The floor, the supermarket, the shoe that's apparently the wrong shoe. Somewhere in there an adult says use your words, and it lands like asking someone to read a map while the car is on fire.
A tantrum is a flood, not a strategy. While it's running, access to language drops sharply, which is why a child who was chatting five minutes ago can now only produce volume. Asking for words at that moment is asking for the one thing that's temporarily unavailable.
Lend the words, don't demand them
Naming a feeling out loud, calmly, gives the child a label to attach to a sensation they can't describe. It also tells them the sensation is survivable, because you're describing it in an ordinary voice rather than panicking with them.
- Instead of
- Use your words.
- Try
- You wanted the blue cup. You're so upset.
- Supplies the sentence they would have made if they could.
- Instead of
- You're okay, it's fine.
- Try
- That was a big fall. It hurt.
- Being told you're fine when you aren't teaches you to distrust your own read of things.
- Instead of
- Stop crying and I'll help you.
- Try
- I'm right here. We'll sort it when you're ready.
- Makes help unconditional, so calming down stops being a toll you pay.
Name the feeling while it is happening. The teaching part can wait until everyone is calm.
The teaching window is afterwards
Ten minutes later, once the body has settled and they're eating a cracker, the thinking brain is back and the review is cheap. Keep it to two sentences. You were cross about the cup. Next time you can say I want blue. That's the whole lesson. It takes a great many goes before the sentence turns up on its own, so don't judge it by tomorrow, or by next week either.
It also helps to lower the daily count. Most two-year-old meltdowns cluster around the same four triggers, and three of them are logistics rather than character.
- Hunger and tiredness, which explain more of them than anything else.
- Transitions, which arrive as a surprise unless you give a warning.
- Having no say at all in a day full of instructions.
- Wanting something that genuinely can't happen. This one is real, and it just has to be survived.
One caution about the bargain. If you offer a choice you can't honour, the next twenty choices carry less weight. Better to say this isn't a choosing one, we're leaving now, and hold it.
