On the last day of our vacation this Summer, we went to a luggage store at the mall near our airbnb to buy a new medium sized check-in suitcase (we were long overdue for one). My husband and I were discussing the differences between two brands that we had narrowed down to with the sales lady at the store. That’s when my 7 year old son spotted it – a “Quack blue” carry-on sized rolling suitcase. “Let’s buy this one! It’s Quack blue Ma! It’s Quack blue!”, he announced triumphantly with a wide grin on his face.
“That is Quack blue! But that’s a carry-on sized suitcase. We don’t need that size right now. We need a bigger one. We’re trying to decide between these two right now.” I said, pointing to the ones by us.
His face grew small within two seconds as he processed my reply. Then, within another two seconds, it grew bright again as he scanned the store quickly. He had located the medium sized suitcase in the same brand that he was holding. Turned out that was “Quack blue” too.
“Ma! I found the medium sized in the Quack blue! Let’s get this one!” He announced with yet another triumphant smile.
We hadn’t seen that one so thought we should give it a chance. However, we found out that it was 50 odd Euros more expensive than the ones we had finalized and didn’t feel like it was worth the money.
“That one is way more expensive. We’re going to go with this one. It’s sturdy and not as expensive. Serves our needs.”
I could tell that he was starting to feel more upset.
At this point, he raised his voice a little, “But I WANT this one! We don’t have any Quack blue suitcase! It’s my favorite color. It can be mine! Can we get at least the smaller one in the Quack blue and the medium one of your choice? Please please Ma! Why can’t I make the pick? Pleeeaaaaase!”
“I can tell you really really like that one, but we’re going to go with this right now. We don’t need another carry-on piece at the moment.” He was nearly in tears now.
“But Ma, please please, I want this one. I want a Quack blue suitcase…” yelling through his tears.
Just as my husband and I were acknowledging our son’s feelings calmly, the sales lady took it upon herself to try and “fix” the situation. She looked at us and said, “Oh children are ALWAYS asking for things to buy. Never enough. Never enough. My daughter is 6 and like this ALL the time! Always whining to buy this or that.” (I’m paraphrasing what she said, but this was the gist of it). She proceeded to complain about her daughter a couple more times.
Just as we were processing this sudden turn of events, she then turned to our son and lectured, “Didn’t your parents bring you on this nice vacation and take you everywhere and buy you a lot of things? Is that not enough? That should be enough, right?” She repeated some version of this a couple more times to our son.
While I stood there, trying to process what to say, my quick-thinking husband pointedly interrupted her, “No, actually, he is not like that all the time. We just spent the past couple hours shopping at this mall, buying things for us, while he tagged along and hasn’t asked for a single thing for himself. He doesn’t whine for things all the time.”
My son looked at his Dad and was slowly starting to finish his cry. He then turned to me, wiping his tears, “I guess we can get the one you guys picked. But the next time we’re up for a carry-on sized suitcase, can we pleeeeease look for a Quack blue one and can that be mine? You know, I can pack most of my own stuff now, right? So I can be responsible for that. Heyyyyy, the one we’re buying is also blue, just a different shade!”
“Absolutely! We can most certainly look for a Quack blue one the next time we’re up for buying a carry-on.” I said and meant it.
His sobs had completely stopped now. He walked over and stuck by me as my husband finished the transaction. We walked out of the store and back to our apartment with the new suitcase in tow and a calm child.
As I was reflecting on what had transpired, I felt proud of my husband for standing up to the stereotyping sales lady. Somewhere through that, our son had recognized the fact that we knew he wasn’t “always like this”, (even if he already knew that, it reinforced the fact). We understood that he was going through a vulnerable moment – he needed our acceptance for how he was feeling, not a judgmental lecture or a permissive submission of grudgingly buying an extra suitcase and laying the guilt on him later. He was simply having a tough emotional moment of letting his feelings go as he worked through accepting a limit that we had set.
A meltdown or tantrum is a child’s brain’s organic way of working through tough emotions – disappointment, anger, sadness and everything in between, because their executive functions are typically not yet at the point where they can rationally calm them themselves down. They need our help, not judgement. These are valuable experiences, learning through real situations and natural consequences. It gives them a chance to understand that they will come out the other side okay and move on. These are the foundations of emotional self-regulation and resilience – which affects their ability to learn and navigate life with self-confidence.
Our most important job to TRUST our child and ourselves to allow them to go through age-appropriate painful experiences, knowing, that with our emotional scaffolding in the form of acknowledgment and acceptance, they will pull through – back to the regulated self. This is a valuable gift that we must be willing to give our children. Perhaps the most valuable one.
It is tough, very tough indeed, to get ourselves into this zone. But every bit worth it.
Step One: Recognizing the opportunities
Often, without realizing, we take such learning experiences away from our children by offering them rewards or unnatural consequences to stop the crying / whining, owing to our cultural or generational conditioning. This puts the entire focus only on external behaviors as opposed to the need underlying that.
The first step is to learn to recognize these opportunities for growth. Some examples of this – we might say things like:
Belittling their feelings: “Shhh…..stop crying. Stop crying right now. This is not such a big deal.”
Threatening / Manipulation: “I will not talk to you unless you stop crying! You need to calm down right now.” OR “If you don’t stop right now, we are not going to get that ice cream we talked about!” OR “I’m going to leave you here if you keep acting like this!” (This last one, especially, is extremely scary for the child, not to mention, inauthentic on our part because we will never do that. So it strains the foundation of trust, each time it is said. Essentially, it is a lie.)
