Now Is the Right Time!

As a parent or someone in a parenting role, you play an essential role in your child’s success. There are intentional ways to grow a healthy parent-child relationship, and helping your child learn to deal constructively with their most upsetting feelings provides a perfect opportunity.

Two-year-olds are in the earliest stages of learning about their strong feelings. They do not understand the full-body takeover that can occur when angry, hurt, or frustrated. Feeling out of control because of anger or frustration can be scary and add to the length and intensity of their upset. Tantrums are normal. Learning how to deal with anger or upset without choosing destructive responses is a critical skill, and your support and guidance as a parent or someone in a parenting role greatly matters.

Research confirms that when children learn to cope with their feelings, they strengthen their executive functions and ability to choose healthy behaviors.¹ They can better use self-control, problem-solve, and focus their attention. Yet, we face challenges in managing upset, frustration, and anger. Your child may throw themselves on the floor crying and unable to tell why they are upset. Or, they may hit, bite, or hurt you in anger.

The key to many parenting challenges, like helping your child manage tantrums, is finding ways to communicate to meet your and your child’s needs. The steps below include specific, practical strategies to prepare you to help your two-year-old work through their roughest, most intense emotional times in ways that build up their resilience and self-management skills.

Why Tantrums?

Your child may cry hysterically at the grocery store when you say “No” to a request for candy, or they might stubbornly refuse to leave the house when you are late for a commitment. Learning to deal with your child’s anger, upset, and other accompanying feelings can become challenging if you don’t have plans and strategies to manage them.

Today, in the short term, learning to manage tantrums can create

• a sense of confidence that you can help your child regain calm and focus
• greater opportunity for connection and enjoyment as you work together to care for each other
• added daily peace of mind

Tomorrow, in the long term, your child

• builds skills in self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, relationships, and responsible decision making
• builds skills to handle unexpected challenges in life
• builds assertive communication to communicate needs and boundaries, which are critical for keeping them safe

Five Steps for Managing Tantrums

This five-step process helps you and your child manage tantrums and builds important skills in your child. The same process can also be used to address other parenting issues (learn more about the process).

Two-year-olds are highly active, exploring their environment and everything in it. They add new words to their vocabulary regularly but do not yet know how to name their big feelings. Frustrations with not being understood may result in them losing control and becoming unregulated more frequently.

Despite your child’s new ability to use words, continue to pay close attention to their facial expressions, movements, and sounds to work on understanding what they are trying to communicate. Your effort to learn from your child will create empathetic interactions that let them know you are interested in their thoughts. This will make a big difference as you manage intense feelings together.

In becoming sensitive to your child’s verbal and nonverbal expressions, you

• are responding to their needs
• are growing their trust in you, sense of safety, and sense of healthy relationships
• are growing motivation for you and your child to work together
• are deepening your ability to communicate with one another
• are modeling empathy and problem-solving skills

Actions

Before you can get input from your child to understand (and help them understand) what they are feeling, you both need to be calm. Your child will not learn from the situation if you or they are upset.

• Ask yourself if your child is hungry or tired. You could offer a snack or transition to a nap.
• Check on how you are feeling. If you are angry, frustrated, or overwhelmed, take a “parenting time out” and take several deep breaths (it really does help) or sit quietly for a few minutes.
• If your child’s basic needs, such as hunger or tiredness, are not an issue, take additional steps to help them calm down. This might involve offering a hug, helping them take deep breaths, or holding a blanket or stuffed animal.

Two-year-olds are just beginning to understand their feelings, so they need your support in figuring them out. When both you and your child are calm, reflect on your child’s feelings so you can be prepared to help. Ask yourself:

• “Does my child have an unmet need?” They might need someone to listen or give them attention, some alone time, or some help so they can be successful at something they are trying to do.
• You can also begin to ask them about how they are feeling.
  • “I noticed your face got red, and your forehead got all scrunched up when you threw the toy. Were you feeling angry?” 
  • “I know it is almost snack time. I wonder if you are feeling hungry?”

When reflecting on your child’s feelings, you can think about unpacking a suitcase. Frequently, layers of feelings need to be examined and understood versus just one. Anger might just be the top layer. You might ask about other layers after discovering why your child was angry. Was there hurt or a sense of rejection involved? Perhaps your child feels embarrassed? Fully unpacking the suitcase of feelings will help your child feel better understood by you as they become more self-aware.

