In the throes of your toddler’s rage, it’s perfectly healthy to wonder whether you’re observing normal childhood behavior, or the beginnings of a behavioral problem. Here's how to know for sure.
Fortunately, there’s a way to measure whether your child’s tantrums are abnormal. The temper tantrum scale, developed by Lauren Wakschlag of Northwestern University in Chicago, identifies normal tantrum behaviors and duration. Her study also highlights red flags parents can use to determine whether their children are acting out more aggressively than expected.
Meet The Temper Tantrum Scale
Answer the following questions with “never in the past month”, “less than once per week”, “1-3 days per week”, “4-6 days of the week”, “every day of the week”, or “many times each day”:
How often does your child…
- Have a temper tantrum
- Stamp feet or hold breath during a tantrum
- Have a tantrum that lasts more than 5 minutes
- Keep on having a tantrum even when you tried to calm him/her down
- Break or destroy things during a tantrum
- Have a tantrum until exhausted
- Hit, bite, or kick during a tantrum
- Lose temper or have a tantrum with a parent
- Lose temper or have a tantrum with other adults
- Lose temper or have a tantrum when frustrated, angry or upset
- Lose temper or have a tantrum when tired, hungry, or sick
- Lose temper or have a tantrum to get something he/she wants
- Lose temper or have a tantrum during daily routines such as bedtime or mealtime
- Lose temper or have a tantrum “out of the blue” or for no clear reason
- Become frustrated easily
- Yell angrily at someone
- Act irritably
- Have difficulty calming down when angry
- Become angry very quickly
- Get extremely angry
- Have a hot or explosive temper
- Stay angry for a long time
OK, I Did It. Now What?
Certain behaviors on the list are normal even when they happen quite often—others, less so. To figure out which behaviors were truly abnormal, Wakschlag and colleagues surveyed nearly 1,500 preschoolers. She found that 95 percent of children engaged in certain behaviors with predictable frequency, and established this as the baseline. Presumably, abnormal behaviors are those behaviors along the tantrum scale that fall outside the 95th percentile—in other words, behaviors that 95 percent of children do not engage in. None of the tantrum behaviors on the list are abnormal if they occur less than once per week. When these behaviors crop up more frequently, however, there may be cause for concern. Here’s the breakdown:
The following are “abnormal” behaviors only if they occur 1-3 days per week, or more:
- Hit, bite, or kick during a tantrum
- Stay angry for a long time
These are “abnormal” behaviors only if they occur 4-6 days per week, or more:
- Stamp feet or hold breath during a tantrum
- Have a tantrum that lasts more than 5 minutes
- Keep on having a tantrum even when you tried to calm him/her down
- Break or destroy things during a tantrum
- Have a tantrum until exhausted
- Lose temper or have a tantrum with other adults
- Lose temper or have a tantrum during daily routines such as bedtime or mealtime
- Lose temper or have a tantrum “out of the blue” or for no clear reason
- Become frustrated easily
- Yell angrily at someone
- Act irritably
- Have difficulty calming down when angry
- Become angry very quickly
- Get extremely angry
- Have a hot or explosive temper
These are “abnormal” behaviors only if they occur every day, or multiple times per day:
- Have a temper tantrum
- Lose temper or have a tantrum with a parent
- Lose temper or have a tantrum when frustrated, angry or upset
- Lose temper or have a tantrum when tired, hungry, or sick
- Lose temper or have a tantrum to get something he/she wants
My Child Is Abnormal. What Now?
First of all, don’t panic. Most children will, at some point, do most of the things on this list, and not all abnormal tantrum behaviors are created equal. Wakschlag and her colleagues write that the most rare behaviors should be the most worrisome for parents. So if your child is, with any regularity, staying angry for a long time, or hitting, biting, or kicking during tantrums, that should concern you more than observing that your child “becomes frustrated easily” more often than average. The authors include a ranking of each tantrum behavior, broken down by severity.
If your child is experiencing tantrums that fall well outside the average, especially if those behaviors are ranked “severe” by Wakschlag, it may be time to seek professional help.
But if your kid is on the cusp of abnormal tantrum behavior, or tantruming more frequently than you’d like, there are some simple ways you can use tantrum research to tame your wild child. The key is to figure out what your children wants to obtain, and ensure that they do not get it by tantruming. They then learn, over the long term, that tantrums are ineffective negotiating tools.
Behavioral scientists recognize three types of tantrums: a demand for attention (hold me), a demand for tangibles (food, games, activities), and an escape from demand (I don’t want to get dressed). The first two can only be solved by ignoring the tantrum—age-old advice. But the third type of tantrum requires finesse. Because in this scenario, children pitch fits in the hopes of making their parents ignore them and not make them do what they don’t want to do. Instead, when a child throws a tantrum to avoid doing something, the correct approach is to “help” them do it. Placing your hands over their hands and forcing them to get dressed or eat their dinner teaches them that tantruming to avoid tasks leads to a worse outcome—loss of autonomy.
“Kids learn very quickly that you’re serious about this intervention and they comply,” tantrum expert Michael Potegal once told Fatherly. “They may grumble and fuss, but they will comply.”
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