Negative comments disguised as positive ones, if they accepted our decision without much crying: “Good boy! Good boy! You listened to Mom/Dad. You’re a good boy!”
Here’s how your child perceives such reactions, subconsciously: What is the connection between the current situation and ice cream? Why do I need to stop crying? Is it wrong to cry? Am I a bad person for crying? For feeling this way? Is it wrong to feel this way, because every time I do, my parents don’t seem to like me. They want to leave me somewhere unless I stop feeling this way. They only like me when I’m smiling or do only what they want me to. They called me good boy, so am I bad if I don’t do what they want me to?
Unfortunately, these are the subliminal messages we are sending our children when we react in these ways. These are signs that we, ourselves, have become emotionally unregulated and are reacting from a place of anger, frustration and fear, rather than calm and thoughtfulness. Deep down these are our subconscious fears paralyzing us. Fears such as – a big public tantrum / meltdown, what others will think of our parenting, will they perceive our child as a brat, will I be spoiling my child if I don’t yell at him? Fears driven by preconceived notions, years (generations) of conditioning and fixed mindsets.
These reactions disconnect us emotionally from our child and now, more than ever, we need to lean in and connect with them. In other words, we need to shift our perspective to perceive a meltdown / tantrum / strong emotions as a healthy release and an opportunity to connect through conflict in a deep, authentic way.
Step Two: Handling a meltdown with kindness and confidence
Having the right perspective frames our response and thereby the lessons our children internalize. Keeping this in mind, here are things that help us move towards authentic connections:
- Lose the judgement: Listen to your internal dialogue and thoughts carefully and watch out that they are not judging our child for feeling the way they feel. It is important to stay neutral and open to the waves of emotions our child is experiencing. Remember, this is scary for them. Their brain isn’t fully quipped to handle this and that’s where your help is necessary. Some examples of our judgmental thoughts:
“Arrrrgh! Not again! Why does he have to do this in a public place?? I am so embarassed!“
“Not again! He always does this when he doesn’t get what he wants!”
“He has so many toys and things, can’t he be satisfied for crying out loud??“
“We brought him on amazing vacation! How can he ask for more? We need to teach him to be more grateful!“ - No punishments or threats: Once you lose the judgement, this comes more naturally. You start seeing the emotional outbursts as healthy, as a way to release the pressure. That this is not a time to threaten with disconnected consequences, rather, a time to lean in and connect. Remember, accepting the feelings is not the same thing as allowing them to do whatever they want. You are still holding the limit firm. For example, you could say (and mean it), “We’re going to buy only this one suitcase. Wow, you don’t like that at all. You are really really mad / disappointed about not getting the suitcase. I get it. It’s hard.” And then holding the (physical and emotional) space for them to release any fallout, blocking any unsafe behavior like hitting confidently and without judgement. Remember, they are working hard to accept a decision they don’t like. We need to build empathy for the process. Trusting our child to soldier through the tough emotions is one of the most loving things we can do for them.
- Do not try to “fix” or appease: For example, “Don’t worry! There, there….we can go get ice cream now and you will feel better” or “I can buy you something smaller, like a toy. Would you like that?” Recognize that these statements from us are coming from a place of our fears and worries. The clear, underlying message to the child still is this: I don’t like that you’re crying right now. It makes me feel uncomfortable. I don’t like how you’re feeling right now. So I’m going to offer you something to make it stop at any cost. Acknowledging and accepting is very difficult for us adults because of our conditioning, but gets easier with practice, especially once we begin to shift our perspective.
- Move to a safe space if necessary: Sometimes we need to remove our child and ourselves from a very public place to provide a more private space to go through our messy emotions so we can all relax a little. We owe them that. E.g., you can carry them to a restroom or a more inconspicuous corner or back to the car if you’re in the middle of a store saying, “I’m going to take you to a safer space and you can let your angry feelings out. I’ll be right here with you.”
- And finally, stay calm: Easier said than done, but not impossible with practice and incredibly important. Focus on holding your own calm because we do not want to add our own charged energy to the emotions already being released. We want our child to know that no matter what they throw at us (hurtful words, yelling, hitting), we love them and can handle it with confidence and without losing faith in their abilities. We are here to help them stop engaging in unsafe behavior (not labeling them as “bad behavior”), while recognizing the underlying need for understanding why it is happening. If we break down emotionally and yell or cry ourselves our child internalizes that his parent cannot handle his big emotions. He does not have any safe space to release his emotions. That he is not free to be his authentic self around the person whom he should be able trust the most.
It takes concerted effort, tons of practice and building a deep-seated trust in the process to enable emotional resilience. Every tantrum is an opportunity to connect. Every meltdown is an opportunity to build an authentic relationship with your child based on understanding, trust, kindness and love. With each instance, and consistency, it will get easier for us to view emotional releases as healthy and necessary to move on. This is anything but easy, especially when we bring our own baggage to the table. When we’ve been conditioned to shut down our emotions. But every time we manage to see emotional outbursts as opportunities to connect, shift the needle in our minds even a little at a time, we become that safe emotional space of genuine acceptance for our child’s feelings, no matter what. We are building emotional resilience, a healthy perspective on feelings and the ability to self-regulate, bit by bit, one meltdown at a time.