Reply to Help me learn what to think during major tantrums

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[quote=Anonymous]Agree with the recommendation of the Explosive Child. I read it selectively during this phase and it helped me a lot.

A specific script I would recommend is that when a big tantrum is happening and you feel those negative, shameful thoughts rising up, to see if you can train yourself to go in an adjacent room for a minute and just count backwards from 10. Or take a few deep breaths. Or punch a pillow. Whatever it takes to give you a little space to process.

THEN go back to your DD and see if you can approach her more calmly. It sounds like you know that your mental response of "you're a bad kid and I'm a bad mom" is both false and unproductive. But it's an emotional response that has likely been drilled into you since YOU were a 5 year old struggling with big feelings. If you can just give yourself a little bit of space to recognize "ok, that's not useful here" I bet you can access some additional patience and tolerance to just stay calm through the tantrum and help her co-regulate.

Also, something that helps both my DH and I a lot (and that I gleaned from the Explosive Child) is to learn to recognize what responses have an escalating effect on a meltdown. In our cases, responding with anger and blame always makes the meltdown worse, because then our kid felt the shame we are feeling and she hates that feeling and her emotional response gets even larger. So whatever you can do bring the temperature down is better. Like you can even say almost the exact same thing, but if you say it calmly and in a compassionate voice, it will work better. Think the difference between:

1) Yelling or raising your voice to say "you can't hit me! stop hitting me! this is not acceptable!"

versus

2) In a calm voice "I can see you are upset but I cannot let you hit me. If you can't stop hitting, I will need to leave the room for a moment until you can stop."

It's the same message, but the first one is going to make your kid's brain go nuts, and the second offers a path to resolution for both of you. The calmer version doesn't accept the bad behavior any more than the angry version. And the calmer version is more productive. You will get there.[/quote]

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