3-Year-Old Temper Tantrums Getting Worse? Do This One Thing
Why Are Your 3-Year-Old’s Temper Tantrums Getting Worse?
The simple answer is that your child lacks emotional regulation abilities. As your child grows, they have more needs, and their frustration rises when not met. A combination of insufficient regulating skills and pent-up frustration leads to worse tantrums. 2-year-old toddler tantrums then turn into uncontrollable 3-year-old meltdowns and power struggles.
Why Do Kids Lack Emotion Regulation Skills
Babies aren’t born with the ability to regulate their emotions. We must teach children the skills and provide the right environment for them to learn. Many parents use behavioral techniques that aggravate temper tantrums. When tantrums become more frequent and aggressive, these parents use even harsher behavior control, resulting in a vicious coercive cycle.
Should Parents Worry
Emotional dysregulation underpins psychiatric disorders such as depression, anxiety, and borderline personality disorder. In the long run, parents and children benefit from teaching children how to regulate their emotions adaptively.
Do This One Thing When Your Toddler’s Tantrums Are Getting Worse
The single most important thing parents should do to calm their toddler’s tantrums is:
Shift your mindset…
from “How do I stop the temper tantrum?” to “How do I teach my kid self-regulation.”
By changing your mindset, your focus shifts from your needs (to stop the tantrum) to your child’s (to learn how to self-regulate). Changing this mindset also helps parents avoid the negative labeling trap. When parents label meltdowns as tantrums, they forget that very young kids have emotional tantrums, not manipulative tantrums. They feel upset when they believe their 3-year-old has meltdowns over everything and is manipulating them. That causes most parents to lose their calm and make things worse. You and your child will benefit by changing your mindset and focusing on teaching self-control rather than stopping tantrums.
How to help 3-year-olds develop self-regulation
Modeling
Children learn to regulate through observation.
They are watching your reaction. The way you behave shows how you control your emotions.
If you cannot regulate your emotions or stay calm, how can you expect a toddler with an underdeveloped brain and less life experience to do so?
It’s hard to remain calm when dealing with a screaming toddler who won’t stop crying, but it’s a hundred times harder for your child.
Be responsive, warm, and accepting
Research shows that a warm, responsive, and accepting parenting style is associated with better self-regulation in children.
When parents are responsive and warm, children tend to seek help from the parent actively to regulate their emotions.
These kids show better self-regulating skills.
Foster a positive family climate
Self-regulation is affected by the emotional climate of the family.
A positive emotional environment is closely related to better self-regulation in children.
When a child’s emotional climate is negative, coercive, or unpredictable, they are at a higher risk of becoming more emotionally reactive and less regulated.
How to deal with temper tantrums
Dealing with a 3-year-old’s tantrums is similar to dealing with toddler tantrums.
Here’s a detailed step-by-step guide on dealing with tantrums.
Here’s a summary of the tips in that article:
- Use simple choices or distractions to divert attention.
- Do not reason with them.
- Help them restore emotional balance or avoid hurting anyone by holding or hugging.
- Stay calm and be positive, but do not give in.
- Do not punish.
- Teach vocabulary so they can express themselves verbally.
- Look out for hunger, anger, loneliness, and tiredness to prevent tantrums.
How To Prevent Your Three-Year-Old’s Temper Tantrums From Getting Worse
Avoid making these five parenting mistakes if your child’s temper tantrums worsen.
1. Do not get angry
For little kids to learn self-regulation, they need a good role model.
When parents are furious at their kids for throwing tantrums, they are modeling what to do when things do not go their way.
Slow, mindful breaths are the easiest and fastest way to calm down and avoid getting worked up.
Meditating every day can also help parents remain calm during stressful times.
2. Do not punish
Parents often believe a lack of discipline causes tantrums. Therefore, they try to discipline harder. Sadly, they mistake punishment for discipline.
Discipline means “to teach,” not “to punish.”
Punishment doesn’t work.
Coercive parenting doesn’t work.
It’s proven by decades of studies.
Punishment is not the only way nor a good way to teach.
We can teach a lot better when we are kind and patient than when we are harsh and mean.
