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Meltdown Moments
Dealing with Preschool Temper Tantrums
By Margaret Risk
No matter how many parenting techniques you have at your disposal, a preschooler's tantrum can catch you by surprise. Fatigue, hunger and frustration seem to be the common ingredients. Add late afternoon and you have a recipe for a major meltdown.
Bridgette Moore from Rochester, N.Y. works in the mornings, and afternoon is her prime shopping and errand time. If her daughter, Breanna, is hungry and tired, and the store is busy, that's the perfect combination for a tantrum. But at least she can prepare in advance.
"Other times it's completely out of the blue," says Moore. Moore remembers one incident with Breanna a few days after Halloween when she dropped her off at preschool. Breanna had been calling her classroom the "pumpkin door" because of the pumpkin decorations. On this day, the decorations were gone and Breanna began crying, "It not the pumpkin door! It the number door! I no go in there!" She lay down on the floor, crying, and refused to move.
A Normal Part of Childhood
The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) says that at this developmental stage a young child is learning to be independent and wants to make her own choices but doesn't have the coping skills to deal with the frustration of not getting her own way.
But even knowing this, a parent can feel frustrated. "Especially when a tantrum is making me late for work, or I am trying to just get done with the grocery shopping," says Susan Whipple, mother of 3-year-old Rhiannon living in Charleton, N.Y. But Whipple's 10 years experience teaching in a Head Start program has taught her that Rhiannon is not having a tantrum to make her angry. "It's a phase she has to work through," she says. "I need to help her do it without her feeling shame or hurting herself."
