We’ve all seen it. Heck, even some of us have experienced it. A little girl sobbing and crying as her mother pulls her away from the toy department. Standard toddler tantrums.
A young boy red-faced and screaming as his mother pleads with him to leave the video game aisle of the store so they can take his younger sister home.
A toddler withering around on the floor in the grocery store aisle because his mother wouldn’t let him open the box of Cheerios.
It’s enough to make us cringe and induce panic and anxiety that our children will one day, inevitably, have a meltdown in public.
But let’s take a second and re-evaluate these same scenarios from the perspective of the child.
The little girl crying as she is pulled from the toy department feels abruptly pulled from doing an activity she was fully engrossed in and enjoying.
The young boy whose mother is pleading for him to leave the video game aisle so they can take his younger sister home is frustrated that the new baby is getting all the attention and feels like everything is done for her.
The toddler having a meltdown over Cheerios is unable to cope with the emotions of desire and the expectation of waiting until the right time.
Wow. When we take a second and remove ourselves from the tantrum we can see that each and every tantrum tends to have a root cause. When something has a root cause, we can start to address this and prevent the tantrum altogether. Do this often enough and toddler tantrums can be tamed and kept at bay.