Terrible Twos and Temper Tantrums
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Every parent I have ever talked to has their own unique view on temper tantrums.
Throw in all the experts, each with their own view on the stuff that the terrible twos and threes are made of and…
… you have a bunch of people, each with a “solution” that you should follow. Of course every solution is different, which just adds to your frustration and confusion.
The Funny Thing
There really hasn’t been a lot of research (hardcore scientific type stuff) on the temper tantrum topic, until now.
A study was done by the big brains of James A. Green and Michael Potegal. Their research adds some substance to the tantrum topic and digs into the intensity differences in vocal expressions of anger and sadness in children’s tantrums.
The researchers have found that temper tantrums have a pattern of sorts.
All the screaming, yelling, whining and crying have acoustic features related to them. These features can show the high point of anger (like screaming), or a sad point (like the whining or crying).
Here is a little ditty that they had to say:
Young children’s temper tantrums offer a unique window into the expression and regulation of strong emotions. Previous work, largely based on parental report, suggests that two emotions, anger and sadness, have different behavioral manifestations and different time courses within tantrums.
Individual motor and vocal behaviors, reported by parents, have been interpreted as representing different levels of intensity within each emotion category. The present study used high-fidelity audio recordings to capture the acoustic features of children’s vocalizations during tantrums.
Results indicated that perceptually categorized screaming, yelling, crying, whining, and fussing each have distinct acoustic features. Screaming and yelling form a group with similar acoustic features while crying, whining, and fussing form a second acoustically related group.
Within these groups, screaming may reflect a higher intensity of anger than yelling while fussing, whining, and crying may reflect an increasing intensity of sadness.
Many parents can make the mistake of trying to calm their child down, or even talk it out with them. The researcher found that none of these stopped the tantrum in the shortest period of time.
Temper Tantrum Solution
So what is the solution, the fastest way to stop the temper tantrum….
… do nothing at all.
This is a hard answer for many of us to swallow, but check out the video and see what you think.
We all know that temper tantrums, at times, can be more traumatic for the parent then the child. So before any of us go down the path of sucking it up, we need to know what into the research right!
The Science Behind Temper Tantrums
They found that tantrums follow rules.
- screams and yells come together
- throwing things and pushing and pulling happen together
- Crying, whining and throwing themselves down on the floor happen together
The old theory of tantrums was that they had 2 stages
1st stage – angry – the shouting yelling and physical parts
2nd stage – crying and tears or end up sad
This theory of 2 stages is incorrect. The anger and sadness actually happen in tandem. This was seen by plotting the audio signatures on graph. By doing this you can see that the sounds ebb and flow throughout the tantrum.
The real trick is to get the child past the peaks of anger. Once this is done, you are typically left with the sadness. The quickest way past the anger…. do nothing.
During sadness, children are typically in a stage where they want to reach out for comfort.