Language as a tool against tantrums

This week I’ve been talking a lot about tantrums. We’ve talked about the ‘why‘, the triggers and today I’m talking about how we can use language to help our child and ourselves.

I’ve mentioned before the frustration a child feels when they lack the ability to put their wants and feelings into words. So my best tip in tantrum prevention, and getting through the tantrum phase more quickly and easily is expanding on a child’s communication skills.

Give your child a vocabulary for emotions.

If children can put a word to different feelings, or know what they mean, it becomes a way of communicating what they are feeling. My three year old son has been taught to differentiate common feelings: happy, sad, angry. We also have taught him the meaning of the feeling, ‘frustration’ and ‘disappointment’. These are two feelings that are very common causes of tantrums, and very hard emotions for kids to put into words, unless we use them often. We did this with Missy 9 when she was in the tantrum stage, also. Often, my son will use these words to describe how he’s feeling, and when he’s too upset to tell us, we can ask him (‘are you upset, angry, frustrated?’) and he will nod or shake his head at the word he is feeling. Usually, once we’ve nailed how he’s feeling, we find he can’t help but start talking about what is bothering him.

Some ways we can teach kids to understand different feelings:

- through pretend play. You, or your child/ren can act out different feelings. Make it fun. Kids love watching mums and dads pretending to cry. Little sadists, they are… You can pretend with toys, puppets, whatever you like.

- through songs. Try, ‘If you’re happy and you know it’ or, ‘how do you feel today?’

- via stories. When you’re reading a story with your child, stop to look at the pictures. Ask your child how they think the character is feeling. If it’s a feeling that is sad, angry, etc you can ask the child, ‘what do you think would make him happy again?’

- when watching tv shows. You can ask the same sorts of questions as you would when reading a story.

- encourage them to observe other people, such as their brothers or sisters and think about how they are feeling. This has the side benefit of encouraging compassion for others as well.

- give names to the feelings when they come over the child. I’ve mentioned before that when any of my children are frustrated, particularly when little, I will say, ‘you’re frustrated, aren’t you?’ or, ‘I can see how angry/upset you are’.

- through art. When your child is drawing or painting, or creating something, you can sometimes bring discussion about feelings into it. If your child is drawing a person or an animal, you can ask your child how the person in the drawing is feeling, and what made them feel that way. You can ask what would make the animal happy.

- when you’re listening to music, talk about whether it sounds like a sad song, a happy song, an angry song, etc.

Help your child to widen their vocabulary in general.

The more language skills a child has, the less they will tantrum.

- Talk to your child often, talk about what they are doing, what you are doing, describe how you are walking up the steps together, or washing your tummy in the bath, describe anything that occurs in your day.

- Tell your child the names of objects, and praise them when they try to say them. An important one was for us to teach our daughter the word, ‘cup’. Once she could attempt to say that word, we managed to remove that tantrum trigger, because we could make out what she was trying to say. In turn, she learnt that saying words was a more likely way to meet her needs and wants than screaming or grunting, and led to her wanting to try other words, too.

- Read with your child often. We all know this is an obvious way to develop a child’s language skills, but it’s still important to mention it here.

Role model language when you are angry/upset/frustrated.

We can teach our children that us adults get upset, frustrated and angry too. If children can see us showing appropriate ways of expressing those feelings, it makes it so much easier for them to see what we expect them to do when it’s their turn. Think about what you do or say when you are angry. Do you yell and scream? Do you slam things on the table?

Hey, we’re all human, and we all sometimes react in a way we wished we hadn’t. I’m not just talking about with our children, I’m talking about with life in general. This isn’t intended to judge anyone, or criticise at all. But I know in myself, my moods and my temper can easily get the better of me at times, and it’s important to keep it or get it in check, because I have three pairs of eyes watching how I handle it. Learning about the ‘done thing’ by adults, so to speak.

Here’s the list of what I like to aim for in terms of role modelling these feelings in front of children:

- I try to tell my kids how I’m feeling. I don’t always go into why I’m upset or angry, because sometimes they are for adult reasons, and not my childrens’ burden to bear. But if they can handle the reason I’m feeling a certain way, I aim to tell them. Examples are:

‘I’m just really angry because the cat scratched my leg and it  hurts a lot.’

‘I’m frustrated because I’ve been trying to open this jar and it’s stuck!’

‘I’m disappointed, because I wanted vegemite on toast, but now the jar’s empty’

- I try to tell the kids what I think I might do about it.

‘I think I need to sit down for a minute until I calm down, and my leg stops hurting’

‘Maybe I’ll ask Daddy if he can help me to open this jar.’

‘Oh well, I might have cereal for breakfast instead’.

I have deliberately used the words, ‘aim for’ and ‘try to’ when making up this list. The reason being, is that I’m human and I fall short often. Most people do, it’s human nature. The good news is, we can teach our kids through role modelling, what not to do as well!

Kids sometimes get really scared of their tantrums, because they know they are out of control, and it’s not a nice feeling for them. They might think it makes them ‘bad’, or think we won’t love them as much because they weren’t completely perfect. What if they could see adults making errors in their judgement, losing control? (Within reason, of course) Won’t that make them feel that they’re not so bad when it happens to them? I think so!

Sometimes, like a lot of parents, I’ve yelled when I know I shouldn’t have at people, including my kids. I think it can help a lot to apologise to our kids if they see us go over the top. An example:

‘I’m sorry I was silly before. I shouldn’t have yelled like that. I think I should’ve just walked away to calm down.’

If any of you have ever seen your child copy the way you do something, be it a phrase you often use, or facial mannerisms, you’ll know just how powerful your example is to your children. Good or bad. I find my two older kids often come back to me later after they’ve overreacted to something, and really surprised me with a heartfelt apology, and an explanation why they lost control. An example could be Missy 9: ‘I’m sorry I was rude at the shops. I really wanted that magazine, and when you said no, I still really wanted it. I promise I’ll try not to nag you next time’.

When this genuine sort of apology is given to me, I like to thank them, and let them know we all make mistakes, and the main thing is to learn from them so next time we can try to do things differently.

I hope you come back to read my next post about public tantrums. I know this is the type most of us struggle with! I’m also going to talk about what we can do if you’ve avoided the triggers, you’ve done everything you can to avoid tantrums, and your child still has a tantrum anyway. Kelly from Be a Fun Mum has aptly suggested I call it, ‘Parents Eat Humble Pie’. I must say, it has its merits!

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