As opposed to stopping a tantrum, punishment escalates it.
Researchers have found that punishment negatively affects a child’s emotional regulation and promotes aggression, both of which worsen temper tantrums.
Young children cannot control their emotions by themselves.
“Self-soothing” does not happen in a vacuum.
Kids need the help of parents to learn to self-soothe.
3. Do not ignore
The most common advice parents receive regarding toddler tantrums is to ignore them.
A 3-year-old usually cannot control their emotions well enough to stop a tantrum alone.
The child in a tantrum is in emotional pain.
How would you feel if you were in pain and your loved ones ignored you or locked you in your room instead of helping you?
You’ll probably be angry, too.
Many kids in tantrums feel the same way.
The emotions become even more intense and aroused.
They try to calm a more aroused nervous system using their less-developed emotional skills.
Parents often think ignoring a child in a tantrum will teach them how to self-soothe.
This is wishful thinking.
Emotion regulation doesn’t work that way.
Some 3-year-olds may stop having tantrums if you ignore them.
However, by leaving them alone rather than helping them, the parent is modeling callousness toward other people’s suffering.
They are essentially teaching kids they do not need to empathize with others… and then we wonder why our society is filled with people who lack empathy.
4. Do not give in
When you give in to the child’s demands, you apply positive reinforcement to their tantrums.
The child is being taught to tantrum to get what they want.
This is the teaching we want to avoid.
However, not giving in does not mean not paying attention.
Kind and attentive parenting is possible without compromising.
5. Do not treat terrible twos as a “phase” and do nothing
Parents often refer to the terrible twos as the beginning of a “phase.”
It is like the phase when a baby’s teeth fall out.
There is no need for parents to do anything, as the phase will pass automatically.
The “phase” of terrible twos passing depends heavily on how adults deal with it.
The 3-year-old’s temper tantrums are likely to worsen if they cannot learn to calm themselves and if the parents continue to punish them.
During the preschool years, the child may become resentful, opposing the parents, which can lead to disruptions, antisocial conduct, and aggression.
The child can develop an oppositional defiant disorder or conduct disorder in severe cases.
Need More Help With Toddler Tantrums?
To get more help with children temper tantrums, Parenting Styles suggests the ebook Calm The Tantrums written by Stanford-trained parenting specialist, Pamela Li.
Final thoughts
There are so many “Don’ts” that it can be overwhelming.
It may feel as if there were no Dos.
If you have missed them, scroll back up to see the “How to” sections above, especially the sections about helping kids develop self-regulation and dealing with temper tantrums.
References
Graziano PA, Calkins SD, Keane SP. Sustained attention development during the toddlerhood to preschool period: associations with toddlers’ emotion regulation strategies and maternal behaviour. Inf Child Develop. Published online March 31, 2011:389-408. doi:https://doi.org/10.1002/icd.731
Morris AS, Silk JS, Steinberg L, Myers SS, Robinson LR. The Role of the Family Context in the Development of Emotion Regulation. Social Development. Published online May 2007:361-388. doi:https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9507.2007.00389.x
Bor W, Sanders MR. Correlates of Self-Reported Coercive Parenting of Preschool-Aged Children at High Risk for the Development of Conduct Problems. Aust N Z J Psychiatry. Published online September 2004:738-745. doi:https://doi.org/10.1080/j.1440-1614.2004.01452.x
Morris AS, Silk JS, Steinberg L, Myers SS, Robinson LR. The Role of the Family Context in the Development of Emotion Regulation. Social Development. Published online May 2007:361-388. doi:https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9507.2007.00389.x
Patterson GR. The early development of coercive family process. In: Antisocial Behavior in Children and Adolescents: A Developmental Analysis and Model for Intervention. American Psychological Association; :25-44. doi:https://doi.org/10.1037/10468-002
Chang L, Schwartz D, Dodge KA, McBride-Chang C. Harsh Parenting in Relation to Child Emotion Regulation and Aggression. Journal of Family Psychology. Published online 2003:598-606. doi:https://doi.org/10.1037/0893-3200.17.4.598
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