toddler temper tantrums Archives

Aggression in 3 Year Olds : How You Can Help

Ophira4 CommentsJune 16, 2021September 13, 2019

Read time: 9 minutes

aggressive 3 year old-aggression in 3 year olds

Aggression in 3-year-olds can take many parents by surprise. As adults, we view aggressive behavior as unhealthy and inherently wrong. So when we first encounter aggression in 3-year-olds (some 2-year-olds also exhibit these aggressive behaviors) we are shocked and feel as if we are failing to raise a good human being.

Okay, before you start stressing about your aggressive 3 year old, let me assure you, what you are experiencing is a normal part of emotional and behavioral development in young children. Most preschoolers will hit, kick, bite, jump, or yell when they are overwhelmed by emotions. Children act out in an aggressive manner when they feel threatened or frustrated by a problem.

WHY DO PRESCHOOLERS GET AGGRESSIVE?

The most common tantrums that lead up to aggressive behavior in 3-year-olds are

need for your attention,
to gain access to certain toys, activities or foods, or
disagreement with your plans for that moment/follow routine.

The child is still learning how to appropriately express his needs or disagreement and sometimes the need or moment gets bigger than him.

How to control one’s impulses and solve conflicts in a socially acceptable way is still an undeveloped skill in this age group.

Such aggressive behavior, therefore, is normal for 2-4-year-olds. You may notice aggression peaks by age 3 and starts to decrease after age 4. (source)

HOW CAN I HELP MY 3 YEAR OLD WITH AGGRESSION?

Stay calm

The first thing you need to do when your child hits, bites or yells is stay calm. Any reaction from you can motivate the child to keep repeating his actions. At the moment you are setting an example for your child of how one reacts when provoked. Do not join in his chaos, help him understand and learn through you how big emotions are dealt with. Explain calmly, “hands are not for hitting, or I can’t let you hurt your sister/friend.”

Related reading: How to become a calm mother

Remove from the situation

When the child’s actions can pose harm to another child or adult, remove him from the situation. Do not wait until harm is done. At age 3 most children are verbal. You can wait until the child has calmed down or moved on to other things to bring up the subject again and talk about how we handle difficult situations. This is the conversation where you reiterate limits, for example, “hands are not for hitting, no throwing sand on other kids, it can hurt others”.

Stick to your expectations and limits

At age 3 many temper tantrums may be for access to certain privileges like screen time or certain favorite food. When denied the child lashes out in a violent tantrum. At moments like this, it is important for the parent to stay calm, reassuring, and consistent with the set limits.

Reassure your child you care for him and stick to the set expectations. For example: I worry about your eyes that is why I cannot let you watch more T.V.

4. Be realistic about your child’s ability to follow house rules.

Set age-appropriate rules and expectations for your child. A 3-year-old may not be able to complete a task around the house without making a mess. Expect the messes and work around providing more opportunities for independence.

3-year-olds especially are beginning to enjoy the risky play. They are testing the limits of their bodies.

When children are unable to explore tasks independently that pent up frustration comes out as aggression.

Creating safe spaces for exploration and play is important for the child to develop confidence and a healthy emotional state.

Be realistic about qualities such as empathy and sharing.

Many 3-year-olds have not yet developed impulse-control. Therefore sharing or taking turns can create situations of conflict. Even so, the child requires more opportunities to play in groups and learn through observation what sharing looks like.

If your child has a favorite toy that can cause conflict at a play date or at the park, do not bring that toy along.

Three-year-olds will protect their interests when threatened, and may not be willing to share with another child.

When we go for play dates, I make sure to buy a small toy or gift for the other child and ask my son to gift the other child. This simple act of gifting brings him joy and settles him into a happy mood more willing to participate in group play.

Tune in, listen, and learn.

Our job as parents is to shape the world around the child. When the child is throwing aggressive tantrums frequently, it indicates something that’s lacking in his environment. Often the first questions to ask ourselves are

Is our child feeling loved?
Does he get enough time with his parents?
Does he feel threatened by a new situation- the birth of a new sibling? or simply,
Overtired, hungry, or sleepy.

All these situations can bring about aggressive behaviors in three-year-olds. The situations indicate unmet needs and the tantrum a way for the child to express his needs.

Understand the cause of the aggressiveness and take action to change the environment to suit the child. Results are almost always immediate. Solving the root cause of the disturbance yields better results than temporary solutions like offering a treat or distractions like T.V and screens.

