Tantrums
A tantrum usually involves 2 people:
The child is screaming, hitting, kicking, biting,
attacking, spitting, pinching, defiant, ....
The adult usually feels bad, helpless and angry,
just wanting to stop this ‘horrible’ behaviour.
This is how the child feels too!
A temper tantrum reflects an inner struggle the child
is having inside himself:
he really seems to have lost something of his self, he is ‘beside himself’, ‘all over the place’, ‘losing it’, ‘falling apart’, ‘ gone to pieces’, ‘in bits’, ‘freaking out’...
What does a tantrum feel like to the child?
* Inside the child feels in turmoil/ boiling with rage/
terrified/ panic-stricken/ ...
* These feelings are experienced as sensations of
unbearable bodily tension that feel very
uncomfortable and painfully sharp/hard.
* They ‘short-circuit’ the child’s ability to think/
to use his mind so that he cannot process this
overwhelming experience in any rational or
sensible way,
* so he tries to get rid of/discharges the sensations
that are too intense for the body to bear
What causes tantrums?
* A tantrum is usually triggered by a frustration (or fear) causing a conflict inside
the child.
* Parents may have triggered it, but they are not
responsible for the turmoil, nor can they settle it
for the child, ...
* The child is torn between 3 main conflicting tendencies
+ caught in a vicious circle:
1. being angry, wanting to attack/ hurt and make
the other feel as bad as he feels
2. wanting to get away from parent/afraid of those
angry attacking feelings (retaliation)
3. wanting to come to parent for comfort/ security
(attachment behaviour)
* The child may take his anger out on those he
feels safest with and loves most, often mum and dad, even if it had nothing to do with
them (i.e. a sort-of compliment of trust).
What does the child need from the adult?
* ‘The work of the adult is to remain calm
and not get so flooded by the child’s
feeling that she is taken over by it and
preceeds to have her equivalent of a
tantrum too.’ (Phillips 1999)
* In a tantrum, the child feels that
everything has gone bad and even his
idea of a ‘good mummy’ has been swept
away by the torrent of his own rage and
fury. The adult therefore
* needs to offer safety and act as an
‘external container’ for the child, e.g. through loving
(and not revengeful!) holding arms or other firm but kind containment,
* to help child to get his confused feelings of anger and fear into perspective, i.e. to feel
that the adult is not as angry as he is, but is helping him to learn to control his
impulses
* to ‘lend themselves’ to, to allow child to ‘borrow’ comfort from the adult’s mind, so
child can take in that reassuring experience, e.g. ‘I love you but I can’t let you hurt me/
do this’, ‘ I will hold you/ your hands until you have calmed down’, ‘sometime you will
learn to stop yourself and then I won’t need to stop you’.
Many adults cannot tolerate the temporary ‘breakdowns’ that all young children experience:
* they see tantrums as attacks on the adult’s own care-taking skills and
* interpret the child’s behaviour as criticism, that they are not good-enough parents, or
even ‘bad’ parents (which is not what the child is saying with his difficult behaviour)
* punishments and threats make the child, already overwhelmed with unmanageable
feelings, feel even worse, more beside himself, all over the place and in bits;
* sending him away, makes the child more frightened, as he is already in a panic and
clearly unable to manage his angry feelings on his own/ without help.
Email: info@reachingautism.org
A tantrum usually involves 2 people:
The child is screaming, hitting, kicking, biting,
attacking, spitting, pinching, defiant, ....
The adult usually feels bad, helpless and angry,
just wanting to stop this ‘horrible’ behaviour.
This is how the child feels too!
A temper tantrum reflects an inner struggle the child
is having inside himself:
he really seems to have lost something of his self, he is ‘beside himself’, ‘all over the place’, ‘losing it’, ‘falling apart’, ‘ gone to pieces’, ‘in bits’, ‘freaking out’...
What does a tantrum feel like to the child?
* Inside the child feels in turmoil/ boiling with rage/
terrified/ panic-stricken/ ...
* These feelings are experienced as sensations of
unbearable bodily tension that feel very
uncomfortable and painfully sharp/hard.
* They ‘short-circuit’ the child’s ability to think/
to use his mind so that he cannot process this
overwhelming experience in any rational or
sensible way,
* so he tries to get rid of/discharges the sensations
that are too intense for the body to bear
What causes tantrums?
* A tantrum is usually triggered by a frustration (or fear) causing a conflict inside
the child.
* Parents may have triggered it, but they are not
responsible for the turmoil, nor can they settle it
for the child, ...
* The child is torn between 3 main conflicting tendencies
+ caught in a vicious circle:
1. being angry, wanting to attack/ hurt and make
the other feel as bad as he feels
2. wanting to get away from parent/afraid of those
angry attacking feelings (retaliation)
3. wanting to come to parent for comfort/ security
(attachment behaviour)
* The child may take his anger out on those he
feels safest with and loves most, often mum and dad, even if it had nothing to do with
them (i.e. a sort-of compliment of trust).
What does the child need from the adult?
* ‘The work of the adult is to remain calm
and not get so flooded by the child’s
feeling that she is taken over by it and
preceeds to have her equivalent of a
tantrum too.’ (Phillips 1999)
* In a tantrum, the child feels that
everything has gone bad and even his
idea of a ‘good mummy’ has been swept
away by the torrent of his own rage and
fury. The adult therefore
* needs to offer safety and act as an
‘external container’ for the child, e.g. through loving
(and not revengeful!) holding arms or other firm but kind containment,
* to help child to get his confused feelings of anger and fear into perspective, i.e. to feel
that the adult is not as angry as he is, but is helping him to learn to control his
impulses
* to ‘lend themselves’ to, to allow child to ‘borrow’ comfort from the adult’s mind, so
child can take in that reassuring experience, e.g. ‘I love you but I can’t let you hurt me/
do this’, ‘ I will hold you/ your hands until you have calmed down’, ‘sometime you will
learn to stop yourself and then I won’t need to stop you’.
Many adults cannot tolerate the temporary ‘breakdowns’ that all young children experience:
* they see tantrums as attacks on the adult’s own care-taking skills and
* interpret the child’s behaviour as criticism, that they are not good-enough parents, or
even ‘bad’ parents (which is not what the child is saying with his difficult behaviour)
* punishments and threats make the child, already overwhelmed with unmanageable
feelings, feel even worse, more beside himself, all over the place and in bits;
* sending him away, makes the child more frightened, as he is already in a panic and
clearly unable to manage his angry feelings on his own/ without help.
Email: info@reachingautism.org
Some adults become angry and threaten to punish the child if he does not stop the ‘bad’ behaviour, some try to ignore it, to cajole or threaten to hit the child. But these attitudes will only maintain the child’s frightening feelings (with the added danger that if a hyper-sensitive child meets harshness and lack of containment often, his experience of another person as attacking may make him resist being contained; may then get used to the idea that he can satisfy himself, that he does not need other people, i.e. withdraw:
