Tantrums

[ailbhe]

My experience of tantrums is that they mean the child is upset. Sometimes they don't know why, by the time they reach a tantrum - I have just remembered the bit in The Bone People where Simon has tried and tried and tried and tried to get people to understand what he needs to say about his recent trauma, and eventually flips out and smashes things in an effort to communicate his desperation.

It doesn't work.

But tantrums are like that. Babies - and children - and, come to think of it, some adults - reach a point of communication failure where they can't express themselves moderately any more. They want something and it's not fair, on that deep Peter Pan level of unfairness, that they can't have it. The phrase we use in this house is "The Universe is wrong."

I have never seen a child put themselves into a tantrum deliberately as a manipulative tactic. Tantrums are no fun to watch, but it's abundantly obvious to me that they are far less fun to be inside of.

Ignoring tantrums mainly works to stop the adult's temper fraying irretrievably. It doesn't solve the child's problem. It doesn't prevent future tantrums; some children don't have many, and a very few pretend to have one in case it works, but the difference is obvious - a child in control of themselves isn't having a tantrum.

I used to give Linnea words - one chant was "I hate Mammy, I hate Daddy, I hate everything unhappy," which worked well. So far, Emer responds more easily than Linnea did, to cuddles or sympathetic noises. Disagreeing with them has never worked; if it's not fair, it's not, and if it's nasty, it is, and that's that.

Losing my temper doesn't help either. I put myself in time out far more than either of them.

But they don't do it much; I might feel differently if they did.

(I'd love to know why they are so very naughty when I am hungry and have PMS though. That's cunning.)

Comments

[biascut.livejournal.com]

I'll never forget her trembling on the edge of a meltdown at stellanova's wedding. She was trying SO HARD, and her eyes were just getting bigger and bigger until there were finally raisins to eat!