Allow the child the freedom to express his feelings. Encourage talk and spend one on one time every day with your child. I know this sounds simple, but our busy lives and routines sometimes do not allow us to spend uninterrupted time with our children. I always felt like I know my child’s heart better when I have spent time with him, he feels more settled around me and I have insight into his challenges that help me help him better.

The days I have been busier at work, the distance between us becomes obvious and sure enough, I start to see cracks in his generally settled behavior.

Over a period of time, I found that one on one time spent with parents is one of the ways to resolve any of the challenging behaviors we face.

AGGRESSION IN 3-YEAR-OLDS – WHAT TO DO WHEN YOUR CHILD HITS, BITES, OR GETS ROUGH

How to help an angry child calm down

Name the emotion or describe what happened

As much as is possible try to find out what led to the angry outburst and name the emotion for your child. For example: “You are upset your sister took your blocks”

I find this My Feelings Card Set quite useful in helping children understand and name emotions. It creates awareness about what to expect and how the child can act after a violent episode.

Do not shame the child for expressing violently, but reiterate limits

For example, “Our hands are not for hitting/ I will not let you hurt your sister/ I cannot let you spoil the mattress”(While gently pulling the child away from the situation)

Offer a solution/distraction

Let us build blocks here away from sister/ Move sister away with another toy/ Or offer a similar-looking toy/crayon/block.

Help the child make amends

When the child has hurt another child/adult you can say something like this;”Looks like sister got hurt, let us give her a pat on her arm and comfort her”

Ignore a rough play when possible

Sometimes I ignore rough play if it is happening in a safe space and does not have the potential to cause the child or those around him hurt. I try as much as is possible to bite my tongue and not say anything. Counting to 10 helps me in this case. Most times he gives up his rough play after a few tries.

At this age, a lot of it is the inner desire to experiment with things around him.

If I feel his rough play is going to harm him in some way, I ask him to “Use gentle hands/ Walk slowly/ or I describe the potential harm the object he is playing with can cause so he can understand it better and then distract to another toy/task.

Channel that energy so he can express correctly

Often during a violent tantrum, all the child needs is a way to vent. You can offer a pillow to punch, paper to tear, or color. These activities help the child calm down. I start by punching the pillow myself and showing how I can get that frustration out.

A quick tip: What to say instead of No

One trick that worked for me with my son is to say what I expect as if he already embodies that command. If he is around a baby and engaging in rough play, I will say “You want to show me how you can be gentle when you play with baby”. Or “You are so gentle around the baby.”

These simple positive statements show I trust in him and 90% of the time, he follows through wanting to show me how well he can handle that situation. Sometimes he backs off if he feels he cannot do what I stated. A simple tip that works in many tricky situations instead of saying “No, don’t do this/that.”

To sum it up

Children act out in an aggressive manner when they are fearful, frustrated, or threatened by a certain situation. They want to protect their own interests. Show them how they can without harming others around them.

I hope these tips and tricks help you resolve some of the aggression in your 3-year-olds. Do leave me a comment if you need help with a specific scenario. Until then be the calm to your child’s chaos.

How To Deal With Toddler Tantrums: A Gentle Parenting Approach

Ophira11 CommentsMay 3, 2022January 23, 2018

Read time: 8 minutes

Toddler Tantrums; they just seem to sneak into your lovely baby as they get closer to 2 years of age.

Yes, I’m talking about those loud screeching noises in public and at home, where your toddler seems almost possessed. Your sweet little baby seems to have lost all his senses and is crying out loud, not caring about who is watching. The worst part is that the reason they are doing this is probably very trivial or sometimes it might not be anything at all.

It’s exhausting, makes you angry, leaves you baffled and clueless as to what to do in a situation like this when your child is just not listening to you.

At times it’s not even possible to pick them up because your hands are full, and you have no option but to let them go through those emotions and wait for them to settle, or worse you have to drag them out of the place. This has happened to me a couple of times when I have my baby in my arms and my toddler is going through some difficult emotions in public.

It’s tough momma, and I’m with you on this one, but it’s very important to also understand why is your mostly sweet baby throwing those tantrums.

This age of 1- 3 yrs is probably the most developmentally challenging for their brain. It takes a lot more stimulus than it can handle. Plus, they don’t know how to control their impulses and get overstimulated and tired and hangry (hungry + angry) out of the schedule. It’s tough on them too.

