Posts Tagged ‘tantrums’

• Why We Should NOT Ignore a Tantrum — or — Where NPR’s Health Blog Missed the Boat

  Date: 2012.01.02 | Category: Parenting, The Brain | Response: 0

  Several people have asked me recently about Shankar Vendantam’s post on NPR’s Health Blog, where he writes about a subject I’ve discussed a good bit:  tantrums.  In Vendantam’s article, he discusses a recent study that appeared in the journal Emotion, where scientists examined different toddler sounds that typify a tantrum.

  I find the whole study – which analyzes the patterns of sound and action that usually accompany a tantrum – absolutely fascinating.  And I’m grateful to any scientists (in this case Michael Potegal and James A. Green) who offer us new information that can help us better understand our children so we can be more loving and nurturing as we interact with them.  I also want to mention Vendantam’s book The Hidden Brain.  I haven’t read it yet, but it’s on my “get to” list, since I understand that it raises some really interesting questions regarding how much our brain drives who we are, even without our awareness.

  Having said all that, a couple of objections kept nagging at me when I read Vendantam’s blog post about Green and Potegal’s science explaining “what’s behind a temper tantrum.”  Specifically, I kept wanting to hear less about how parents can “get a tantrum to end as soon as possible” (though I totally understand this desire and have felt this way during many of my own children’s tantrums), and more about how parents can be emotionally responsive and present when their kids are upset.

  In other words, I wanted a tantrum to be presented not only as an unpleasant experience that parents can learn to manage for their own benefit, but instead as another opportunity to make a child feel Read the rest of this entry »

• Surfing the Waves of an Emotional Tsunami: When Your Kid’s Upset, Connect and Redirect

  Date: 2011.09.20 | Category: Parenting, The Brain | Response: 13

  [Two weeks from today (Oct 4), my new book with Dan Siegel, The Whole-Brain Child, comes out!  Below you’ll find the third in a four-part series where I post excerpts from the book.  I hope you enjoy it.]

  ——————

   

  You can’t stop the waves, but you can learn to surf.

  –John Kabit Zinn

   

  Here’s a conversation I recently had with my 7-year-old when he wasn’t at his logical best.

  My son:  I can’t go to sleep.  I’m mad that you never leave me a note in the middle of the night. 

  Me:  I didn’t know you wanted me to.  

  My son:  You never do anything nice for me, you do things at night for Luke, and I’m mad because my birthday isn’t for ten more months, and I hate homework. 

  Sound familiar?  An encounter like this can be frustrating, especially when you’re beginning to feel that your child is finally old enough to actually be reasonable and discuss things logically.  All of a sudden, though, you’re interacting with a being who becomes over-the-top upset about something completely ridiculous and illogical, and it seems that absolutely no amount of reasoning on your part will help.

  This is one of those times when knowing a little bit about the brain can help us parent in more effective (and more empathic) ways.

  You probably already know that your brain is divided into two hemispheres.  The left side of your brain is logical and verbal, while the right side is emotional and nonverbal.  That means that if we were ruled only by the left side of our brain, it would be as if we were living in an emotional drought, not paying attention to our feelings at all.  Or, in contrast, if we were completely “right-brained,” we’d be all about emotion and ignore the logical parts of ourselves.  Instead of an emotional drought, we’d be drowning in an emotional tsunami.

  Clearly, we function best when the two hemispheres of our brain work together, so that our logic and our emotions are both valued as important parts of ourselves and we are emotionally balanced.  Then we can give words to our emotional experiences, and make sense of them logically.

  Now, let’s apply that information to the interaction above.  My son was experiencing an emotional tidal wave.  When this occurs, one of the worst things I can do is jump right in trying to defend myself (“I do nice things for you!”), or to argue with him about his faulty logic (“That’s just not true, and your birthday is actually only nine months away”).  My verbal, logical response hits an unreceptive brick wall and creates a gulf between us:  he feels like I’m dismissing his feelings and that I don’t understand; I feel frustrated that he’s being so ridiculous and impossible.  It’s a lose-lose approach.

  So I have to come to an important recognition:  Logic will do no good in a case like this until a child’s right brain is responded to.

  How do we do that?  I suggest that we use the “Connect and Redirect” method. Read the rest of this entry »

  

• Upstairs and Downstairs Tantrums

  Date: 2011.08.05 | Category: Parenting, The Brain | Response: 16

  Summary Bullets:

  • A child’s tantrum may originate in the upstairs brain, meaning the child is in control and is using the moment to intentionally achieve a desired end.  In moments like these, parents should respond with love, but set clear boundaries and avoid rewarding manipulative behavior.
  • If, however, the tantrum originates in the more primal downstairs brain, and the child is truly out of control, then the parents’ response should be less about setting boundaries, and more about nurturing the child and guiding him back into a state of calm and control.

  If you’ve heard me speak before, you may have heard me talk about the upstairs brain and the downstairs brain.  Or maybe you’re read about the concepts here, where I help you teach the basic information to your kids.

  Right now I want to apply that information in a way that can help us deal with one of the most unpleasant parenting issues we all face:  the dreaded tantrum.

