The Happiness Of Stopping My Daughter's Tantrums

The Little Girl is a charming, ebullient, sweet-natured three-year-old. She also had a habit of throwing MASSIVE tantrums. Kicking, screaming, throwing things, pulling glasses off people's faces...it was bad.

It seemed so uncharacteristic of her, I kept thinking she'd outgrow it. She was so happy and friendly. We made excuses: she was overtired, she had a cold, she didn't like rushing around. But the tantrums didn't go away, and it became a real drag. We started calling her "the girl with curl":

There was once a girl

Who had a little curl

Right in the middle of her forehead.

When she was good, she was very, very good

And when she was bad, she was horrid.

Finally, I admitted I needed to take direct action. Her tantrums were putting a cloud over our family life, plus I realized that I was adjusting my expectations - I was putting up with behavior I would never have tolerated with the Big Girl, because I didn't want to deal with a tantrum. Not good. And on the other hand, there were pleasures I wasn't permitting the Little Girl, because I knew she'd throw a tantrum when we said "Not now" or "It's time to stop." We never let her watch any TV, for example, even though I would otherwise have been happy to let her watch a Sesame Street episode or part of a Wiggles DVD, because of the certainty of the tantrums that would follow when the TV was switched off.

There's a Buddhist saying that I've found to be uncannily accurate: "When the student is ready, the teacher will appear." My teacher appeared in the form of Beth Lisick, when I read her book, Helping Me Help Myself.

I'd , because Beth Lisick did her own kind of happiness project: she spent a year following the advice of ten self-help gurus.

One of the gurus she followed was Thomas Phelan, author of 1-2-3 Magic: Effective Discipline for Children 2-12. Beth Lisick explained all the reasons she resisted following the simple program in the book (it boils down to counting calmly "1, 2, 3" and if your kid is still misbehaving, enforcing a short time-out, with no emotion and no talking) but in desperation, she tried it, and it worked. Like magic.

Okay. If it worked for Beth and her son, maybe it would work for us. I bought the book. I tried it. And you know what? It worked. Like magic. It didn't completely stop the tantrums - the Little Girl still throws it down, from time to time, but less often, and for a much shorter amount of time, and we know how to react when she does.

A big comfort as a parent, I've discovered, is having a strategy. I need a theory of how to behave. This book gave me a tool to use when I didn't know what to say or how to react. Even if it doesn't always work, I know that I'm being consistent and reasonable. That feels a lot better than just flailing around, saying and doing whatever comes into my head at a difficult moment.

A lot of people would say, "I'd never use 1-2-3 Magic! I don't like time-outs. That's not the kind of parent I am." I would have said exactly the same thing, as the mother of the Big Girl. But the Little Girl is different, and for us now, 1-2-3 Magic has been very helpful.

So, if you've got a tantrum-y kid, I would recommend giving it a try. Has anyone else had good, or bad, experience with it?

Comments

[Krikkit]

We tend to forget that we reinforce or allow to die out behaviors by how we react to them. Calm time outs are a way of taking the drama, and the reinforcement, out of unacceptable behavior. It's really a no brainer. Time outs simply put is the art of rewarding the good and ignoring the bad in a safe and controlled environment. Time outs are a way to remove all environmental stimulus, and best of all, it works.

The ultimate goal is to raise a person who will be happy, well adjusted and capable human being. Bad behaviors that are tolerated or worse, encouraged in young children turn into bad behaviors in adulthood that lead to the opposite of happiness.

[jnh71]

I second the recommendation of 1-2-3- Magic! It truly did work magic on my family. We were at our wits' end with our "spirited" 3 year old...a boy who would hit/push etc. Our 7 yr old daughter was constantly arguing and basically running the household as a benevolent dictator. My husband and I went to a family counselor, who recommended the book. Believe it or not, is was already on my shelf, but I looked at it once and thought "it will never work." Our counselor persuaded us to try again, and IT CHANGED OUR LIVES.

