During the course of raising your child, you may experience the frustration that occurs when your child has a meltdown. While dealing with tantrums can be frustrating enough to push your own buttons, finding ways to diffuse what is at the source of your child’s tantrums can help bring your child under control and prevent you from losing your cool.
Whether your child exhibits the normal reactions most children do, or whether your child might be hypersensitive and anxious, it is your job to help identify the source of the emotion and ways to manage it.
Why Kids Have Meltdowns
Meltdowns occur when anyone, but particularly children, are unable to cope with their circumstances. As humans grow and develop, they should learn coping mechanisms for life, particularly for routine frustrations that occur. Children, however, explode when they don’t get what they want. Those under two may express frustration because they can’t communicate their needs clearly, while older children know what they want and become angry when they don’t get it.
Techniques For Diffusing Meltdowns
While most parents experiment until they find techniques that work well with their child, here are a few that many parents find useful.
- Develop a routine for bedtime, feeding times, doing homework and scheduled activities, and when possible adhere to the schedule. Having a routine may not stop kids from rebelling at bedtime, or when it’s time for school, but knowing what to expect can reduce meltdowns if children are well fed, well rested, and secure in their schedule.
- Insert enjoyable and calming practices into the schedule. For example, reading a book or listening to music with your child before bedtime can promote relaxation and add a pleasurable aspect to the less pleasant one of going to sleep. When your kids come home from school, make sure they have a snack and some decompression time before they sit down to do homework.
- Try to learn the reason for the frustration. You might encourage young children to point to what they want, but with older children, talking to them calmly might do the trick. Many children need some time to express their anger before you do too much talking. Once they are calm try to get them to express their frustrations in words. At that point, you can validate their feelings while not reinforcing their bad behavior.
- Teach your children techniques to calm themselves down. This might be as simple as promoting slow breathing or taking them to child yoga classes. Even when designed for children, yoga can help children learn inner fulfillment, relaxation, self-help, self-esteem, and body awareness that can prove helpful when they encounter frustrating situations.
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Keep calm yourself. Children often have tantrums when you are in hurry or feel stressed yourself, especially if you are in a public place. Screaming at your child as you express your frustrations seldom defuses the situation. If you find yourself often frustrated with your child or with other things in your life, you may benefit from learning meditation or are taking a yoga class yourself.
Help When You Need It From Raintree Medical & Chiropractic Center
As you’re teaching your children how to develop anger management techniques to keep meltdowns to a minimum, it is important to make sure they are eating right, getting the proper amount of exercise, getting the right amount of sleep, and have no other medical issues that influence their behavior. For information and holistic health tips, contact Raintree Medical & Chiropractic Center today at 816-623-3020 or request an appointment online.