Parents of young children face many challenges, and dealing with their child’s emotions is certainly one of them. As kids grow and develop, their emotional landscape grows and changes as well. The difficulty for kids—and their parents—is that not all the feelings they experience are easy to deal with.
Feelings like anger, frustration, fear, and even sadness can erupt in a toddler or preschooler, and they frequently don’t have the words or experience to convey what they are feeling. Those eruptions can turn into tantrums or other kinds of reactions that parents must respond to.
In the moment
If your child is having a tantrum, the first thing to do is ensure that they are safe. That might mean getting them to a clear spot on the floor away from breakable objects or hard furniture, for example. After that, you can try to engage your child about their feelings in a way that lets them know you are there to help.
Sheppard Pratt inpatient social worker Carolyn Tazelaar, LMSW, advises not to try to short-circuit the feelings your child is experiencing. “Just let a child have their feelings if they’re having a meltdown, especially if they are younger,” she says. “A lot of times, we as the adults want to tamp down that outburst to make ourselves feel more comfortable, but we are not meeting the need.”
A parent should always try to remain close to their child when they are upset, establishing themself as a safe person who can withstand big feelings. The child needs support even if they can’t quite understand what that means in the moment.
“Before you can understand, you have to know,” says Shay Williams, LCPC, program director for the Youth First Care Program, which embeds Sheppard Pratt therapists in public schools in Prince George’s County, Maryland. “Toddlers just got into this world, right? When they have these feelings, they don’t know what it is that they’re feeling.” Williams says, “Parents must be okay with their child not knowing what they are going through. They may not even be speaking well enough yet to put a name to what they’re feeling!”
Responding to a screaming or out-of-control child takes strength and patience. Sometimes a tantrum occurs in public, which can cause embarrassment. But give yourself some grace: You may not know exactly what to do to help your child in that moment, and you two have to navigate this emotional squall together. Just remember that helping your kiddo (and yourself) is more important than a stranger’s judgment.
Staying calm as a parent also helps your child learn how their outburst affects you. “The child looks to the parent, and they replicate, or model, the parent’s behavior,” says Irene Gomez Figueroa, LCPC, RPT, associate director, Youth First Care Program. “If a parent begins responding with heightened emotions as well, a child’s going to think, ‘I need to elevate my emotions,’ because that’s what they’re seeing.”
Calming the storm
There are a few ways to help your little one get past a tantrum. “Get down to their eye level,” says Gomez. “They see us as a parent, but also we are typically much larger than them, so getting down to the child’s eye level to talk is a good way to start.”
Also, Gomez advises, it’s important to know what your child finds comforting or supportive. “If your child is someone who likes to be touched or doesn’t like to be touched,” she says, “go with their preference.” She offers the example of her son, who doesn’t like to be hugged when he’s upset. “In a situation like that, I would get down to his eye level and say, ‘I hear you. I see that something’s wrong. I see that you’re not feeling okay.’” Validating the child’s feelings helps them learn that feelings are real and that they come and go.
Preparing ahead of time
Another strategy that can help is to teach kids about feelings when the stakes aren’t so high. Naming specific feelings like sadness, anger, disappointment, or fear will help everyone have a common vocabulary before a tantrum strikes. There are many age-appropriate books that show characters in the story displaying different feelings (Tazelaar recommends “Emotions Aquarium”), or maybe you can catch a “teachable moment” during a TV show. There are also feelings charts that show faces frowning, crying, smiling, or worried.
These tools are also important for parents, because we sometimes need reminders about what we are feeling—and that we, just like our little ones, can feel more than one thing at once. “Parents will start to see a child who’s sad but also anxious, and they may not really know what to do,” says Tazelaar. “They might say, ‘I’m going to focus on the sad part, and the anxiety may disappear.’ But we remind parents that you can have two feelings at once. You could have three feelings at once. These things are part of being a person, and we have these throughout our life.”