Temper Tantrum Solutions: The Distraction

Raising a toddler inevitably brings a parent head to head with one of the most challenging of childhood behaviors: the temper tantrum. It's a frustrating experience for parent and child alike, and often ends in a bitter battle with both feeling powerless and confused. The temper tantrum can easily feel like a war you never intended on waging.

To really understand how to handle these behaviors, it's first important to understand what they occur. The problem for a lot of parents is that they approach the temper tantrum conventionally, based on a set of beliefs about the child that end up setting parent against child. But, if you change your belief system and look at the child from a developmental perspective, you may find out that a temper tantrum is a much different kind of behavior than you thought, and, so, much easier to deal with.

To begin this conversation, I want to use an example from my experience with my friend and her 2 1/2 year old. Going on a walk, her daughter wanted to be carried. Having a younger child that she had to pull in a wagon and a dog on a leash, this was an impossibility. She had started the walk by telling her daughter that she would not be able to carry her. When her daughter asked to be carried, she reminded her of this. She offered that she could sit in the wagon. Inevitably, her daughter burst into tears and screams, walking along side her mother continuing to scream and cry. It unsettled her mother who was now caught between the anxious desire to stop the crying and the knowledge that it would not be helpful to give in and carry her daughter. The stage is set for battle.

Let's first look at conventional thoughts about this behavior. Many people would say that this child wants what she wants and is going to scream bloody murder and do whatever she can to get it. They might say she's trying to manipulate her mother, that she's not listening, that she's being disobedient, or that she's misbehaving. A parent looking at the child from this perspective can only feel one thing: anger. The parent feels that the child is trying to get control and instinctively knows that giving that control would not be good. The options in this scenario become complete surrender or declaration of war. Neither of which is good for parent or child.

When parents enter the situation this way, they often try to use bribery, punishment, or give in. Bribery can work, but only if you can be immediate with it. A two year old cannot think far into the future. So, when my friend offered a Popsicle when they got home if her daughter stopped crying, it failed. And that's simply because she didn't have the Popsicle on her, not because it wasn't a good idea. When bribery doesn't work, the next instinctive step in this approach is punishment. But, when my friend suggested to her daughter that they couldn't take any more walks if she was going to behave like this, the crying failed to stop. And the reason for this is again, children can't see that far into the future. Her daughter only cares about and can only think in the moment. While my friend quickly dropped punishment as a solution at this point, many parents might go on and on, raging forward in battle. Time outs and spanking can become the final straw when the screaming breaks the camel's back. That, or they give in because they just can't wage war any longer.  In the end, it all leads to more frustration.

So, let's take another approach with this child. Let's throw out words like manipulation, control, or disobedient, and look at the child's developmental abilities. What are her brain and body actually capable of; what can she control and what can she think? From this perspective, she is not capable of understanding why she can't be carried. She does not understand the complexities involved. She only knows that she wants to be with mom and she cannot understand why her mother won't let her. She does not yet have the complex language abilities to explain this, or ask questions, or rationalize further information. All of these abilities would be necessary to calm herself down. So now she is left reverting to crying because she still has that communication instinct from before she developed any language. She is also left upset and frustrated because she cannot figure out any other solution. Her "misbehavior" has now become a cry for help.

Looking at it this way, a parent's reaction is often much more calm, allowing them to approach the situation in a far less combative manner. When the behavior, more realistically, becomes about needing help rather than wanting control, the parent is provided with far more options to change the behavior.  So, looking at this behavior as a request for help and an expression of emotional frustration and confusion, it becomes an opportunity to help our children learn how to redirect themselves. It helps a parent look at the situation and say "what does my child want or need right now and how can we find a way to meet both of our needs?"

Let's look at my friend and her daughter again. What this little girl was expressing was the desire to be held. There are two reasons likely for this: she either is too tired to walk or she wants to spend time with her mother. Since she turned down the offer to sit in the wagon, we can conclude her desire is to be with her mother and her interpretation of that desire is to want to be held. Unfortunately, mom cannot meet the need in that manner. So what can be done?

The answer is actually pretty simple, although, in all honesty, it can be exhausting. However, I promise it's far less exhausting than listening to a kid scream or fighting with her. The answer is redirection, otherwise known as distraction.

After a little while of screaming and some failed attempts at the conventional solutions mentioned earlier, we began to look for ways to engage her daughter. When looking at it from another approach and seeing that her daughter wants her mom, then the solution to distract her from wanting to be held by mom became doing other things with mom.

We were headed towards a creek, so we began to look for things we could throw into it. Then at the creek, mom and daughter tossed things in and saw what happened.  Further down the path we found puddles to jump. Then we came up with some games. I announced that whoever touched the nearby tree first would "win" and soon mom and daughter were off running. Her daughter loved the game so much that every few feet they raced to the next tree, bush, fire hydrant, street corner, etc. No more tears the entire walk back, and mom didn't have to give in to carrying her daughter.

This solution requires creativity and effort, and it can be tiring when you are constantly having to think of something new because children at the tantrum age have short attention spans or become so involved and don't want to move on (and in the case of a walk, sometimes you have to keep moving). But, when the solution leads to giggles and enjoyment of each other's company rather than a major battle, you will find that not only does your child just need some extra help when they melt down, but that instead of being the bad guy, you can be the good guy.