011: Does your child ever throw tantrums? (Part 1)
So, does your child ever throw tantrums? Yes? Well, the good news is that you’re not alone. And this isn’t something us Western parents have brought upon ourselves with our strange parenting ways; they’re actually fairly common (although not universal) in other cultures as well. What causes a tantrum? And what can parents do to both prevent tantrums from occurring and cope with them more effectively once they start? Join us today to learn more. References Denham, S.A., & Burton, R. (2003). Social and emotional prevention and intervention programming for preschoolers. New York: Kluwer Academic/Plenum Publishers Green, J.A., Whitney, P.G., & Potegal, M. (2011). Screaming, yelling, whining, and crying: Categorical and intensity differences in vocal expressions of anger and sadness in children’s tantrums. Emotion 11(5), 1124-1133. DOI: 10.1037/a0024173 Goodenough, F. (1931). Anger in young children. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Lancy, D.F. (2015). The anthropology of childhood: Cherubs, chattel, changelings. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Levine, L.J. (1995). Young children’s understanding of the causes of anger and sadness. Child Development 66(2), 697-709. LeVine, R., & LeVine, S. (2016). Do parents matter? Why Japanese babies sleep soundly, Mexican siblings don’t fight, and American families should just relax. New York: Public Affairs. Lieberman, M.D., Eisenberger, N.E., Crockett, M.J., Tom, S.M., Pfeifer, J.H., & Way, B.M. (2007). Putting feelings into words: Affect labeling disrupts amygdala activity in response to affective stimuli. Psychological Science 18(5), 421-428. Read Full Transcript Transcript Hello and welcome to the Your Parenting Mojo podcast. This episode is called “Does your child ever throw tantrums?” Is that kind of like asking whether you have time to read all of the scientific research published in journals on topics relevant to parenting? (You answered “of course!” to both, right?) Actually if you wanted to research the scientific literature on tantrums it wouldn’t take you all that long because there really isn’t much of it. As far as I could find, the first, last, and only detailed work on this subject was published in 1931. Then the research went quiet for a lot of years, and the pace didn’t really pick up again until the 1980s. Even since then the research has been a bit thin on the ground – I wonder whether it’s because tantrums are so hard to study in the lab, and because few people have the time, money, and energy to study them in the home. Whatever the reason, it is a little odd that there’s so little information out there on something that’s pretty important to a lot of parents. I’m not going to lie; this is a bit of an altruistic episode for me. We’ve been incredibly lucky with our two-year-old; she has thrown a few moderate tantrums and we certainly get episodes of whining and crying but they are almost always explained by tiredness at the end of the day. I know we’re not out of the woods yet so hopefully this episode will help me to be extra-prepared just in case we round a corner one day and she decides that tantrums are the ‘in’ thing and she’s just got to have one! Tantrums are really common in children between the ages of 18 months and four years – in fact, they’re among the most common childhood behavioral problems reported by parents. While most children do grow out of their tantrums and don’t experience lasting ill-effects, tantrums in older children can be associated with future antisocial behavior. I was curious to find out whether tantrums are a phenomenon limited to Western, Educated, Rich, Industrialized, Democratic (or WEIRD) societies, and also whether they are a development that has arisen since we’ve started to put children’s needs above our own. I was somewhat gratified to find that tantrums do seem to occur in other cultures. Robert and...