In an NPR interview, researchers James A. Green and Michael Potegal revealed their findings about the patterns of children’s temper tantrums. By studying audio recordings of over 100 toddler tantrums, Green, Potegal, and Pamela Whitney found that the old idea that tantrums have two distinct stages, anger then sadness, was incorrect. Instead, they found the two overlap: sadness continues throughout, overlaid by spikes of anger.
A YouTube video included in the article demonstrates the pattern and is worth watching. In the video, you see three-year-old Katrina’s father, David, carrying her to the table. She is already upset. She wants to sit at the corner of the table, but it’s round. David says there is no corner and asks where she wants to sit. The question makes the tantrum worse, so he decides for her. When he sits her in a chair, she screams and slides onto the floor. Yelling and screaming she bangs a stool against the wall once, checks for Dad’s reaction, then throws herself face down for the final phases of the tantrum – kicking, screaming, then tears and sadness.
“The trick in getting a tantrum to end as soon as possible, Potegal said, was to get the child past the peaks of anger. Once the child was past being angry, what was left was sadness, and sad children reach out for comfort.”
The researchers’ conclusion was that the best thing to do is nothing – observe children’s tantrums, but don’t react.
I agree with their conclusion about using observation but disagree strongly with the idea of doing nothing. Instead, observe children’s tantrums out loud with a great deal of empathy and understanding, and give them a way that is OK with you to meet their need for power each time their anger rises.
To do this simply SAY WHAT YOU SEE® (SWYS) the child doing, saying, feeling and thinking while matching the level of the child’s energy as it rises and falls. In this case, it could sound like this:
SWYS: “You want to sit at the corner of the table, and it’s round! Oh, no!!! There’s no corner!!! That’s just awful!!! Not here, not there…no corners, and you wanted to sit at one!”
When you start to get some nods, you can try moving into empowerment by offering something specific the child can do or turning the problem-solving over to the child with an all-purpose CAN DO statement like:
CAN DO: “Hmmm. You want to sit at a corner, and there aren’t any. Must be something you can do!”
If the child needs more power, the answer will be, “No! Nothing will work!” to which you respond by SAYing WHAT YOU SEE to make the child right. Being right helps meet a child’s need for power; contradicting a child increases the need for power which results in escalation. Responding with questions also increases a child’s need for power because questions feel controlling, so they also can result in escalation. De-escalation occurs when you start from where the child is, make her right about what she is saying, and show you understand by matching her level of energy while describing tangible details. If you are wrong, the child will tell you, as in:
SWYS: “There’s nothing you can do! Wow! You want to sit at the corner with your own space right there – your own corner.”
Child: “No. I want to sit by you and Mommy!” (or whatever the wish is)
If the child tells you why sitting at the corner is important, make her right again and return to problem-solving, as in:
SWYS: “I was wrong! You want to sit by me and Mommy!”
CAN DO: “Must be some way you can sit by both of us at a round table. Hmmm.”
When children feel understood, rather than knocking over stools they meet their need for power by problem-solving. In this case, choosing a chair between you would do the trick, but letting the child figure that out would be best.
So what do you do when the wish remains “unreasonable” like:
Child: “Yes, I want my own corner!”
Turn it over to the child. Because children see the world differently than we do, solutions that would work for them might never occur to us. For example, where I might think that the only answer would be to bring in a table with corners, the child might decide that putting a special toy on the table would be enough to say where a corner is. You never know, so remember to turn “impossible” problem-solving over to the child, too. Then your role becomes referee, simply saying:
Boundary/CAN DO: “That’s OK with me,” or “That’s not OK with me. Must be some other way that works for everybody!”
When children come up with solutions, pointing it out as a STRENGTH seals the deal and gives them a tool to draw on next time, as in:
STRENGTH: “You found a way to solve that problem that works for everybody. You’re a problem-solver!”
Noemi, Katrina’s mother, said that her daughter often picked unsolvable problems as the focus of her tantrums:
“[Katrina] once said, ‘I don’t want my feet. Take my feet off. I don’t want my feet. I don’t want my feet!’ When nothing calmed the child down, [the mother] added, “I once teased her – which turned out to be a big mistake – I once said, ‘Well, OK, let’s go get some scissors and take care of your feet.’ Her daughter’s response, [the mother] recalled, was a shriek: ‘Nooooo!!’”
Even in the case of unsolvable problems, understanding is still the answer. De-escalation will occur when you simply SAY WHAT YOU SEE and make the child right, as in:
SWYS: “You don’t want your feet. You want them off, and there they are—stuck right on there. Oh no!”
When children invent unsolvable problems over and over, problem-solving is not in order because the upset is not about that problem. The problem is invented to provide justification for the upset.
For example, in the round table tantrum video, you can see that Katrina was already upset when she was carried into the room. If she felt like her problem or her feelings had been discounted, latching onto an unsolvable problem like finding the corner of a round table would validate her feelings. After all, in kid logic, if you can’t fix a problem, it must be really big and really real! Right?
Tantrums like this can be avoided by SAYing WHAT YOU SEE and validating the child’s feelings at the start. Even if the initial problem doesn’t seem to warrant the level of upset you are seeing, to the child it does. Validate the feelings about the “little” problem, and the child will not need to seek greater proof.
This goes back to the root causes of tantrums that the researchers did not discuss: unmet needs. The things children do to meet their needs for connection and power match the patterns that the researchers observed.
Tantrums often begin when children want something or don’t want something, and feel like they can’t make you understand. On top of that, children often feel that if you don’t care about what they want, you don’t care about them! This leaves them feeling powerless and disconnected.
Sadness is a child’s response to disconnection and, as the researchers said, compels them to reach out. When their need for connection remains unmet (they don’t feel like you care), children start to feel powerless, so anger and aggression kick in to meet that need. Banging chairs, hitting, and screaming feel powerful to kids. When that need is filled, kids return to sadness and again seek connection.
During a tantrum, the need for connection continues, overlaid by the presenting need for power, which rises and falls… depending on your interactions with the child. Contradicting children or focusing on boundaries drives the need for power up, which you can clearly see occurring in the round table tantrum video.
When you understand this, you can see why traditional approaches to tantrums just make them worse: ignoring children increases their need for connection and power as does trying to control them. The answer? Validation.
Validation directly addresses the underlying need for connection that set the whole thing off to begin with. Our first premise for understanding children explains why:
“Everything children do and say is a communication, and children must continue to communicate until they are heard.”
When children feel like their wishes and wants are not heard and that no one cares, they feel powerless and escalate the communication by yelling, screaming, and acting it out. It’s the child’s version of, “What do I need to do to make you see? This is important to me!” When you finally “see,” the child’s need for connection is filled and the acting out stops. Children who feel connected can handle anything, even not getting what they want.
