7 Ways To Deal With Your Temper Tantrums

A tantrum or temper tantrum is an emotional outbreak, usually associated with children or those in emotional distress, that is typically characterized by stubbornness, crying, screaming, defiance, angry ranting, a resistance to attempts at pacification and, at some cases, hitting. Physical control may be lost, the person may be unable to remain still, and even if the "goal" of the person is met he or she may not be calmed.

So these are the seven ways to deal with your temper tantrum:

• Try to distract : When your child throws a tantrum, the best thing that you can do is distract her. For example, if your child is crying for a toy, give her a story book or teach a new game or simply talk about something else. If that doesn’t stop the crying, take your child to a different setting – another room or outside.

• Find the cause of the tantrum : Finding the cause of the tantrum can help you in two ways. It will help you distract your child from the cause completely and also eliminate it in the future. Say, your child throws a tantrum because he wants to touch the computer. Once you track this cause, you can shift the computer to another room, which can be kept locked.

• Avoid the trigger :  As mentioned earlier, the best way to avoid a tantrum is to avoid the trigger. Suppose, your child creates a scene in the shopping mall for chocolates, then you can avoid shopping with your child altogether. Ask your husband to shop for a few months or you may ask him to take care of your baby until you come back from shopping. Sounds attainable?

• Don’t get irritated :  No matter how uncontrollable your child gets, never get irritated with her. Children don’t understand what you say; they can only understand your expressions. And if you seem irritated, they get disturbed and may again throw a tantrum that was dwindling. Your toddler thinks, ‘If mom looks upset, means even she can’t solve my problem!” This makes them all the more afraid. 

• Neither entertain nor punish the tantrum : Each and every reaction of yours is going to have an impact on your child’s life. This is because toddlers are in the conditioning stage. So every time you encourage something, your child will repeat it and so is the case otherwise. Hence, whenever you face a tantrum, make sure you neither entertain it nor punish your child for the same. If you entertain the tantrum, your child will know how get things done. If you punish, it will have a negative effect.

• Compromise : There is a vast discrepancy between how your toddler wants things done and what you want them to do. It’s necessary to maintain a balance and compromise. For example, if he doesn’t want to wear the raincoat when going to the park try, “Honey, it’s raining very heavily. You don’t want to get sick after getting wet, do you?” If she insists, then take him under a big umbrella, but make sure this is a one-time situation.

• Praise your child :  Praise your child for all the good things that she does and ignore all of her tantrums. This way, you will reinforce only those activities that are ideal for your child and she will learn from this. Keep your toddler’s daily schedule busy so that she doesn’t get the time to think over or feel frustrated over something.