Remember, you must look past the behavior to uncover the underlying feelings. Taking the time to help your child learn about these feelings is growing their self-awareness skills, which is essential to helping them control their behavior.

There are no “bad” feelings. Every feeling a child has is a vital message that quickly interprets what’s happening around them. As a parent or someone in a parenting role, the challenge is to avoid interpreting the behavior before trying to understand what is motivating the behavior. The feelings behind the behavior may be from an unmet need.

• If your child has recently thrown a tantrum, then use that example to reflect on what caused it at a time when you are both calm. You might ask, “What upset you at the grocery store?” Finding out what contributed to a tantrum can give you insight into your child’s triggers and also help raise your child’s self-awareness.
• Use your best listening skills! Remember, what makes a parent angry or upset can differ significantly from what angers or upsets a child. Listen closely to your child’s concerns without projecting your
• Explore the mind-body connection. In calmer moments with your child, ask, “How does your body feel now?” See how descriptively they can list their physical signs of well-being. Now ask, “How does your body feel when angry or upset?” Every person’s physical experience will be different. Find out how your child feels and make the connection between those symptoms and the usual feelings they are having. Children learn through modeling, so narrating your own emotional experience is helpful. You may share, “ That traffic stressed me a bit; I notice I am taking shallow breaths. I am going to take a few deep breaths and regulate myself.” It may feel unnatural initially to narrate your experience, but your child will greatly benefit from sharing how you regulate yourself daily.

Because intense feelings like anger and hurt occur as you go about your daily life, you may not consider their role and impact on your child. Intense feelings can significantly influence your child’s day and your relationship with them. Learning new skills and behaviors requires modeling, practice, support, and recognition.

Learning to understand your feelings and behaviors when your child has a tantrum is a great way to start. It will help you understand what they are just learning to do. You might ask yourself:

• “Do I get angry when they act a certain way?”
• “How do I respond to my anger?”
• “How do I want my child to respond when they feel angry?”

Children learn first through modeling. If you respond to anger by yelling, they will learn to respond to anger by yelling. Consider your reactions to anger and other intense emotions. Formulate your new reaction around what you want your child to mimic when angry, frustrated, or upset.

Learning about your child’s developmental milestones can help you better understand what your child is going through and help you to have reasonable expectations for your child.²

• Two-year-olds are starting to see themselves as unique, individual people. They develop the understanding that they can have their own thoughts and feelings and that someone else could have different thoughts and feelings.
• Two-year-olds are eager to engage in imaginative play and, at times, cooperative play with other children. Children gain vital practice with all of their developmental milestones through play.
• Two-year-olds can show defiant behavior and test boundaries as they learn about the rules and attempt to understand your values.
• Two-year-olds can recognize common feelings like happiness, sadness, and anger.
• Two-year-olds may begin to experience separation anxiety when you leave them.
• Two-year-olds can imagine what response might be appropriate or comforting in a particular situation.

Teaching is different than just telling. Teaching builds basic skills, grows problem-solving abilities, and prepares your child for success. Teaching also involves modeling and practicing the positive behaviors you want to see, promoting skills, and preventing problems.

