3 ways to Navigate Toddler Meltdowns

Meltdowns can make for a long day out, but it doesn't have to be that way. In fact, you can learn ways to prevent meltdowns and help your child avoid them when they happen. It just takes some patience and understanding of your child's behaviour. These tips can help you stay calm and manage meltdowns the next time they happen.

And yes, as parents, we all know how difficult it can be to maintain our cool in the midst of a toddler meltdown. The tantrums, tears and screams can spark the most intense emotions within us. Although it's impossible to stop these feelings from bubbling up inside us, we can not change someone else’s behaviour - only our own. So this episode focuses on how we can adult our response to best help our toddlers. 

Meltdowns… how do we manage these? How do we keep our cool, when our kid is throwing the kitchen sink at us? Well, here are 3 ways to manage meltdowns.

Video - Navigating and Managing Meltdowns

Transcript

Three ways to manage your child's meltdown that has nothing to do with your child. Welcome to the simplifying childhood podcast where we simplify parenting, play, and everything child development. I am your host Tiffany. And today is going to be a really quick, actionable episode for you on how to manage your child's meltdowns.

So, as I've said before, this month's workshop is on managing meltdowns. If you want more information, make sure you follow the link in the show notes sign up onto the waitlist, so you get one first dibs to a discount code as well, when we go live and open cart.

Now, three ways to mention meltdown that have nothing to do with your child.

You cannot control someone else's behaviour. You cannot change somebody else's behaviour, you can only change your own.

And that's hard. So because we can't change our children, because we can't change how they're feeling, how they're acting, we can support them, we can't change them. We can only change how we react, how we respond. We cannot change, we cannot prevent or stop that damage occurring. How and what we do with that is in our court ball is in our court. So what can we do?

Respond not React

Step one is to respond not react. And what I mean by that is when it explodes, and you can start to see it unwinding and it all starting to melt down and everything's just starting to lose control. Instead of reacting and jumping in. Respond. The difference is that is there is a pause them. Reaction is a quick response. It's a quick thing where you see somebody there, boom, boom, boom, boom, okay, and it is a reaction. It is a gut feeling. It is innate, it is without thinking, you react, okay, you put your hand on a boiling kettle, your reaction, you don't think I should remove my hair now, it just happens. When you react to a meltdown. And you're not in control. You are just acting on instinct. And when it is safety? Yeah, there is a point for that there is a reason why we do that. When they're unsafe when they're about to run onto a road or whatever you want that reaction. When they are in a safe environment, and they are losing control. We want to then look at how do we respond instead of react? And when we respond, we pause and we think and then do something that pause can be a second, that pause can be a few seconds. But that pause to then we'll look at what are my options here? What's the best one for me? And which way am I going to go? So step one to manage your meltdowns, that has nothing to do with your child is respond. Don't react.

Stay Calm - I know this is hard

Step two into managing meltdowns is stayin calm. And I say that. And I pause before I said it because I understand the complexity of that. I understand that that's not always achievable. And it's a high expectation. And in the last episode, I talked about giving our expectations and simplifying expectations of ourselves. And I did say that this is an expectation I have on myself to always be calm, and it's unrealistic. So I say be calm from a real loving place have an understanding place of the complexities and the difficulty with doing that.

The reason though, we want to try to remain calm as much as we can, is because when you it's like a wave coming in and you hit it with a wall. The crash is massive.

Okay, so your child's that wave. It's a tsunami and it's coming in and your wall of anger or frustration of exhaustion. And you hit bang, and it goes up. When you are calm and like that sand and you go with that flow, and they come at you. You just flow with them. And it becomes a float. And then there's that co-regulation. remaining calm is hard. It's really hard, I can't even begin to pretend that this is easy. It is hard and in the moment, and when you're working on one or two hours weather sleep, and when it's a fifth thing that day, it is hard.

And that is where the difference between reacting and pausing, responding comes in as well is that breath that you take to remain calm, allows that respond that remaining calm that no matter how big that wave is that they come with you that your response is always the same, and it's consistent, and that it is calm. The wave loses that power, and they lose that fine because they're not coming and banging and banging. Okay, because that has a momentum to it that keeps going. Whereas when that's that, there's no momentum, there's nothing to buy. And so that falls out of them.

If you want tips on how to do that, that will be in my workshop, because I know I've just hit the top of an iceberg there. And there's so much to unpack underneath that. And there was no way to do all that in a 10 minute podcast episode.

So remaining calm is a key step for that in managing meltdown that has, again, nothing to do with your child and a lot to do with us as parents and making sure that we are feeling our cup that we are in a space where we can do that. And it's a big issue. So I'm not again, going to pretend that it's an easy fix.

So three ways of managing meltdowns. One is respond, don't react to is remaining calm. And then the last one is allowing space for that feelings for yourself and for your child.

Allow Space for both yours and your child’s feelings

So because in episode four, I want to say we talked about what is a meltdown. And we went through the defining a meltdown, I'll put a link in the show notes for that podcast. Because it is a meltdown of feelings and control.

Allowing space for those validating that and giving space to those yourself as well with in those moments and your child makes them okay, when we allow for feelings. It allows them to work out how to manage and deal with them and cope with them and then give words to them. So when I'm angry, I can say I'm angry about this. And I have a way to articulate that. Because I've learned that because there's been space at different times for me to have that feeling. When we don't allow the space for those feelings, it comes at us. And I'm sure some of you have been in that situation I have where I've held on to something for so long, and I'm holding it and I'm holding it tight and I'm holding on to these emotions. And then out of nowhere it explodes. I can't do this anymore. This is ridiculous did it are these always been those sorts of statements come because I haven't allowed myself to have those feelings along the way and just say, Hey,

I'm frustrated. Hey, this is going on, it's not working for me here. I'm angry at this. By allowing those feelings along the way.

We working no against we slow down, it doesn't build up is that pent thing. Now sometimes for children, there might not be a pent up emotion or feeling it can just come okay and it can be overwhelming for them. Allowing the space that their feelings is okay. That their feelings and the emotion is okay. behaviour may not be but the feeling is okay. So we want to allow the space where the feeling is okay. And all feelings are allowed. All feelings are okay. And other times might not be great socially, it might not be in the right setting, but that we can have as human beings emotions and space for those emotions where they can be expressed and said allows for then almost a preventative measure from hitting that breaking point.

And as I said, I'm sure that you can think back and reflect on times where you've built up to that breaking point where you've lost it or where you've really felt sad or upset at something. And there's been steps where along the way that could have been prevented by allowing and having those conversations or there's space for those feelings earlier. And I'm not pretending that this is all going to be a magic wand for you at all. That's not what I'm trying to do. And the work that I've said here is big work, how can I say three tips?

Three things you can do. actionable? Yes. actionable? Yes, you can do. Yes, these are three tips. And I recognise that they're three big tips, three difficult tips, three things that are easy to say and sometimes hard to do in practice.

So three ways to prevent meltdowns or work with meltdowns that have nothing to do with your child is respond don't react, staying calm and allowing space for feelings. If you want to go into this further, and build up your strategies, and your toolkit for managing meltdowns and how to work with your child rather than against them, so you're not having those crashes in those banks together, sign up again for the waitlist in the show notes for April's workshop managing meltdowns, and I have been your host Tiffany and this has been the simplifying childhood podcast