Toddler Tantrums - 6 Effective Strategies

If you have ever had a toddler in your home, you will know that these little people are some of the most fun to be around.  The rate at which they are learning new skills, speaking new words and processing the environment around them is incredible to witness.  It’s when their personality really starts to shine through and they begin to make their mark on the world.

On the flip side, having a toddler can also mean dealing with their terrific “tantrums,” the “terrible two’s,” and even the “terrible three’s”.  

These little people can be pretty stubborn, wilful, strong-minded and unrelenting when they want something and WANT. IT. NOW!  

Their cute, lovely selves instantly turn into little volcanic eruptions - screaming, kicking, biting, lying on the floor with all four limbs flailing about, and even vomiting.  

It’s loud, unnerving, embarrassing and can be just as frustrating for the parent as it is for the tantruming toddler.

And even the most well-meaning, loving, gentle parent can be moved to erupt in their own adult tantrum in response - raising their voice, physically handling their child, smacking, enforcing time outs and other punishments.  

And, I’m guessing most parents will feel emotionally drained, exhausted and guilty after behaving this way.  They know deep down inside, there MUST be another way to be the adult and respond to their erupting toddler without losing it.

Feel familiar?

So, how to you mindfully manage a seemingly irrational (and defiant) toddler without losing control of yourself by yelling, using physical force or punishments?  

How do you reason with a child who can’t yet form sentences on their own?

Toddler Brain Development

When it comes to toddlers, one of the first things to know in order to understand their behaviour is that their brains are not yet fully developed.  

The human brain is one of the last organs to fully mature and neuro-scientific research has shown that the brain does not fully develop until a person is in their mid-twenties.  And even then, the brain is continually changing depending on our life experiences, relationships and environment.  Neural pathways and connections (often up to 1 million each SECOND!) are constantly altered and updated based on how and how often they are used.

In toddlers, we see this display of brain immaturity most frequently in their passionate and impulsive behaviour.  These little people can experience a wide range of thoughts, emotions and preferences and yet cannot put these together in a coherent way.  

It takes the brain approximately 5-7 years for a child’s brain to integrate - that is, for all the different parts of the brain to start to communicate efficiently with each other.  Until this time, children will struggle with paying attention to more than one thing at a time and will also struggle with situations that require judgement and self-control.  

When they are full of emotions, which they certainly are when they are in a tantrum, they cannot control themselves as they just don’t have a sufficiently developed frontal cortex.

Just by knowing this about their brains, and keeping it in the forefront of our minds when our toddler is tantruming, then immediately we start to approach our tantruming toddler with a different perspective.  We can filter their behaviour with a lens of mature understanding and see that they are doing their best with the limited brain development that they have.

Because your toddler really doesn’t want to tantrum.  Although crying does release stress hormones and so literally helps their bodies process and release the felt stress and emotions, it doesn’t feel great for your toddler in that moment.  When they are in a full-blown tantrum, they are as upset as can be and they actually cannot control themselves.  They don’t know what else to do.  

It’s important for you to know it’s not intentional.  It’s not a personal attack on you. It’s not your toddler’s way of purposefully embarrassing or upsetting you.  Their behaviour is their way of communicating to you that they need your help.

6 Strategies to help your Tantruming Toddler

1. Take a moment for yourself

Perhaps one of the biggest ways that we can stay calm in the face of an irrational explosive toddler is to take a moment for ourselves in the very beginning.  

It might just be a couple of seconds to take a deep breath.  Breathing changes our physiological state and has a huge calming effect.  

You may wish to repeat a mantra to yourself, such as “I can do this” or “He is a toddler and needs my help/love”.

Taking a moment also gives you a chance to THINK about how you are going to react, without just reacting to the situation.  

Remember, you are the parent.  It’s your role to stay calm, in control and help your toddler through this situation.  

2. Show Empathy and Understanding

When your toddler is in a tantrum, they are 90% full of emotion.  They are FEELING.  They are NOT thinking!  So please don’t try to use logic or reason with your child.  Remember their feeling brain has hijacked their thinking brain and you cannot access that thinking brain until the feeling brain has calmed down.  

Try to limit the number of words that you use.  Instead, with your body language and facial expressions, show your toddler that you empathise with their situation.  That you FEEL what their frustration/anger/sadness.  

Then you can use your words to try to help them express their feelings - “I can see you are SO upset that you cannot have that toy.  You really wanted it and you wish you could have it.”  Your aim is to name their emotions so that you can give them the vocabulary to accompany the feelings. You’re helping them name their feelings.  Acknowledging their desires.

All your toddler knows is that they are feeling really upset, and if you can show them that you understand how they are feeling and there is a way to describe it, it also shows them that it’s not such a big scary feeling.  The feelings have names and you get it. 

Most toddlers are still learning to communicate and have limited words at their disposal.  If you can help them feel “heard” and “understood”, often just by stating what it was they wanted to have or do or what they were wishing for, this will speed up the time it takes for them to calm down and regain their composure.

3. Re-connect

If your child allows it, try to physically reconnect with them.  GIve them a hug.  Hold them tight and reassure them without words that you still love them.  That it’s okay.  The world is a safe place and you are there for them.  Physical contact can be a powerful sensory input and help your child to re-connect with you and calm down.

