Because I have a hyper-sensitive child, we’ve had our fair share of meltdowns. Major meltdowns. Meltdowns where none of the standard advice helped. And, I’ve had my fair share of looks. You know the kind I mean. The condemning looks that say, “You clearly need to get your child under control.” The bad mom looks.
After years of trying every mash up of solutions, I finally found one that worked. Maybe it will help other moms with challenging children. With this in mind, I present Mom’s List of five ways to calm a tantrum.
Stop talking. This was the most difficult for me, but I found if I stopped talking and stopped trying to get my son to calm down, he relaxed faster. The sound of voice, bouncing around his brain, seemed to aggravate the situation. Get to a quiet spot. It didn’t matter if we were at home or in public, the faster I could navigate him to a safe, cozy, quiet place, the better we both could think. Get a dog. This has been the single most helpful addition to our home. Sheldon is a visual clue for our son when the situation is getting out of control. We noticed our dog reacts to the intensity by going into the laundry room. We point that out, and my son’s job is to go “calm the dog down.” It is a magic charm. Time in instead of time out. Time outs never worked for us. In fact, they made everything much worse. It wasn’t until much later I learned of another option called time in. During a time in, you might sit by your child, or hold him, and just breathe together. I found hugging my child and applying just a bit of pressure helped immensely. Be a problem solver. Repeat “I can help you solve this. Whatever it is, I can help.” This works better than, “Stop it.” And much better than “Stop it, or else.” Avoid rehashing negative behavior. Focus on solving the problem that caused the behavior first. Maybe later — once everyone is calm and no one is operating out of their monkey brains — debrief. Be sure to equip your child with tools, techniques and words to use so he can respond differently next time.