tomorrow morning’. This gives them time to calm down and reconnect with their rational selves. And in many cases, forget all about what they were asking for!
I hope that applying these steps will empower you to diffuse situations that otherwise may have gone to extremes and bring a little more calm into family life.
For any questions, feel free to contact me at : info@parentacademycoaching.com
