Children throw tantrums for anything, tips to help them empathize
Children who throw tantrums and get upset about everything are not necessarily capricious, most of the time they are extremely sensitive. Everything affects them too much and as a parent your job is to teach them how to deal with their emotions and frustration above all. We give you 5 tips to help them.
Stand at his level and look him in the eye
When he first starts to get upset, he makes eye contact. This is known as “active listening”, and it shows your child that you are willing to listen to him or her, that he or she does not have to get frustrated because he or she can communicate with you. It shows him or her that you are there to help with what is bothering him or her. Try to understand from that position what makes him/her angry or cry so that you can help him/her to solve it.
Validates your emotions
It is important to know how the child feels before scolding and judging. Empathize with your child, put yourself in his place, let him know that you understand his problem, whether you agree with his vision or not. This does not mean that you validate the tantrum but that you validate his emotions. Emotional intelligence develops from the time we are very young and we learn nothing if we have parents who only teach us to suppress our own emotions.
Give him support
You can’t always stop it from exploding and it’s healthy for it to do so, what’s exhausting is that it throws a tantrum over absolutely anything. But you have to understand that he does it because as a child, he doesn’t know how to deal with certain situations and the emotions that come his way. So when that happens, you need to provide him with emotional support. This means hugging him, holding him back (although not all kids let themselves go and if they do, you need to respect that), even if he doesn’t want you to listen to him, show him that he can always come to you.
Look for a distraction
There are several techniques that can work to distract your attention, counting to 10, singing the song you like, can be some. This doesn’t mean pretending to be distracted by what is happening to you, it serves to avoid the explosion of anger, the crying attack or the tantrum, but when you calm down it is necessary to recover the subject and solve it. Never leave a conflict that your child almost exploded without resolution.
Give him his time.
If the child is very upset, give him time to calm down. Don’t force him to talk about what’s upsetting him right now if it doesn’t flow naturally, because you’ll only add to the frustration inside him in the attempt to explain what’s wrong with him. Empathize with him, validate his emotions, but leave the subject for later, at home, when you can both see it from another perspective.
Finally, a few kisses and tickles can solve everything in some cases, other children just get more upset.