   

  The Downstairs Brain and the Upstairs Brain

  The basic idea is that we can think about our brain as a house, with a downstairs and an upstairs.  The downstairs brain includes the brain stem and the limbic region, which are located in the lower parts of the brain, from the top of your neck to about the bridge of your nose.  Scientists talk about these lower areas as being more primitive because they’re responsible for basic functions (like breathing and blinking), for innate reactions and impulses (like fight and flight), and for strong emotions (like anger and fear).

  Your upstairs brain, on the other hand, handles much more sophisticated thinking.  It’s made up of the cerebral cortex and its various parts—particularly the ones directly behind your forehead, including what’s called the middle prefrontal cortex.  In other words, it is literally the higher (and thus upstairs) part of your brain.  This is where more complex mental processing takes place, like thinking, imagining, and planning.  Whereas the downstairs brain is primitive, the upstairs brain is Read the rest of this entry »

  

• I Like to Move It Move It! (revised)

  Date: 2011.06.22 | Category: Parenting, The Brain | Response: 11

  We tend to think that our emotions reside in our brain.  And they do, but they also can begin with our bodies.  In fact, by the time you realize that you’re anxious, your body has already known for a while—your shoulders are tight, your jaw is clenched, your stomach might be churning.  By the same token, you can make yourself feel more calm and peaceful, just by focusing on your body.

  Try it right now.  Wherever you are, pay attention to your body for the next few seconds.  Take a deep breath, then slowly let it out.  As you do, relax your shoulders.  Do you feel that?  Do you feel some of the tension in your body begin to dissipate?  Do it one more time.  Deep breath, relaxed shoulders.  Do you see how you can feel more calm and serene just by adjusting what your body’s doing?

  The reason is that our emotions are intensely connected to the sensations of the body.  Because the nervous system runs throughout the body and is part of the brain, what our body does significantly impacts our brain, including the way we experience our emotions.

  This is great news, because it’s just one more example of how we can intentionally influence, to a fairly significant extent, how we experience the world.  We can’t always choose how we feel, but in important ways, we really can influence our own emotions. You might have heard about experiments where Read the rest of this entry »

  

• Do You Discipline on Auto-Pilot? (revised)

  Date: 2011.05.31 | Category: Parenting | Response: 14

  Auto-pilot may be a great tool when you’re flying a plane.  Just flip the switch, sit back and relax, and let the computer take you where it’s been pre-programmed to go.  Pretty great.

  But I’ve found that auto-pilot is not so great when I’m disciplining my children.  It can fly me straight into whatever dark and stormy cloudbank is looming, meaning my kids and I are all in for a bumpy ride.  So instead, I’m always working on DECIDING how I want to interact with my kids when I discipline them.

  For example, let’s talk about consequences.  For most parents, when we need to discipline our kids, the first question we ask ourselves is, “What consequence should I give?”  That’s our auto-pilot.  But through my years of parenting, I’ve begun to significantly re-think my use of consequences.

  My four-year-old, for instance, hit me the other day.  He was angry because I told him I needed to finish an email before I could play legos with him, and he came up and slapped me on the back.  (I’m always surprised that a person that small can inflict so much pain.)

  My immediate, auto-pilot reaction was to want to grab him, probably harder than I needed to, and Read the rest of this entry »

  

• Is There a Good Way to Respond to a Tantrum?

  Date: 2011.02.07 | Category: Parenting, The Brain | Response: 14

  As a mom with three boys, who are three, six, and nine years old, my experience has been that ages three and four are the hardest ages (so far.)  The parts of the brain that help control impulses and calm emotions are just still very undeveloped, but their emotional range and desires are in full force!  At these ages, when they are losing it and having a full blown tantrum, they are not really in a teachable frame of mind.  So what do you do?

  1.  Identify with the feeling:  “You’re really angry/annoyed/frustrated.”

  2.  Give the directive to stop the behavior “Hitting is not OK” or “No more throwing, please.”

  3.  Change the situation (either remove her, distract her, or get her onto something else).

  4.  Talk about the behavior when she’s in a calm state of mind.

  I want to focus now on this last step.  Conventional wisdom says you have to address misbehavior immediately, or the child won’t remember.  But the fact is that a child Read the rest of this entry »

  

• I like to move it, move it

  Date: 2011.01.09 | Category: Parenting, The Brain | Response: 13

  We tend to think that our emotions reside in our brain.  And they do, but they also spring from our bodies.  In fact, when you realize that you’re anxious, your body has already known that for a while—your shoulders are tight, your jaw is clenched, your stomach might be churning.  So, one way we can change our emotional states is by moving our bodies.

  When your child is having a hard time or acting difficult, one quick trick to try is to get them to move their bodies in a different way.  You might grab a big ball and begin a game of catch.  Turning on music and dancing together can quickly shift things for both of you when frustrations are running high.  You can also have them do a few yoga-type stretches by asking them to show you how an alligator snaps its jaws (have them  lie on their belly, arms stretched out far in front of them, with their palms together), or how a bear would climb a tree, or any other type of animal doing some sort of movement.  This can be a surprisingly quick way to move moods in a better direction.

  It works for older kids, too, by the way.  I told my nine-year-old’s Little League coach about this principle, and he ended up having the boys jump up and down in the dugout  when they got discouraged after giving up a few runs during the championship.  Their movement brought a shift of excitement and new energy into their bodies and brains, and they eventually came back and won the game.  (Chalk up another victory for neuroscience!)