This year has brought a new experience for John and I… temper tantrums.
That moment when Hailey clenches her fists, shakes uncontrollably, and squeals like a pig… randomly throughout our day. It could trigger tantrums over several things in her “high-stress” day. As adults, we talk about temper tantrums like they are a phase and disregard any logical explanation for why they happen.
Personally, if someone twice my size deprived me of another serving of ice cream or tore me away from my favorite show to go grocery, shopping… I’d get pretty upset too. I might even shake uncontrollably.
As adults, we learn how to hide our feelings eventually causing no scenario. This keeps everything in place but for children, the story is different.
Parenting Class on Temper Tantrums
We often say, “Oh well, whatcha gonna do? It’s the terrible twos.”
We recently took a Love and Logic parenting class (highly recommend this) and it has helped immensely. Our lack of control mainly caused temper Tantrums for adults and kids.
Give a child or an adult a choice and they feel more in control. Hailey now gets several choices a day regarding everything she does…”do you want to wear pink shoes or red shoes… pants on first or shirt on first… dinner in this chair or that chair…”
A Calm Place
It has added a lot of humor to our day and keeps things in perspective. She also has “a calm place” where she can rest if she “loses it.” It’s an area in her room with pillows and stuffed animals.
Now that she knows how to use it, she will frequently go there on her own after “losing it.” Wouldn’t it be nice to have a “calm place” at work after a bad meeting? How about a “calm place” at the airport? I can certainly say, everybody would just love this.
