Adventures in Parenting

In the last post, I placed the responsibility on the parent and practically held the child blameless when the child throws a tantrum at the mall.

Let me explain.

Imagine you are putting together some piece of IKEA furniture. There are no English words in their instructions. After three hours, it is just about finished, except for that one final step…and that final piece does not fit. Your reaction? Most likely a tantrum with swearing, ripping up the instructions, and throwing the screwdriver out the window will be the result.

Imagine if you were asked to go to the world’s best chocolate shop to buy a present for your friend. You are on a strict diet and promises yourself that you will not buy anything for yourself. Intellectually you know the right thing to do. You should buy that scrumptious chocolate for your friend and not even have a taste of it for yourself. But when you get to the store and smell the sweet rich aroma, you get real agitated. You swear you’ll scream at someone if you don’t get some chocolate in a hurry.

We adults throw tantrums too! We are a little more inhibited and probably won’t do it in a public place, but we go home and kick the dog, so to speak, and have a fit.

In the same way, a child usually has a tantrum to express his frustrations. So to some extent, it is normal and part of the development process until he develops language to express himself. He is also learning to deal with his environment and people around him.

When we have a tantrum, how do we want to be treated? What would soothe our temper?

Would we want someone to scream at us and tell us to stop it? Do we think it would be fair to receive punishment for expressing our frustration? How long do you think we should be allowed to vent and scream before we should control ourselves and stop?

In a similar way, when your child has a temper tantrum, don’t react with screaming that will just escalate the emotions. Seek to understand the situation and deal with it as you would want to be dealt with if you were experiencing that type of frustration.

As an adult, we have much more control of our circumstances. But a child is at our mercy. Children are often put into situations without their consent, like having to go to the mall when they would much rather go to the park. They have only been in this living-in-this-world thing for a couple of years and don’t understand all that is expected of them.
Be patient. As much as possible don’t put children in situations where they don’t want to be, just as you wouldn’t want to be put in frustrating situations either.