If they aren’t ready for a hug, stay in close proximity to them so they do not feel abandoned in a time when they emotionally need you the most.

4. Don’t Give In

It might feel like an easier solution in the moment, but giving in to your child’s wishes in the middle of a tantrum doesn’t help them understand and process the world around them any better.  It sets the precedent that if they tantrum, they will get what they want, and I’m pretty sure you don’t really want to set that precedent that early on in life!

If you have set a limit of some sort, you’ve hopefully done it for a good reason and therefore you should stick with it.  Your toddler is learning how to deal with the upset, disappointment, sadness, anger, etc. that they feel when they are faced with a limit they don’t like or agree with.  That’s okay.  

You can acknowledge that they didn’t agree with your limit and that it’s okay for them not to like it.  

You can give them the words to understand how they are feeling and then the empathy to help them recover from those feelings.

5. Avoid Bribes, Counting to 3 and Punishments

Like giving in, bribing your child to get them out of a tantrum doesn’t really teach them the right lessons and sets you up for more challenging situations later as they get older, stronger and wiser!  

Counting to 3 is another popular parental tactic to be avoided.  What this does is teaches your child that they don’t have to listen to you the first time you ask them to do something and that they can delay until you “really mean it” (is that when you say 3? When you raise your voice? When you lose it?).  These aren’t really the lessons that you want to be teaching your child.  

Instead, if you have asked them to do something you want them to do it the first time you ask, not after counting to 3.  If you toddler is in the middle of a tantrum, I would suggest to you that asking them to do anything, let alone counting to 3, is highly ineffective as they are too busy still FEELING all the big emotions and don’t have the brain development to process your request in that moment.

Punishments of any sort, including time outs and naughty steps/corners, have been proven to cause stress and trauma and have long-term negative consequences for a child’s developing brain.  

Punishments often instil fear and stress in a child, and so in the moment you may get the desired behaviour, but not because the child is self-motivated to behave well, but because they are motivated to avoid the stress or feeling bad from the punishment.  Those might seem like two sides of the same thing, but they are in fact very different.

Time-outs or naughty-steps, teach your children that in their most upset and vulnerable moments, you struggle to be there for them and create a safe place.  That you are  withdrawing your love and “banishing” them to be isolated and process their big emotions on their own, whether or not they are able to.  

Imagine you were really upset and went to confide in a friend, who then put you in another room and turned her back on you.  You would feel abandoned and even more upset, and would probably be less able to process your original emotional upset than before.  

Your toddler, being incredibly immature, needs your help to process their emotions and feel safe doing so.  They need your help to calm down and regain their composure.  

Sending them away to calm down on their own sends a few messages to your child:

• That they are a bad person who behaves badly
• That having big emotions is bad
• That you only love them when they do what you want
• That you will abandon them when they have big emotions
• That they have to figure out how to process big emotions on their own

I don’t know a single parent who uses time-outs or the naughty-step who actually intends to send any of these messages to their child.  Most of the parents who use these methods do so because they don’t know what else to do or see the short-term cooperation from their child and are then convinced these methods “work”.  In fact, the short-term cooperation you might see from your child is motivated more by the fear you will abandon them again or withdraw your love again, rather than the intrinsic self-motivation to behave well (which is the kind of motivation you are really after!).

6. Calm before Reason

You may wish to process what happened with your toddler but always wait for them to be calm before doing so.

Your child may have thrown a tantrum because of a limit you set - i.e., you said “no” to something.  That’s okay.  It’s your role to set limits and your child NEEDS you to set limits and boundaries for them in order to understand and feel safe in the world.  

They may not always like the limits you set, and that’s okay too.  If that’s the case, you can acknowledge this and also re-state your limit,  “You’re mad that I said you can’t play outside right now.  I know you really wanted to play outside.  It’s lunchtime now.  Maybe we can play outside this afternoon?”

If your child misbehaved in the lead-up to a tantrum, you may wish to talk through that misbehaviour and role play what they could do differently next time.  

This can be a useful way to “practice” the behaviour your expect in situations you can anticipate might be tricky.  For example, going to the shops and wanting something or leaving a fun activity/playground.  It is especially helpful to do with slightly older toddlers/pre-school children, whose language and brain functions are slightly more developed.

For younger toddlers, you can just give them a narrative of what happened without blame or making them feel bad. Just tell the story of what happened, how they felt, and what you both might do differently next time to avoid the tantrum.

Of course, it goes without saying that if you can be proactive and avoid triggering a tantrum where you might foresee one occurring, that is often a good parenting tactic!  

Toddlers and young children are particularly prone to exploding when they are tired or hungry, so watch out for those signals.  

Also, keeping a good routine and structure helps a toddler make sense of their world and anticipate what is happening next, keeping surprises (and therefore emotional outbursts) to a minimum.  

And taking time to connect with your toddler each day, giving them your full attention, having fun and laughing together helps build up their positive reserves which can go a long way to helping them feel more cooperative with you in those tricky situations.

If it helps, when you find that you toddler is having a full-blown tantrum, you might be comforted to know that research has shown the average tantrum only lasts 3 minutes.  Take a few deep breaths, follow the strategies outlined above and know that it will be over soon.