How do I get my Raging Child to be a Cooperating Child?

can her tantrum be more than meets the eye?

Parents often come to me with the following problem: “If my child doesn’t get what he wants, or doesn’t want to do what I want, I have a screaming, raging child on my hands and once the explosion has hit, there is nothing I can do but wait it out. What do I do?”

This type of scenario is not uncommon among parents of small children, but it usually begins to fade away as they get older. But for some kids, it never gets better, enough. And the reason can often lie in something less well known; a cognitive deficit or difficulty learning. But it’s not necessarily something we diagnose. Just as some children learn to walk or talk later, or some children are better at sports or math, there are some children who have a lot of trouble regulating their emotions and expressing their feelings. For some children, transitioning from play to eating or from school to home, or from what they expected to happen to the reality, is disproportionately difficult. So difficult sometimes that they cannot cope with the change. And when they can’t articulate what they need, they resort to tantrums and once they start, it takes a long time for their brain to re-regulate.

One solution for these parents; Learn to parent more proactively

I tell my clients to keep track of tantrums and triggers and try to understand what the underlying issues are. What happened right before the tantrum and always these four; were they hungry, angry, lonely or tired? (HALT - a wonderfully useful acronym coined by "No Drama Discipline" authors Daniel Siegel and Tina Payne Bryson). This is one great way to stay proactive. Make sure your kids are fed, well rested, not feeling lonely or angry and if you think they may be suffering from one of these four things, stay on top of them, help them, don't let it turn on you. This is when they are most vulnerable. Be ready, and step in before they explode. This can mean keeping a snack in your purse. It can mean a stricter bedtime. It can mean making sure you have a plan for them when their brother has a friend over and they don't. It can mean, you know they slept poorly the night before, so you are going to be a little easier on them, and help them get to bed early tonight.

And if it already happened...we work on next time

You were too late this time. You weren't proactive, but now you have more information. You know they had a tantrum about school that was so bad, you let them stay home. You know that something is bothering them about going to school. They are insisting they are sick, but the blood tests are all fine, and they seem to recover once the school bus has come and gone.

Or, they are jumping into your bed every night, and you and your spouse are not sleeping. You have been letting them stay there because otherwise there is yelling and crying in the middle of the night and you don't want to wake the whole house, the whole block, the whole neighborhood. So the problem is defined, but what do we do about it so it doesn't happen again?

We work cooperatively with our children and meet them where they are. We try and find out how to help them, and we enlist them in the process. We tell them; “If this solution doesn’t work we can try something else.” When we problem-solve with our children, we are taking a step forward, going in the right direction. It may not work the first time, but when we try, with them, we are moving forward.

How do we do it?

Step one: Trouble shoot the problem together. Sit together, when you are both calm and agree to talk about the problem calmly. Find out what’s bothering your child. Listen. And listen some more. Children who have terrible tantrums and young children often have a really hard time expressing and even understanding what they are feeling, but they are having a hard time for a reason. Most children don’t want to defy their parents; they actually want our love and attention. They want to cooperate with us, but something is preventing them and our job is to help them figure out what is preventing them from listening.

Getting to the core of the problem is not easy, but the harder we try, the better we become at being a detective; and the more motivated they will be to learn how to articulate what is troubling them. And sometimes the problem may be something we really don’t relate to, such as; ”there are monsters under my bed,” or “I am scared of robbers,” or “I don’t want to hold your hand when crossing the road because I want to be a big boy (3 year old says)” or “I can’t clean my room because I am in the middle of building a city” (a year long project) etc., etc.

Step two: Once we know what the problem is, we can come up with a solution. The solution must be realistic and mutually beneficial to both parties (i.e. You and your child). Coming up with the solution is where we also enlist their help and expertise. This is where we really want to try and let them take the lead, but if they can’t come up with something themselves, we can help them with one possible solution, but do not get attached to your idea, even if it’s better than theirs. Theirs may be worse, but if they came up with it, it’s still more likely to work. But make sure you open the discussion up to the idea that if it doesn’t work, we will try something else. That is the key to keep it moving.

Once your child is able to articulate and feel in control of their emotions, that's when you go from raging to cooperating.

This article was written using ideas from The Explosive Child by Ross W. Green and No Drama Discipline by Daneil J. Siegal and Tina Payne Bryson