I am so proud of the way I managed that tantrum. Said no parent – ever.
Staying calm amidst our children’s meltdowns is widely known and ‘suggested’ but let me assure you, hard to put into practice. I know this from personal experience as a mum and as a Child Psychologist where I’ve met plenty of parents wondering how to manage emotions and behaviour.
What causes behaviours like tantrums.
The tantrum or meltdown is perhaps the most common behavioural enigma of parenting life. We all deal with them and love to chin wag about the doozies in our playground rhetoric.
However, when, how and to what gravity we experience tantrums differ from family to family and is dependent on many variables such as number of children, temperament, sickness, disability, family structure and plenty of other factors not in our control.
Big behaviours are a known factor contributing to parenting stress. You’ll be familiar with this, but it’s defined as “any stress felt in response to the demands of being a parent” (1). Negative feelings toward ourselves, and our children, often accompany stress. Meltdowns and tantrums put an immediate demand on meeting our child’s needs, balancing their needs with our own, and the always-present social pressure to be doings things right in terms of our child’s wellbeing (1).
A secret to managing tantrums and other behaviour.
If you’d like to know how to manage a tantrum or any other life challenge to be honest, let me share with you a little secret. There’s a simple step we as humans all need to take before trying to achieve any sense of calm. A step that often gets missed in the chaos of parenting. It’s very important as it will set you up to deal with any hard stuff that gets thrown at you from today and into the future.
The secret step is AWARENESS.
Whether you’re parenting while sitting on the loo, parenting from the base of the jungle gym, parenting remotely, parenting in the middle of chaos, nurturing your awareness is the no.1 tool to effectively manage whatever follows. If you learn the skill to sit in your awareness in the middle of a storm, it will make it SO much easier to calmly approach any situation.
What is Awareness
3 Truths about Awareness
While I’d love to say that simply telling yourself, I am aware, will bring calm on instantly, there are a few cold hard truths you need to consider before diving into practising.
Especially when you’re stuck or caught in a tornado of big feelings crashing around at the time. I.e., Tantrums or meltdowns! Be patient with yourself during these moments when you forget or struggle to nurture it.
You need to put in the time to nurture your awareness for it to grow and be a part of your muscle memory. It’s really a case of practice makes progress not perfect!
You must make a conscious effort to choose awareness over those ‘other parts’ that love to dominate. Simply mustering awareness will not be enough in the whirlwinds.
3 Facts about awareness.
Your ‘parts’ matter
There are many ‘parts’ to us as humans – parts that like certain foods, parts that like movies, parts that like games, humour, and a part for all the emotions – an angry part, a happy part, a worried part, a ‘stressed to the eyeballs’ part.
These ‘parts’ hang out in our unconscious mind (that rather large part of our mind, 90-95%!) that is out of our direct awareness. The ‘conditions’ of our current life trigger our different parts to pop into our consciousness mind and guide how we think, feel, and behave.
So, if we love dogs and a dog comes into our room, our ‘dog-loving’ part pops in and guides us. Conversely, if we’re scared of dogs and a dog appears, our ‘scared-of-dogs’ part pops in and guides us very differently.
Our awareness part is the most important part because when you are aware, you have power. The power to pause, the power to recall values and the power to choose your actions.
When these abilities are within your reach, your emotional, social, relationship and parenting lives have the best chance to reach their potential.
Your brain anatomy matters
Dan Siegel uses an excellent representation called the Hand Model of the Brain to explain the three parts of the brain – basic, emotional and smart – and how these interact and drive thoughts, feelings and behaviour. (2)
We can override our survival brain with our smart brain abilities such as ‘pausing’ and remembering helpful cognitions (values). However, when we are faced with conditions that ‘threaten’ our nervous system, like when our child is melting down, our survival brain jumps into action and literally blocks our smart brain abilities. Our survival brain takes over as the captain of our ship and big feelings and behaviours follow.
In these moments, we as parents come to a fork in the road. We can a) get stuck in the situation and be thrown around by our feelings and the thoughts that feed them, OR, b) we can BE AWARE.
The stories you tell yourself matter.
As parents, we also need to understand a little about the way we think before we can put awareness properly into practice.
In a nutshell, the ways in which we think are simply stories. Stories we have gathered from our experiences throughout life. The ‘thought stories’ we hold are the catalyst to everything else; from our thoughts, come our feelings and from our feelings, come our behaviours.
Our thought stories, feelings and behaviours can all be noticed and observed by us – we can become aware of all of them.
Now you know that your brain, your parts, and the stories you tell yourself all contribute to awareness, are you ready to try it?
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About Boss Brain.
Here at Boss Brain, awareness is the foundation of everything we practice, and we want to encourage parents to harness it too. We love tips and tricks but we’re all about teaching you real stuff to change the way families view and work with emotions. If you need some more help, take a look at our 10-week online kids’ program, Boss Brain.
About Lynn Jenkins
Lynn Jenkins is a Clinical Child Psychologist, mother of 3 and creator of the 10-week digital program Boss Brain. She believes it ‘makes sense to start at the beginning’ when it comes to emotions and behaviour as ‘when we have strong emotional foundations, we can build a strong human foundation’. Together with her team she loves developing Boss Brain and resources for parents to make parenting a little easier and kids a little calmer.
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