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I’ve always been skilled at hiding — or at least restraining — my deepest emotions, keeping everything bottled up to avoid confrontation or awkwardness. Regardless of the emotional storms I faced throughout my life, I would process them silently, perhaps simmering inside but showing no visible signs of anger.
Then my baby transitioned into a toddler, and the tantrums started. My facade began to crumble.
My daughter’s outbursts aren’t particularly severe by toddler standards, but anyone who has witnessed a little one’s meltdown knows that even minor tantrums can feel monumental. These outbursts typically start around age two and gradually decrease by age four, making this a brief yet intense phase. Research indicates that tantrums occur on average once a day, lasting about three minutes, which, as it turns out, feels like an eternity.
This behavior is a natural part of their development. Toddlers don’t yet have a fully developed prefrontal cortex, the brain region responsible for impulse control and emotional regulation. “As such, toddlers are all feelings. They can’t help but fully experience and express their emotions,” says Lisa Thompson, a licensed mental health counselor and founder of Parent’s Haven.
So when a toddler feels frustrated, tired, hungry, or misunderstood, emotions can spiral quickly. Just the other day, my daughter was in a fit on the floor because she thought she saw a “cookie” outside. It turned out she was actually saying “turkey.” What a mistake!
Of course, the child isn’t the only one upset during these tantrums. They can trigger a myriad of emotions in parents: they’re irrational, embarrassing, poorly timed, and utterly exhausting. On a deeper level, they can make you feel inadequate as a parent. I often find it difficult not to take tantrums both seriously and personally — and this dynamic can have repercussions.
As Thompson explains, tantrums initiate a cycle in parents, where the child’s behavior triggers certain thoughts, which lead to intense emotions, which then result in outward reactions. This process is often automatic, leaving parents unaware of what drives their behavior. The most common emotion that leads to an unregulated response in parents? Anger. “Many adults were raised with the notion that anger is bad and unacceptable,” Thompson notes. “This ingrained thinking is what ultimately leads to negative triggers for parents.”
I can relate to this deeply. All those years of suppressing my anger didn’t mean I was processing it; I was simply burying it. And, well, when a toddler is hurling her xylophone mallets at your leg because you tried to fix her shirt, it takes immense effort to keep that anger under control.
In the heat of my three-year-old’s tantrums, I’ve lost my temper. I’ve seen myself act in ways that are completely out of character: yelling, threatening, snapping. Just the other night, my daughter woke me from a deep sleep at 2 A.M., crying in frustration because she couldn’t get her blankets perfectly flat in bed. Exhausted and frustrated myself — we’ve been dealing with this blanket obsession for weeks — I snapped back. “Get BACK in your bed now,” I said sharply. “The blanket being straight DOES. NOT. MATTER.”
Naturally, this is the worst response. Dr. Michael Roberts, a child psychiatrist, explains that the most crucial aspect of a parent-child interaction during a tantrum is the parent’s tendency to mirror their child’s emotional intensity. “This isn’t helpful,” he asserts. “Your child is mostly unaware of the tempest they’re causing, so when you react with heightened emotions, it only escalates the situation.” Research supports that negative parental reactions to tantrums correlate with lower social competence and more negative emotions in children.
There’s no shortage of advice on how to handle a child’s tantrum. You’re told to stay calm, validate their feelings, give them a comforting hug; practice mindfulness, maintain a neutral face; crouch to their level, distract them; or simply let the meltdown run its course.
But here’s the catch: those strategies don’t always work. There are times when I gather all my strength to remain calm, to validate her feelings, to follow expert advice, and yet the tantrum still escalates. In those moments, my stress levels spike, and my mind becomes cluttered with feelings of shame, self-blame, and overwhelm, drowning out the advice I’ve learned.
Experts say this is a common experience. But we have to strive to stay calm nonetheless.
“Parents often fixate on finding the perfect strategy in heated moments like a tantrum,” Thompson notes. “While strategies and tools can be beneficial, mastering our ability to regulate our emotions and calm ourselves is fundamental to being a more grounded parent rather than a reactive one.”
I don’t want to be a reactive, triggered parent. Nor do I wish to keep squashing my feelings the way I have for much of my life. As the adult, it’s my responsibility to — at long last — develop coping mechanisms to process that most misunderstood emotion, anger.
I have a long way to go, but I’m making an effort. When my go-to tantrum strategies fail, I’m resorting to different techniques, ones that I employed when my baby was born. Because tantrums, in many ways, resemble contractions. You can’t reason with them; you can’t wish them to be shorter or less intense. They’re natural events, and no matter how many sophisticated strategies you acquire, often the best — indeed the only — thing you can do is breathe through it and remember that their intensity doesn’t define you.
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Summary:
This article discusses the challenges of handling toddler tantrums, exploring the emotional impact they have on both children and parents. It highlights the natural development of emotions in toddlers, the common triggers for parental reactions, and the importance of self-regulation in managing these difficult moments. Ultimately, it emphasizes the need for parents to acknowledge their feelings and develop coping strategies to navigate tantrums effectively.
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