Actions

• Teach your child positive behaviors. Each time your child has a tantrum, ask yourself what positive behavior you need to teach and practice.
• Respond to your child’s upset with modeling in mind. When your child has a tantrum, focus on calming down yourself, and then help your child. Stop what you are doing and walk them to a safe, non-public spot where they can calm down. Don’t leave them. Be with them and use a calm, soft voice. Encourage them to breathe by breathing slowly with them. Don’t try to talk about the situation until they are calm (they won’t be able to hear you anyway). Stand aside and focus on your deep breathing while you allow your child time to calm down.
• Raising your voice and your level of upset in response to your child’s tantrum will only increase the intensity and duration of your child’s upset. Yelling only communicates that you are raising the emotional intensity, not diminishing it. Your yelling may also scare your child and negatively impact your relationship.  Leaving your child alone in their room will also escalate the tantrum at this age. They need you because their feelings have overpowered them.
• The saying “Name it to tame it” really works! Look for ways to identify feelings and name them. Post a feelings chart on your refrigerator as a helpful reminder. The more you can name a range of feelings, the more comfortable your child will get with articulating their feelings. This strategy alone can reduce the time a child is engaged in a tantrum since they become skilled at articulating their feelings and feel more capable of securing their understanding faster. Furthermore, when a child can apply accurate words to their emotional experience, soothing chemicals wash over the brain’s emotional centers to support regulation. This technique is called “name it to tame it.”
• You can expand your child’s emotional vocabulary by labeling and narrating your feelings throughout the day. Remember to label both positive and negative feelings. For example, you may say, “I am feeling really calm now that the kitchen is cleaned up. When there are lots of chores to do, I have trouble relaxing.” Sharing your experience will help develop empathy and invite your child’s curiosity about their experience.
• Additionally, talk through your regulation strategies as you go through the day. This may look like, “I feel stressed, and my belly hurts slightly. I know fresh air and a walk are helpful when I feel this way. I’d like to move my body and go to the park.” Modeling through actions is even more helpful than teaching specific skills to your child.
• Play the “feel better” game. At a calm time, ask, “What helps you feel calmer  when you’re sad, mad, or hurt?” Share ideas like taking deep breaths, drinking water, walking, or asking for a hug. Be sure to practice those soothing actions together during play.
• Create a safe base. In a time when your child is not upset, talk about what makes your child feel better and offers comfort. Create a “safe base” with your child — a place in the house where your child can choose to go when they want comfort. Place a pillow, blanket, and stuffed animal there. Play act using it. “I am getting red in the face. I’m hot. I feel angry. I’m going to my safe base to calm down.” 
• Begin to teach your child to repair harm. A critical step in teaching children about managing anger is how to repair harm when they’ve caused it. Harm could be physical, like breaking something, or emotional, like hurting someone’s feelings. Mistakes are a critical aspect of their social learning. We all have moments when we hurt another, and that next step matters in repairing the relationship. A two-year-old cannot repair harm independently, but you can help them by checking in with someone they may have harmed and asking if they are OK.

Practice can be pretend play, cooperatively completing a task together, or trying out a task with you as a coach and offering support. Practice is necessary for children to learn new skills. Practice makes vital new brain connections that strengthen each time your child performs a new action. In addition, these practice steps also help prevent tantrums.

Practice also provides important opportunities to grow self-efficacy—a child’s sense that they can manage their feelings successfully. This leads to confidence. It will also help them understand that mistakes and failures are part of learning.

Actions

• Use “Show me…” statements with a positive tone and body language to express excitement and curiosity.  When a child learns a new ability, they are eager to show it off! Give them that chance. Say, “Show me how you hug your pillow in your safe base to calm your body.” This can be used when you observe their upset growing.
• Recognize effort by using “I notice…” statements like, “I noticed how you took some deep breaths when you got frustrated. That’s excellent!”  
• Accept feelings. If you will help your child manage their biggest feelings, it is essential to acknowledge and accept their feelings — even ones you don’t like. When your child is upset, consider your response. Instead of focusing on their actions or the problem, focus on their feelings FIRST. You could say, “Are you upset? Would your blanket help you feel better?” Then, focus on teaching and practicing positive behavior.
• Practice deep breathing. Because deep breathing is a simple way to assist your child anytime, anywhere, it’s important to get in plenty of practice to make it easy to use when needed. Here are some enjoyable ways to practice together!³
  • Blowing Out Birthday Candles Breathing. You can pretend you are blowing out candles on a birthday cake. Just the image in your head of a birthday cake brings about happy thoughts. And to blow out several small flames, you have to take deep breaths.
  • Teddy Bear Belly Breathing. Balance a teddy bear on your child’s tummy and give it a ride with the rising and falling of their breath. This would be ideal to practice during your bedtime routine when you are lying down and want to calm down for the evening.
• Reflect and reframe. When you are reflecting with your child about their upset, it can be helpful to consider the issue from a learning perspective. One excellent reframe for these early years is that young children are learning. So, if another child grabs a toy and acts in mean ways, you could say, “He’s learning.” This offers your child a sense of grace for others and their mistakes.
• Follow through on repairing harm. When your child has caused harm, they need your guidance, encouragement, and support in following through to repair it. They may need to hold your hand through that process, and that’s okay! They are learning the invaluable skill of responsible decision-making.
• Include reflections on the day in your bedtime routine. You might ask, “What was your high and low today? “What did you like most and least about today?” You should answer the questions as well. Questions like these allow your child to share their challenges and bright spots of the day and let them feel seen and heard. Children may not have the chance to reflect on what’s good and abundant in their lives throughout the day. Grateful thoughts are a central contributor to happiness and well-being.

