7 Ways To Deal With Your Toddler’s Tantrums

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Ineh Olisah

Tantrums are common with toddlers. One moment they are happy and playing, the next moment they are screaming and rolling on the floor when they aren’t getting what they want.

Being limited by their developing speech, because children within the age bracket of 12-48 months have a hard time expressing themselves, they get easily irritated and throw tantrums when they are frustrated, hungry, excited and tired. The onus is therefore on you as a parent, to show your toddler better ways to express their negative emotions.

Using the following tips might help you cope with your toddler’s tantrums:

1. Be Calm: Parents often make the mistake of reacting to a tantrum by also throwing their own tantrums. This a lose-lose situation. If you want to take charge of the situation, you must be calm.

2. Distract Your Child: Use distracting techniques to remove your child’s attention from the cause of his tantrum. Call his attention to something else like a picture or toy.

3. Hold Your Child: When in public, hold your child firmly to prevent him from hurt or causing damage. While doing this, speak calmly but firmly to your child .

4. Take Away Your Child From the Situation: Tantrums can occur when you are outside the home shopping or visiting friends. If you are embarrassed, remove your child from the scene away to a quiet place until he calms down.

5. Be aware of stressful situations: Be aware of situations that could stress your child. Activities like potty training or learning to solve a problem could lead to tantrums. Before starting an activity prepare your child with calm words and be more understanding.

6. Talk to your child: After the tantrum episode and your child is calmed down, talk to your child about the situation. Explain that such actions are not acceptable and teach her how what to say or do when he is faced with a similar situation. Help him to learn how to express himself using his words.

7. Ignore Your Child: According to parents.com during a tantrum, your child is literally out of his mind. His emotions take over — overriding the frontal cortex of the brain, the area that makes decisions and judgments. That’s why reasoning doesn’t help — the reasoning part of his brain isn’t working. Says Alan Kazdin, PhD, author of The Kazdin Method for Parenting the Defiant Child, “Once you’re in a situation where someone’s drowning, you can’t teach them to swim — and it’s the same with tantrums. There’s nothing to do in the moment that will make things better. In fact, almost anything you try will make it worse. Once he chills out, then you can talk.”