Frequently Asked Question: How to stop child tantrums? Why Can’t I Stop the Tantrums Despite Using “Psychological” techniques?

"How to stop child tantrums?" — In my work as a clinical counsellor and childcare educator for years, this is one of the most "popular" question I can't avoid from parents.

— And Yes, Why? —

"I've already named my child's feelings, encouraged my child to talk, and invited my child to take deep breaths. I even practiced deep breathing beforehand to model the behavior. But my child still cried nonstop, rolled around on the mat, screamed, and yelled. It's pushing me to the edge."

It's really hard, and it's so REAL! Isn't it? And what happened next is eventually the exhausted parents are figuring out how to stop child tantrums, and sometimes eventually may find themselves returning to familiar parenting patterns from previous generations, even when those approaches do not align with their values, but "come in handy again."

In modern society, parents are placed in an incredibly difficult position. They are expected to unlearn the dysfunctional parenting patterns they inherited and received from previous generations, and then at their best effort to learn how to stop child tantrums in an effective way from tons of social media content. They are "required to master the latest advanced psychological techniques" to support their children's emotional well-being. At the same time, many are asked to put these approaches into practice without ever having experienced what it feels like to be gently and warmly held, understood, seen, validated, or even simply noticed themselves. This leads me to a deep reflection on my work with parents — we might not expect parents to become therapists at home, because that simply is not fair to them. As clinical counsellors, we have completed master's degrees in counselling, invested thousands of dollars in our professional development YEARLY, and accumulated years of experience understanding child tantrums, working with children who have diverse personalities, temperaments, and needs, not to mention the ongoing clinical supervision to support and monitor our work, helping us reflect on challenges and refine our practice.

Parents, on the other hand, are often expected to navigate these challenges largely on their own.

They do not have years of specialized training about how to stop child tantrums, regular clinical supervision, or a team of colleagues to consult when parenting becomes difficult, exhausting, or overwhelming. Yet they are frequently expected to respond to their children's emotional struggles with the same level of skill, patience, and consistency as a trained professional. That is an enormous burden to place on anyone, not just the parents themselves, but about the nature of being a human being onself.

It's generally not about blaming parents, or blaming ourselves. The issue may be larger than any individual parent, it may be about the systems and environments in which families are raising children. This brings us to an important question:

How do we help parents build self-confidence, self-trust, and a more positive sense of themselves? so parents carry a secure and compassionate view of who they are, so that they can better "co-regulate" with their children at home.

If co-regulation requires a calm, regulated, and emotionally available parents — or we should say human beings by nature, then perhaps our focus should not be solely on teaching parenting techniques, but about self-care.

Eventually, parenting is about self-love.

We also need to consider how we can support parents' own emotional well-being, strengthen their confidence in their effort, and create the conditions that allow them to show up for their children in sustainable ways.

If you're interested in reconnecting with yourself, to find your own ways to support your child's emotiona regulation, without blindly "hitting the parenting textbooks", parent session could be helpful to reinvent your life.

Welcome to book a consult when you're ready:

https://samlamcounselling.janeapp.com/