At this point, you’ve taught your child some new strategies for managing their intensely upset feelings so that they understand how to take action. You’ve practiced together. Now, you can offer support when it’s needed by reteaching, monitoring, coaching, and, when appropriate, applying logical consequences. Parents naturally provide support when they see their child fumble with a situation in which they need help. This is no different.

Actions

• Use intentional communication to foster skill development. For example, “We are headed to the playground. I know it’s tough to leave when you’re having fun. Remember, I’ll remind you to do your last fun activity before we go. If you feel upset, we can take some deep breaths together.”
• Learn about your child’s development. Each new age presents different challenges, and being informed about your child’s developmental milestones promotes empathy and patience.
• Stay engaged. Working together on ideas for trying out new and different coping strategies can help offer additional support and motivation for your child when challenging issues arise.

Learning new behaviors to replace inappropriate behaviors takes time. Your two-year-old will likely not do it right the first time (or second or third!). That’s okay. What’s important is that you approach growing skills to handle tantrums by understanding feelings, teaching new behaviors, and practicing while maintaining a healthy, supportive, loving relationship with your child. Your healthy, supportive, loving relationship with your child is most important.

No matter how old your child is, your positive reinforcement and encouragement have a significant impact.

If your child is working to grow their skills – even in small ways – it will be worthwhile to recognize it. Your recognition can go a long way in promoting positive behaviors and expanding your child’s confidence. Your recognition also encourages safe, secure, and nurturing relationships — a foundation for strong communication and a healthy relationship with you as they grow.

There are many ways to reinforce your child’s efforts. It is essential to distinguish between three types of reinforcement: recognition, rewards, and bribes. These three distinct parenting behaviors have different impacts on your child’s behavior.

Recognition occurs after you observe the desired behavior in your child. Noticing and naming the specific behavior you want to reinforce is vital in promoting more of it. For example, “You took a deep breath when you got upset—I love seeing that!”  Recognition can include nonverbal acknowledgment such as a smile, high five, or hug.

Rewards can be helpful in certain situations by providing a concrete, timely, and positive incentive for doing a good job.  A reward is determined beforehand so the child knows what to expect, like “If you behave in the store, you will get a treat on the drive home.” (If you XX, then I’ll XX.) It stops any negotiations in the heat of the moment.  A reward could be used to teach positive behavior or break a bad habit. The goal should be to help your child progress to a time when the reward will no longer be needed. If used too often, rewards can decrease a child’s internal motivation.

Unlike a reward, bribes aren’t planned ahead of time and generally happen when a parent or someone in a parenting role is in the middle of a crisis (like in the grocery store checkout line and a child is having a tantrum. To avoid disaster, a parent offers to buy a sucker if the child will stop the tantrum). While bribes can be helpful in the short term to manage stressful situations, they will not grow lasting motivation or behavior change and should be avoided.

Actions

• Recognize and call out when things are going well. It may seem obvious, but it’s easy not to notice when everything moves smoothly. Noticing and naming the behavior provides the necessary reinforcement that you see and value your child’s choice.
• Recognize small steps along the way. Don’t wait for significant accomplishments—like the full bedtime routine going smoothly—to recognize effort. Remember that your recognition can work as a tool to promote more positive behaviors. Find small ways your child is making an effort and let them know you see them.
• Build celebrations into your routine. For example, snuggle and read before bed after completing your bedtime routine.

Closing

Engaging in these five steps is an investment that will strengthen your skills as an effective parent or someone in a parenting role on many other issues and develop essential skills that will last a lifetime for your child. Through this tool, children can become more self-aware, deepen their social awareness, exercise their self-management skills, work on their relationship skills, and demonstrate and practice responsible decision-making.