TERRIFIC TANTRUMS

An Attempt at Authentic Parenting

by

David Presswell

Most parents of young children are all too aware of ‘the tantrum’. It is that massive display of emotion that always seems timed to embarrass us in front of guests, fellow shoppers or child-free couples in restaurants. It is that stage you feel guilty about – is it my fault? Am I spoiling my children? – and which you hope so dearly they will simply ‘grow out of’.

So, faced with a full-throttle tantrum, what do you do?

1. Ignore – because to give a badly behaved child attention will only make them worse?

2. Comfort – pick them up and tell them it will all be alright?

3. Distract – find something (anything) else to absorb them?

4. Bribe – the promise of a treat if they pull themselves out of it?

5. Attend – sit with them while they have the tantrum?

Or today’s fashionable answer:

6. Warn them in a firm but fair voice that, if they continue, they will go into Time-Out?

And when you have your answer, how might your approach have implications for the future of our planet?

* * *

A month after Will (our eldest) turned three years old, his brother arrived. If tantrums, like tornadoes, have a high season, two to three years of age seems to be it. Will became unmanageable at just the moment when we, as his parents, needed him to be on his best behaviour. Not only were we busy showing off our new-born, Oliver, to everyone who would see him, but we were getting far too little sleep.

Our first approach was to reason with Will: this was the time when we needed him to be a big grown-up boy. How would he have liked it as a baby if an older brother had pinched him? How could he realistically expect to go out to nice places if he always caused a scene?

When these approaches failed we took the advice of a friend and ‘got Mediaeval’ with him. Any hint of difficult behaviour and we threatened Time-Out. We had the good sense to make this area an anonymous one like ‘the stairs’, rather than associating punishment with somewhere we wanted him to feel comfortable, ie. his bedroom; but even so it was disturbing how quickly Will adapted. Within a few weeks he was volunteering for Time-Out, waiting for the predictable admonitions, saying the required ‘sorry’ and returning to re-offend – this time with more finesse. There seemed no way through to him.

Fortunately there was.

* * *

Writing about Will’s behaviour at that time, what screams at me now is not the memory of the tantrums themselves – intense as they were – but my crass insistence on how I needed him to be rather than how he needed to be. I look back and am left wondering who was the adult in that relationship.

If I was to translate his experience of Oliver’s arrival into an adult perspective it would be like my wife bringing home a man I had not invited, and insisting he would from then on not only be sharing our home, but her body and most my clothes and possessions. Moreover – she would insist – it was ‘unreasonable’ of me to respond badly at such an important time for her.

Most of us would have a problem with that, and Will certainly did. But unlike an adult, who might find all kinds of ways to rationalize the process or numb the pain (alcohol, drugs and eating disorders being three adult favourites) for a child the pain is raw and incomprehensible, and its expression unmediated. A tantrum is a howl of fury. It is what you or I would do if we were deeply hurt and permitted ourselves expression of that pain.

But what makes a child’s tantrum confusing for us adults is that they provide no ‘explanation’. I might now suppose that Will was upset about Oliver taking his place – his comment to Caroline of ‘Are you still my mummy?’ should have given us sufficient warning – but his tantrums were consistently about ‘trivial’ incidents. He would become furious and inconsolable about having to put on a coat to go outside, or taking off his clothes to have a bath, or being refused a biscuit. As we saw it, these were simply absurd ‘over-reactions’.

Since then I have started to notice I do the same thing myself. If I am upset about something and I can’t or I refuse to recognize what it is, I have an uncanny ability to find ‘an excuse’ to express that emotion. Yesterday I was cross about a phone call I had received. I was fine at the time, but I was absolutely furious a little while later when a paving stone tripped me up. I had found my excuse.

Yet when a child finds a pretext to have the emotions they need to experience and to express, we as their loving parents will bribe them, distract them or punish them. We will do anything we possibly can to stop them.

Which in turn leaves the child, not only with all the fury, but now with fear of the fury: if we adults are so keen for them not to be emotional, there must be something terrible about these feelings, or worse, something bad about the child themselves for having such emotions. If feeling angry makes them unlovable, wouldn’t it really be much, much better for them not to feel the way they naturally do.

The implications for the planet are not such a stretch after all. I know many adults, and count myself among them, who have spent whole periods of our lives trying to protect others and ourselves from our real selves. We try to block out difficult feelings, whilst referring constantly to the outside world to confirm to us who we are.

We become what we buy, where we live, where we go on holiday. Consumerism gives us the means of self-definition, made the more powerful by marketing which constantly seeks to undermine any sense of inherent self-worth we still have, should we fail to buy a particular product. If you need proof, go no further than a woman’s magazine, and notice the number of article headings that tell the reader what she should think, feel, do or even be, with the constant implication that what she is now, is not good enough.

If consumerism is essentially driven by ‘perceived need’, and present levels of consumerism are unsustainable, the only way to curb consumerism (short of force) is to change the perception of what we need – our perception. We need to feel happy being us.

* * *

President Roosevelt, amongst others, is credited with the ringing admonition:

The only thing to fear is fear itself.

I used to imagine that I would be free to do anything I wished, if I felt no fear. I now have a very different formulation of that same sentence: ‘the only thing to fear is a failure to feel fear’. Courage is the feeling of fear and acting anyway.

