Surely many readers with two-year-old children will be reflected in this story. I will count you four keys on tantrums. Your sweet baby, around two years, begins to have tantrums and you feel overwhelmed. He has learned to say no and refuses things in which there is no negotiation and it is not possible to avoid them: put on the car belt, warm up, eat what you have prepared, go to the bathroom or go to bed when necessary. In addition he starts to cry and shout with dislikes that you do not understand, sometimes simply because you have not cut the steak as he wanted.
Dads and moms loving and determined not to use screams or scourges are without tools to manage these situations and wonder if they are raising a child without limits that will lose their respect. They are exhausted. They do not understand what happens, because their son insists on not obeying. And they lose their nerves themselves and then feel guilty.
First I would ask you to value very well if those things in which you expect obedience are really indispensable at that time. Sometimes adults get carried away by customs or routines that really do not contribute anything to the child. We are obsessed with eating everything, at lunchtime, sitting and leaving nothing on the plate. We strive to collect their toys alone when they are small, have patience in boring situations or adapt to our rhythm that is not yours. There are ways in which we can minimize them, but even if we do these tasks well, tantrums will occur. But What are tantrums really?
What is a tantrum?
Children are pure emotion. We must never forget that they do not have a brain capable of adult reasoning and that, in addition, they do not have the same experience as us to handle frustrations.
When they were babies, they communicated through crying. Now, despite learning to speak and communicate with us in this way, when they are involved in an intense emotion, restless or exhausted, crying continues to appear as a form of communication.
In this phase, in addition, they are discovering themselves as an independent human being capable of having their own will and that exercise, which they rehearse, leads them to oppose some instructions without our understanding neither we nor they reason. Although sometimes if there is a reason when we ask you for something that disorganizes your basic needs, sometimes you are simply exhausted, emotionally overwhelmed or hungry or sleepy, it will cause you to lose control. Doesn't it happen to us that we are experienced hard sometimes too?
Tantrums are an expression that they are psychologically healthy children and that they are having a normal development. If we see them this way, it will be easier for us not to get disoriented or lose our nerves.
Should we calm a tantrum?
It depends. If we understand calm a tantrum with repressing it, prohibiting the child from crying, getting angry or denying him the right to express himself, no, we should not calm him down. But if we understand that calming a tantrum is to accompany the child without judging him, without getting angry, without leaving us, leaving him, yes, we must calm him down, but never with the aim of stopping him, but rather that the child feels clothed, loved and heard.
Is it bad to have a tantrum?
Emotions are not good or bad, they are simply. There are emotions that are not pleasant: anger, grief, frustration, anger, fear, exhaustion. We should not judge, since they have the right to feel and express. Suppressing the emotion so as not to be rejected by our parents can cause the child to feel helpless, misunderstood or think it is bad. And that is not true. Tantrums are normal.
Tantrums sometimes make children express themselves in a harmful or dangerous way for them, us or other people, and only in that case it is necessary to intervene with firmness and tranquility, helping them, little by little, to find the non-violent expression of their aggressiveness or rage.
What to do before a tantrum?
If the "crisis" is happening it is important that we know how to have a correct attitude and that we are calm about what to do with the tantrum. There is no need to perform a control management, nor a denial or rejection of the child.
There are children who will accept our container hug but others will prefer that we not touch them because they may feel that this prevents them from expressing themselves. We can always get close to them, crouching at their height, speak to them gently offering them our comfort and helping them identify and name the emotion they feel.
However, when our son expresses that he is suffering, we will simply have to put ourselves in his skin and treat them like any human being, offering comfort and affection without judgment, what we ourselves would like. Let's avoid the "nothing happens", the "you get very ugly when you cry", the "you look like a baby" and of course the "if you don't stop crying that lady will think you're an idiot" or the terrifying "mom don't you You will want".
Moving away from the child until it passes, leaving him rolling on the ground, is a mistake that conveys contempt for him and that, in the end, is nothing more than a power struggle that we want to win at all costs. Raising is not a battle nor do children want to manipulate, dominate or make us their slaves. Children want our love and containment and need us to be patient and respectful to them to grow balanced.
The children's tantrums They can remove us so much. The emotions we feel are very intense and, perhaps because of that, we make the mistake of wanting to repress them and stop them as soon as possible. The child inside us regains control and feels, through our son, that he suffered, and that decompensates us.
Then also, we have too much in mind that others are going to judge us badly, but, if we think about it, the opinion that really should matter to us more than anyone's is that of our child and what he needs is that we accompany him in this process . And what others think, deep down, do we really care about anything if our child feels safe from our love and respect?
I hope you are four keys on tantrums help you to understand them better and to understand that they are a healthy and normal expression of children's emotions, accompanying them with the empathy that our children deserve.
