What causes tantrums?
Generally tantrums are caused by the brain being overloaded. Often what happens is that the brain hasn’t learnt how to process the emotions that your child is currently feeling. That’s why logic and reason don’t work at this point.
And that’s why this is the point when we’ve felt like smacking them or just losing it and shouting. It’s a weird psychological trick called projection, they’ve just transferred their overwhelm onto you!
For example during the ‘terrible twos’ (or ones or threes or even 9s!) your child is experiencing new emotions and struggling to learn from them. By keep calming them down, soothing them and hugging them you are giving ‘containment’ to those emotions and slowly but surely teaching the brain how to cope with them.
The way the brain is wired, means the more you help your child to come down from overload, the more likely it is that you will set their ‘maximum temperature’.
