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Welcome to familywisdom.com, a website dedicated to informing and inspiring couples and families. Each week you will find a new article, story or essay about parenting, marriage or life. Suggestions for articles and questions to Ellen Terich are welcome. You can contact her at e.terich1@verizon.net |
LESSON FROM MADDIE: DEALING WITH TANTRUMS 2007-06-01 My daughter tells me that her 18 month old daughter Madeline has begun to have tantrums. When she can't have her way, like having ice cream before dinner, she screams, cries, repeats what she wants, and in the case of the ice cream, pounds on the freezer door. Ahh, the pleasures of motherhood! Dealing with children who are learning they have the power to express their wishes, and lots of unpleasant techniques to try to get them, is beyond frustrating. The wish of all good mothers is to have happy children. It is instinctive to feed a hungry child and satisfy an unhappy toddler. And mothers have empathy for their child's feelings that non-parents simply don't understand. In fact, so great is maternal empathy that it translates into a physical reaction in new nursing mothers, causing their milk to let down when they hear their infant's cries. This translates later into a behavioral reaction, that of satisfying a child's desire when she is crying or pleading for something. The problem is that children, not unlike their adult caretakers, get needs and wants mixed up and demand satisfaction of both equally. And this gets worse as they are exposed to more and more "things" in our very complicated consumer culture, and as distraction no longer works. So for little Maddie, to whom mother is the "good provider," there is no difference between asking for a glass of milk at breakfast and asking for ice cream before dinner. Maddie is as yet unfamiliar with the food pyramid and good nutrition, and, like most children, has a well developed taste for sweets. So it will take a while before she understands her mother's rules regarding food. Mom will have to say "no" many times and Maddie will have many tantrums before she finally "gets it." Now a lot of parents suffer through the tantrum stages, hoping that as the child gets older reasoning will finally win out. In this case, Maddie will eventually stop screaming for ice cream once she is capable of having a little internal conversation that goes something like this: "I want ice cream, but it's 4:00 and the rule is no ice cream before dinner, so I will have to wait." The problem is that this is not likely to happen for a few more years. (Maddie's older brother and sister are capable of this understanding, but even they occasionally beg for ice cream before dinner.) So what is a parent to do in the meantime, while waiting for the age of reason to kick in? Well there are three scenarios: give in every time, because it's just highly enriched milk after all; never give in because that builds bad eating habits; give in sometimes because it's okay to break the rules once in a while and besides sometimes you just can't listen to that screaming any more. If I asked a group of parents which scenario they think is the worst, many would probably say the first, giving in every time. Never giving in they would see as impractical, if also the most desirable, always giving in they would see as bad parenting, and sometimes giving in would be seen as a good compromise, something reasonable, if imperfect, and something that saves a parent's sanity. According to behavioral experts, they would be wrong. Before children are able to reason, they learn mostly (though not completely) through reinforcement (or reward) of their behavior. Any behavior that is given attention, or gets them what they want, tends to repeat itself because it is rewarded. Any behavior that is consistently ignored, or consistently fails to reap the reward, tends to eventually be extinguished. There are many types of reinforcement and many different schedules of reinforcement for shaping behavior, but when the desire is to extinguish behavior – that is, to stop the crying for ice cream, for example – there are two schedules of reinforcement that parents ought to understand: continuous and intermittent. Continuous reinforcement means that every time a child does something the parent rewards it. So in the case of the ice cream, my daughter would be giving Maddie continuous reinforcement (of tantrum type behavior) if she gave her ice cream every time she had a tantrum over it. If Maddie knew any time she wanted ice cream all she had to do was scream and pound on the freezer door, eventually she wouldn't have a lot of tantrums because she wouldn't need to. She would have found a behavior that worked well and she would only use it when she was really hungry for ice cream. If on the other hand, her mother mostly said "no," but occasionally gave in when she (mom) was tired, or Maddie was extremely loud and unpleasant, then Maddie's tantrum behavior would actually be strengthened. She would know that tantrums eventually get her what she wanted if only she kept at it often enough and long enough. This type of giving in reinforces Maddie occasionally, or intermittently, and thus is called "intermittent reinforcement," which behaviorists have long considered the strongest type of reinforcement there is. So the best way to extinguish a behavior is to never, ever give in. One word of warning: if a parent has given in occasionally to a behavior and then decides to get more consistent and makes the decision to never give in, behavior will at first get worse, because at first the child thinks the parent will ultimately give in. So she will have even worse tantrums at first, upping the ante so to speak, in an effort to get mom to eventually give in. Only after an amount of time with no parental giving in will the child learn that nothing she does will work, she will give up, and the tantrums will go away. When a child is screaming, or whining, or throwing herself against the fridge, or laying on the floor and kicking, it is natural to want to stop the behavior by giving in. When tantrums occur, they are extremely unpleasant and parents will try anything to get them to go away (like spanking, time-outs, screaming back, and giving in) but the only thing that will work in the long term (before the age of reason kicks in) is to never give in. Having raised four children myself, I realize how hard this is to do. And I can't say I always succeeded. I gave in myself too many times, but ultimately it only made it that much worse the next time I had to face a tantrum. All I can tell you is what works and what doesn't, remind you to be easy on yourself as you try to extinguish tantrums and unpleasant behavior, and wish you much determination, courage and maybe a good set of earplugs. |