Donna Leskosek has spent years working with children and trying to understand life from their perspective. She talks about how she deals with kids of all ages who are in the midst of tantrums. What she doesn’t do is just as important as what she does do.
Some people have strange abilities. Some can walk on their hands, others can fix things. My husband can listen to a car engine and hear what is wrong with it, even though sometimes he does not hear anything I have said to him. My strange ability may be that I understand tantrums: the kind two-year-olds have and also the kind experienced by children way older than two.
I get the full-on, total meltdown, locked-in-a-bathroom-screaming-obscenities kind of anger that some kids carry far past the toddler stage. It is a strange thing that I understand it, because I have never been prone to tantrums myself. Sometimes people think that I have some special training around how I manage the behavior, but I don’t.
I do have some rules around how I respond. First of all, I don’t restrain or touch anyone. Anger needs space. I try to make sure that things that could cause harm to me or the kids having the melt-downs are out of reach. I also position myself between them and the door. I recognize right from the outset that a child who is out of control will likely not be able to make sense of my words, but they will hear the tone I am saying them in. I match the volume of the tantrum but keep the tone of my voice very even and clear — and slowly I turn my volume down. Usually, this brings their volume down as well.
I don’t address consequences, or behavior. I feel that talking to a child who is in the midst of a tantrum is like talking to someone who is drunk. I negotiate for safety. There will be time later to discuss how we got to the place where they threw a shoe at me. When I feel them lose the edge of the anger, I talk about how frightening it is to lose control. Most kids tell me they hate the feeling. I feel it is really important to acknowledge that and to let them hear how calm I am.
When a child has lost the security of being in control of his or her emotions, there is comfort in having someone who is not reacting emotionally. The angrier the child is, the more calm I stay. One of two things happens: they begin to respond to me, or simply exhausts themselves. Sometimes, they may need to cry — the really ugly, sobbing, nose-running hiccuping crying. When that happens I know that the anxiety and other crappy feelings are breaking away into little tiny bits. When that begins to happen, I talk to them about having good thoughts. I find age-appropriate things for them to imagine, like being a noodle floating in a bowl of chicken soup.
Sometimes we can talk about the their feelings. We save the talk about the incident that preceded the tantrum for later. I don’t allow escape from responsibility, but I save that conversation until I will be better heard. Sometimes, they simply falls asleep. My voice and actions always communicate that they are safe, that it will be okay.
Sometimes the anger of these kids anger drains both them and me.
I don’t mind.
I think that children are worth it, and I have learned to duck.
Photo Credit
Hi Donna:
This short piece is brilliant. I loved the topic. I loved the approach in both your writing about it and the approach you take with anger. I also love that is was brief; this reflects, I think, the fact that you understand that when getting a point across, brevity is key. This is something that I have always struggled with because as a philosopher, writer and problem solver, how I do like to go on and on and bla bla bla. But back to you.
I love the way you began by acknowledging the special abilities we all harbour. Yours in particular interested me. I have always been hyper sensitive to feelings. Bad feelings are like temperatures to me. I feel them immediately and they affect me deeply. Depending on the situation, I have to either block, absorb or transform the energy. I cannot remain in any situaiton in which I intuitively know will alter my internal energy in a negative way, for longer than I can stand. For instance, when someone rages for no reason, as in traffic, I block it and smile. I rarely block children as most everyone else does this – especially when they are screaming with emotions to be seen and heard. They need strong people to show them caring and understanding as they need to be reminded about their innate ability to understand intention, and must be taught that theirs is a powerful tool which must be weilded carefully.
This has taken years for me to learn. I don’t think I could have decribed the slow and subtle and profoundly meaningful steps taken to calm someone who has lost all control quite like you did. But I’ll share my own story to try.
One day, while working at a daycare facility, a mother could not console her child. More than anger in children, my special excellence is feeling sadness, emotional confusion and pain. This really stinks for me sometimes, as if I don’t handle myself carefully, I can absorb the energy around me. But my innate talent lies in leading tempemstuous energy into the eye of the storm and tranforming into something serene – something more enjoyable to feel. I need to dissipate pain.
As parents, sometimes we are so close to the emotion, we cannot separate from it. We have no way to even discern between the feelings felt by our children and those felt by ourselvses. This is why I think stepping in (with permission) is so important at times.
The mother of the soon hysterical child saw my face and said, ‘do you want to try – nothing I do works’. I squatted down to her level and waited for her to see me through her glassy and frantic eyes and then, slowly moved my finger and touched hers. She stopped crying and looked at me. I looked at her with all the love and kindness I could imagine, by transporting my toughts to a ‘safe, happy place’ that helps me when I feel out of control, and let it pass into her eyes. Her face transfomed and naturally mimiced mine. We all felt immediate peace. I think this is what we all desire ulitmately so it’s easy to get there when there’s an obvious doorway in somone else’s loving eyes. The mother looked a little shocked. The situation was a little weird, but it felt perfectly normal at the same time.
The slow and simple gesture, intended only for the upset child, from someone who represented the sometimes scary, sad and unpredictable outside world, but looking nothing of the sort, was like water to a dehydrated desert walker. The mother said I was a child whisperer. I laughed. We all laughed. The situation had new energy.
Children – like adults – do not like to feel out of control. They seek balance and to feel good. They look out for others who can help them do this. They look for grown ups who have grown up, and know how to find comfort in simple ways.
Thank you for your story. You helped me to define something indefinable inside of myself. I am not what anyone would call a professional with regards to child behaviour or psychology, but I am a mother, which by proxy, and with focused intention does make me what I like to call a novice expert.
Many blessings to you.
Have you ever had any puke?
There was this one kid…a master of manipulation..used to start to gag whenever someone else had the ghostbusters toy he wanted. I wonder what ever happened to that little nuisance?.