Cry for Connection

By Patty Wipfler
Issue 115, November/December 2002

The man at my parenting talk is exasperated by his two-year-old son's behavior.

"First, he wants a glass of milk," he tells me. "I pour the glass and hand it to him, and he gets upset and says he doesn't want it. So I say, 'Okay, then, I'll drink the milk.' I'm trying to show him I'm flexible. But he fusses and says, 'No, don't drink it, I want it!' I offer it to him again, and he swats it away! What in the world is going on?" He adds that these episodes are increasing. What could end this cycle of contradictory wants that is spiraling out of control? What is he doing wrong? What does his son need?

This child was teetering on the edge of a tantrum, a very uncomfortable place for him and for his parents. Every child I know has moments when nothing he asks for actually helps, and when every attempt to fill his needs seems to make things worse. I offered the father a fresh perspective on tantrums that makes parenting young children much simpler, if not easier. The headline is that you can safely and serenely allow your child to have the tantrum he is heading toward. That tantrum is necessary. It's healthy, and it's healing. All you need to add is your warm attention. The tantrum you permit him to have clears a jam in his mental and emotional system so he can think well again.

Let's look at this approach in more general terms. Most of us evaluate our parenting in a very straightforward way. When our children are happy, cooperative, loving, and polite, we take pride in them and in ourselves as parents. When our children are unhappy or unreasonable, we figure that something has gone wrong, and we tend to blame ourselves or them. In short, we've been trained to think of children's upsets as "bad."

When an upset arises, we want to put an end to it as quickly as possible. Some parents try distraction or reasoning; others use intimidation and force. Whatever our methods, conventional wisdom has it that it's our job to end the upset. We require our children to tuck their upsets away and be "good" again. We don't want them to grow up to be uncivilized, and we don't want to feel or look like "bad" parents with "bad" children.

But what if, contrary to what we've grown up believing, tantrums and other expressions of feelings are actually useful? What if a tantrum is like an emotional sneeze--a natural reaction meant to clear out foreign material? Perhaps the usual struggle of parent versus child at emotional moments doesn't have to take place. Perhaps we can throw away the mental chalkboard on which every meltdown is a mark against our children or ourselves.

There are four pivotal perceptions that can help us see tantrums in a new light.

• Children enjoy being easy-going, loving, cooperative, and eager to learn. Children are built to take in lots of good experiences, and to operate with joy and enthusiasm.
• Children's good nature can be obscured by bad feelings. When they are sad, frightened, bored, frustrated, or embarrassed, or when they feel alone or unappreciated, their good nature becomes encrusted with bad feelings. This emotional tension pulls their behavior off track, away from trust, cooperation, and enthusiasm. When they are loaded with bad feelings, children literally can't think.
• Hurt feelings confine a child to unloving, fearful, or irrational behavior. A child will openly present this behavior in order to signal for help. The child who wanted milk, then didn't, then did, then didn't, was signaling as plainly as he could that his ability to think was compromised. He was asking for help with a knot of unruly feelings.
• With a little help, a child who is upset or inflexible can recover his ability to reason and to be pleased. To do this, he needs a supportive adult close by, while he works through his upset.

A child cries, throws a tantrum, or sometimes trembles and struggles, to expose and offload her bad feelings. During her upset, she's doing her best to dig herself out of an irrational state. My suggestion to the father whose son was on the verge of a tantrum may seem counterintuitive, but it works. He could stop trying to solve the unsolvable glass of milk problem, move close to his son, and pay full attention to whatever happens next. His son will lead the way. Usually, when a child feels that the parent has slowed down and is interested in her rather than in solving a practical problem, the feelings rise up and spill out, just the way they're meant to. Feelings spilled are feelings resolved. Feelings spilled are not a child's permanent assessment of the quality of our parenting. The father could listen with care to the tantrum, keeping his son safe throughout, trusting that he will soon make his way back to a reasonable state of mind.