Violet Voices

What about tantrums?

By Meredith Efken

I don’t know about you, but when I first became a mom, I read all those books about the different phases I should expect my child to go through. I learned about the baby stage, the toddler stage, and then I got to the Terrible Twos, Preschool stage, Kindergarten stage, and so forth.

Is it just me, or is the only stage that mentioned much about tantrums the Terrible Two stage? I mean, when my little sweetie started pitching fits and screaming around age 19 months or so, I was PREPARED! I knew it was coming, and everything I read said I’d only have to endure it for about a year or so. Just be firm. Use time out. Etc. No sweat. I could handle it.

Well…age THREE came. And the tantrums stayed. This surprised and dismayed me, but my mother finally told me that “threes are often worse than twos.” And that by age four I’d have my darling back. She was at least partially right. Four was better than three. But we still were getting far more tantrums than I would have expected.

Kindergarten came, and we started home schooling. The tantrums REALLY picked up then! I couldn’t figure out what was going on! It had to be my fault. I must be doing something horrible wrong to cause my daughter to throw fits. I felt awful. I was a Bad Mom.
I noticed, however, that over those past few years since Terrible Two, the cause of the tantrums had changed. She would get frustrated about a new skill she was having trouble with. Or her routine or expectations would be upset. Or she would get caught and get into trouble. It seemed like any time she experienced any strong emotion, it would overwhelm her and be expressed as rage.

It was pretty scary, actually.

I finally had to adjust my thinking about how I was dealing with her tantrums. They weren’t because she is spoiled or selfish. They were a matter of her lacking the ability to deal with her own emotions. So instead of ignoring her or putting her in her room like we used to do when she was two, I started working with her on the idea of self control. So when she did start to get frustrated or when she did become angry, I started telling her she needed to excuse herself and go to her room to get self control.

The problem has always been that I didn’t really know how to help her find that control within herself. Sometimes, after she would stomp upstairs and start screaming and throwing things, I would go up after her and just hold her to calm her down. But more often, I was too angry myself to be in a comforting mood, so would just let her thrash it out on her own.

The only way of controlling myself that I knew of was to simply stuff my feelings inside and not express them. I know from personal experience how unproductive that method is. So I let her rage, feeling helpless and a failure.

I wish I had found this article during those times. It draws the clear distinction between the Terrible Two type of tantrum, and the type of tantrum my daughter was dealing with as an older child. And it offers a lot of good advice about how to deal with especially the latter. It’s something not enough parent books address.

My daughter is nine now, and hasn’t had a tantrum in months. I fear we may be trading in tantrums for teenage attitude far too soon for my comfort. But I’m glad to see that she is learning to not let her negative feelings overwhelm her. I just wish I had known better how to help her through those times.

But at least I’ve come to understand better what was causing them. A lot of very intelligent, gifted children struggle with the intensity of their own emotions. And she has the added challenge of coming to terms with some unpleasant aspects of her own personal history–adoption, abandonment, etc. Looking back now, it seems it should have been obvious to me what was going on, but I guess I have to give myself the luxury of having to learn some things the hard way.

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Written By: Meredith Efken
Posted under: On Being a Parent .  Email This Post