My shift of perspective can best be explained by once again returning to Will. Last summer he was five years old and I was teaching him to ride a bicycle. I supported the back of the bike and encouraged him to feel the sensation of balancing. Time and again he would balance for a few moments, lose it, and topple off. An hour later he was sitting by the side of the road sobbing with frustration that he would never be able to ride a bike.

I was at a loss – quite out of advice and encouragement. So I thought I would just ask him very simply to describe what was going on for him: “it’s alright for a bit, just after you let go of the seat,” he told me “then it all goes wrong.” He gestured with his hand as though trying to shut away that part of the memory, “And I fall off. It’s no good, I can’t do it”.

Hearing him speak, what struck me was the difference with my experience of cycling. If I feel myself going off balance I want to know all about it so that I can make the adjustments I need. Will, frightened, was cutting out at exactly the moment he needed to feel most.

“This time,” I said to him, “I’d like you to feel what it’s like when you go off balance, and tell me about that.” Suddenly he was aware of what was happening as he started to lose balance and, aware, he was able to do something about it. Within five minutes he was riding.

* * *

So often in my line of business – as a Personal and Executive Coach – I find people failing to perform because they fear their own negative emotions. The price they pay for safety is self-doubt.

Returning to the opening question, what my wife and I have learnt to do with Will’s tantrums is option 5 – attend while he has them. Extraordinary as it sounds, I had come to welcome them.

There are circumstances – a restaurant, a supermarket – when this impracticable. But, when a child is looking for an excuse to have a tantrum, it won’t before another opportunity comes along.

You need the circumstances to be right (in terms of the impact on others, the time available, and your own emotional resources) because to allow a major tantrum is to enter the eye of the storm. The first time we did so with Will it lasted well over an hour, and we were all left exhausted.

In our experience the shape of a session is invariably the same. The tantrum starts, and you give it your full attention, getting close to the child and or offering gentle words of encouragement or simply being there. When the child realises what is happening the shouting and stamping suddenly become even more extreme. When they realise that you still have not rejected them, they try other tactics to test the point at which you will: they run out of the room (you follow them, slowly) shout at you, tell you they hate you, beg you to go away.

New to this, it is immensely difficult to watch. All your instincts are to ‘save’ your child from being so upset, especially when you seem to be the cause. For those of us who have never ourselves had the opportunity to express big emotion so openly, it can be all the harder.

Then you start to notice things. You find your child is making no effort to get away, even whilst telling you to do so. You notice they allow – even welcome – the comforting hand you rest on them. They settle a little closer. They begin to yawn, go silent, even fall asleep.

After a while of nothing seeming to happen, a new child emerges. I have now seen this transformation several times, but on each occasion I am amazed. A child who is one moment puce with terrified indignation, pops up like a cork from water, clear-eyed and clear-headed – perfectly at ease with themself.

With your support they have come through the tornado and found peace on the other side. The force of their own emotions holds less terror for them as a result. In fact, it has bestowed them with power.

In that first week with Will there were a couple of sessions, the second a little shorter. There was another two weeks after that, and another of about twenty-five minutes some two months later. The improvement in Will’s happiness and behaviour, and the effect on us as a family was – and has remained – transformational.

One of the best sources of information about this approach is Patty Wipfler at The Parent Leadership Institute in California www.parentingbyconnection.org. The series of booklets she has produced on ‘stay listening’ is a fantastic parental resource. What she suggests to keep the connection open between a child and parent is something she calls ‘Special Time’: a set period once a day, or once a week, in which the child decides what the two of you will do, and where you assure your child of your total attention. It is the most important thing you have to give them.

It sound so simple, and it is, but it is only when you do special time that you realise how different it is from how you usually order things: where a child has your partial attention at best, and where it is invariably you suggesting what the two of you should spend your time together. Every bit as shocking is the amount it comes to mean to a child to have ‘special time’ with you.

I am only grateful I learnt to view tantrums in a different way: as ways of reconnecting with Will, and restoring him to balance within himself. I can honestly say his tantrums are one of the best things that ever happened to me – and you don’t hear many parents say that.

David Presswell is a Personal and Executive Coach, with private practices in London and Bath. david@presswell.co.uk

Some simple techniques that I have found helpful:

1. Aim to spend at least 20 minutes of ‘special time’ with each child per week.

2. Whenever possible, put requests in the positive: ie. “eat up all your food until the plate is empty” rather than “don’t leave any food”. Just as with the classic “don’t imagine a pink elephant”, you find yourself inevitably imagining one in order to forget it. Not very efficient!

3. Keep eye contact with your child when asking them to do something.

4. With Time-Out, choose a ‘neutral place’ and tell the child to take themselves there immediately and stay there. No warnings. After a while, go out to them and ask them why they are there – you are trying to get them to do the thinking. If they can’t tell you, leave them for 3 minutes and return. When they can, ask them what they agree to do to change the situation, and welcome them back with a big, unconditional hug.

5. If you feel a child is looking for an excuse to express a much bigger emotion, it is our experience that Time-Out will not work. In which case, when you are ready, welcome the opportunity to support them through a tantrum.

END

©David Presswell

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