Tantrum is one of the most common ways that children resort to for attracting attention, for expressing their anger, their refusal to something, stress, hunger or frustration. It happens suddenly without being planned before. Such a problem disturbs parents which drives them sometimes to deal with it in a wrong and an unacceptable way. You may suffer from the same problem and do not know how to solve it. To help you to deal with tantrum and handle it wisely, we present to you the following tips.
How to deal with tantrum when it happens:
– Ignore tantrum: Try to make your child feel that what she does is ignored and that you do not care about this tantrum.
– Keep dangerous objects away: Dangerous things and those that can be broken should be kept away from your child in order not to be destroyed or to harm himherself.
-Relax: Try to control yourself and do not get angry in order not to encourage your child and increase the level of the tantrum. Do not deal with your child’s tantrum with another tantrum in return.
– Deep breath: Taking deep breaths will help you to relax and act rationally without rush.
– Positive words: Reduce the amount of negative words that you use such as ” don’t” and “no”, you can instead of that use other positive words such as ” please, can you …., let’s ….”.
– Warn your child: Tell your child quietly that what she does should be stopped and that you are not going to talk to himher until she stops throwing the tantrum.
– Do not respond: Avoid responding to what your child wants, because this will make your child throw temper tantrum each time she wants to get that thing. Try to respond later on.
– praise your child: If you succeeded to make your child stop tantrum, then begin to praise and show that you love himher. Reward and praise your child for other good behaviors to encourage himher to do them again.
– Leave the place: If your child started to throw a tantrum in a public place, try to quickly leave the place in order not to attract the attention to such an embarrassing situation.
– Keep away from punishment: Avoid punishing your child and do not think to resort to it when your child have a tantrum, because this will increase tantrum and make your child more angry.
– Express through words: Try to make your child learn expressing hisher anger through words instead of resorting to actions.
– Distraction: Try to change the situation that increases your child’s anger and attract hisher attention to another thing or activity.
– Track your child: Try to observe your child to know the cause that leads to your child’s tantrums, because it helps you to deal with it before happening or becoming worse by many ways such as feeding, relaxing, allowing your child to sleep or showing more concern.
– Understand your child: If your child felt that you understand hisher desires and feelings, then this will relax the child to be more quiet and will help you to shorten the period of tantrum to end quickly and not to last for a long time.
– Time-outs: They help your child to relax, because she is taken away from the place and the situation that increases hisher anger. Time-outs are useful for teaching your child that such a behavior is totally unacceptable and this method can only be used with children who are more than 2 years old in order to be able to understand the purpose of doing that with them.
How to avoid tantrum or reduce the possibility of its occurrence:
– Do activities: Allow your child to do activities that make himher happy and help in relaxation such as running, dancing, reading, listening to music or going for a picnic to reduce the possibilities of tantrum occurrence.
– Organize the child’s day: Try to make your child aware of the tasks that should be done everyday such as playing, watching TV, having meals, taking a shower, sleeping and make these tasks scheduled to be a daily routine.
– Let your child choose: Do not force your child to accept everything such as the clothes that are worn, the food that is eaten and the games that are played without being given some freedom to choose or to show hisher opinion and desire.
– Make your child busy: Do not give your child the chance to get bored by making himher busy along the day and try to always present different and new activities, TV programs, songs and toys.
– Calm down: Try to be calm in front of your child to affect himher and encourage this child to act like you.