Toddler tantrums are not for the fainthearted. When their little brows furrow and bottom lip juts out, and a shriek erupts from their lips, you know things are headed south. But what can you do about it?
Parenting coach Gen Muir has shared some advice on how she stopped her son’s meltdown in seven seconds – and she might be onto something.
Muir took to TikTok to share a story about how her son, who was two at the time, had a meltdown because she accidentally broke his banana in half when peeling it (a rookie error, but we’ve all been there).
Her son was inconsolable. And to make matters worse, it was the last banana.
Her son didn’t want the banana. Muir had no more bananas to give. Emotions were escalating on both sides.
Muir tried to reason with him and even offered to put the broken banana into a bowl and chop it up. But to no avail.
“He’s screaming, his fists are pumping, I’m feeling angrier and angrier. I am questioning every decision I have ever made up until that point … I literally could feel anger rising in me from the depths of somewhere not good,” said Muir.
“One thing and one thing only saved me in this moment,” she continued, “I remembered that I don’t need to fix this or solve this, I just need to let him know that I get it.”
How did she respond?
She took a deep breath, got down to his level by sitting on the floor, and she verbalised what she was seeing in front of her.
“I just said: ‘your banana broke, you did not want it to break [and] you wish it didn’t break, and you are really really sad about this’,” Muir explained.
The parenting educator said within six seconds her son’s head was on her shoulder, and within another second he was quietly eating the broken banana.
Why does this work?
Muir said she realised “it is so much easier to surrender and accept a feeling than to fight it and try to fix and solve it, and distract and beg and bribe and threaten or yell”.
She added that it can be really hard to find that solution in the moment because “every part of you wants to shut down that emotion”.
The Child Mind Institute said validation is a “powerful tool” for helping kids to calm down.
Dr Lindsey Giller, a clinical psychologist, told the site: “Validation is showing acceptance, which is not the same thing as agreement. It’s nonjudgmental. And it’s not trying to change or fix anything.”
She added that feeling understood helps children let go of those powerful, all-consuming feelings.
#Stopped #Sons #Tantrum #Seconds
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