Why does your child get these bursts of tough emotions aka toddler tantrums?

Put in simple words, kids mostly throw tantrums when they are told NO to something they are doing, or they want, or leave a place that is fun.

When they are babies; they’re very dependent on you, but when they get to the age they can walk around, feed themselves, and speak a few words to express their thoughts they think they know it all.

They want to do everything by themselves, make all their own decisions, even the ones they’re not ready for, so when we tell them they can’t do something, it makes them angry and frustrated and it only increases because they can’t express this to you. Hence, the emotional meltdowns aka toddler tantrums.

Toddlers are in the fun age, where they know what kind of things they like to do. So they want to keep doing it, they don’t yet understand the concept of coming back to the thing they are liking to do. For them when you ask them to leave something or place, it’s like forever.

Even when you tell them you can come back, or you can do this tomorrow morning, or we’ll buy this later all that falls on deaf ears; because their panic response kicks in as soon as they sense the answer is going to be around NO or CAN’T. Their brain shuts down, they have a gush of emotions, they’re not in a stage to listen anymore. It’s very quick.

As the age progresses sometimes kids add harsh and hurtful words to their meltdowns; like “I want to be with daddy; I don’t like you” or vice versa. They are not being mean on purpose; they’re just feeling even more independent than a few months back with added vocabulary, but are still not there yet developmentally, so they throw in such words. This article about, What to do when kids say mean things will help you put things into the right perspective.

What to do to prevent a toddler tantrum from happening?

So we need to be smart. The way to beat this cycle is; you have to connect yourself with them before you cut their connection with the thing they are enjoying.

Ideally, you should get down to their level; acknowledge that they’re having a good time with this thing, and it’s so cool and fun. And break it to them that this needs to stop because we have to move on the next agenda of the day, be it mealtime, bedtime, or leave the place and go home. Even when they want you to buy something but you can’t buy it; you need to first acknowledge that’s cool and fun, but we can’t get it right now.

This is not like a quick to work or fool-proof method, you are still going to get some push backs, but it’s an honest approach, and your child is going to feel heard.

That connection is going to go a very long way with you. Your child is going to listen to you more often, and eventually, it’ll be easier for them to leave those things behind, they’ll be more understanding and trusting in you. Because they are genuinely being heard.

You are the most important person in your child’s life; they value you the most more than any object or place, and when you make an honest connection with them, they’re so receptive and responding to it.

On the other hand, if you try to make it a power struggle where you tell them they can’t do it, why they can’t do it, how they can do it another time, while they are already having a meltdown, or try to tell this to them in a more commanding manner so they listen to you, or you threaten them to never come back to this place, if the child behaves this way; it is not going to work. Because they are going to feel threatened, and all their senses are going to shut down and they’ll go into an even more panic mode.

Yes, these sound like big words; but your child goes through big feelings when we yell at them at a sensitive time.

What to do when a toddler tantrum is already in progress?

The only thing that is going to work when the meltdown has already happened is patience and trust. If they’re going through tough emotions; you’ll have to wait for them to go through them. They’re currently reacting out of feelings and feelings only need to be heard and just that.

I usually sit with them when they are going through big feelings; watch them, as to what do they want to do, if they would like a hug, or they just want to stay close. Every child is different, both my kids want different things when they are upset.

As the kids get older between 2- 4 yrs of age; the meltdowns seem to get longer; and it really gets overwhelming for everyone in the family, including the parents and younger siblings.

At Home: So if you’re at home when the child is having a meltdown; stay with them for some time. But if it lasts longer than you can manage; tell them that, you’re going to pick them up and help them find a safe spot like a couch or a chair or bed and let them go through their feelings.

Tell them to come to you when they feel better and that you’re waiting for it. But, it’s still important to acknowledge their feelings and emotions as they begin and stay with them at least for some time so that the child does not feel neglected and abandoned when they’re upset.

In Public: In public, I do the same, acknowledge his feelings, and tell him that we need to leave the place because this makes a lot of people uncomfortable, and I pick them up and leave, or find a safe spot.

You need to trust your child that they’re not doing anything to manipulate you; they’re not doing anything intentionally to make you mad; no matter how much this looks like it, it’s not true not with any child. The reason why kids behave the way they do is that they’re suffering themselves. What may seem trivial to us, is actually a big deal for kids.