For us, the main thing was that it provided consistency. My husband and I were doing the same thing. No more was my husband yelling and shouting about every little thing, and no more was I trying to be the "good cop" to his "bad cop." I cranked it up a notch, and he cranked it down a notch, and this book showed us how. It was magic! Just like it says! In a few short days (I'm not exaggerating), our family was transformed. It's been almost 6 months and we still use it. In fact, even my Mom - the kids's grandma - uses it and says it's magic! GO OUT AND GET THIS BOOK IF YOU ARE HAVING DISCIPLINE ISSUES WITH YOUR KIDS OR YOUR SIGNIFICANT OTHER!

[kingshmoopy]

I second the recommendation for the book, it is a treasure.

As far as the other posters who call in to question "modern" parenting, who seem to advocate spanking (which is abuse, no matter how you slice it) I say this. I am also a parent, I have 3 young children (7, 5, 20 months). We lay down very concrete boundaries and rules for our children, our older kids know those rules and they know there will be consequences if the rules are broken.

But we also value our kid's feelings about those rules, and their opinions. This is not to say that, in the middle of a "mom! you are so unfair!" I will sit and have a debate with my 7-year old about my reasoning. What it means is that our children know that we value them as individuals and we value their opinions and, once things calm down, I will sit and listen to them, if only to show them that I do care and empathize with how unfair life can seem.

My kids are not "brats."We travel on planes frequently and the people around us always comment on how well-behaved they are. They are happy, vivavious, compassionate, and interestng children and I like to think that part of that is because they know their parents don't dismiss them because they are kids. Of course you need firm and consistent boundaries, but this doesn't mean that you have to be a dictator.

[blaqntelligence]

AMEN!!! BRAVO!!! *handclap* AND ^Five

I absolutely agree with nightwind928 above.

Temper tantrums.....?

I'm from the old school. I have two children, young people really, 19 and 15.....

The only counting would have been the number of smacks on their plump little behinds. They both tried it and they both got a spanking. Period.
They tried once more to see if I really meant that it was unacceptable behavior. After the second spanking, in 19 and 15 years, I have not had to contend with public, obnoxious, and embarrassing tantrums.

"Modern parenting" is ruining our children today. Creating obnoxious smart-ass brats that sometimes bring media attention to the "parents". They are then turned loose on an unsuspecting society and we must deal with obnoxious smart-ass adults.

Corporal punishment, NOT abuse, has been the mainstay of countless generations before us.
Now, the "experts", in their "wisdom" have deemed that harmful, millions of parents are listening, and now we have bloggers lamenting on their quest to find a solution to stop their 3-year-olds tantrums.
*sigh*

[nightwind928]

I guess I'm at a loss to explain "modern parenting". I was rasied by my grandparents, who did not suffer bad behaviour gladly, especially in public. If I'd have thrown a tantrum in a public place,I would have suffered for it. That was a given. Today, I see so many spoiled children controlling their parents and being general pains in the butt in all sorts of public places. Many parents seem either oblivious to it or simply embarassed by it. It isn't pleasant for anybody to have to share a 4 hour plane ride with an obnoxious child making an already unpleasant trip a nightmare. If a child doesn't learn parameters at an early age, how will they define them later as an adult? A bratty kid is a public nuiscence to everybody , ranked right up there with a dog that barks all night. I hate hearing some yuppie mommy repeating, over and over again, "Now Chad,now Brittany, you know you shouldn't be doing that" as the rotten kids loudly destroy a public place with total disreguard for their mother words. Get a grip mom, your the adult here...act like one.

[JScott]

And I have seen it too.....in restaurants, there are families with kids who are well behaved and they know that it's a special occasion to eat out but then there are other families with kids where it seems every kind of event in public (restaurant, shopping, road trips etc.) is a total ordeal, and you can be sure those families probably don't go out much.

[Jess27]

Sorry, nightwind, but you have a misunderstanding about discipline. I do not hit my (almost 3-year-old) son. Hitting does not work. When you hit a child, they learn to hit when someone doesn't do what they ask them to do. While I don't use the 1-2-3 Magic! technique (never heard of it until this article) I do use a time-out method that works just fine for my son. On the RARE occasion that he forgets what is expected of him, he will be punished, and that will be the end of the misbehavior. I do agree with the parents who do not discipline their kids at all, and that is not what I consider "modern parenting". That is no parenting. Hitting is not parenting either.