Tantrum is always inconvenient. Mother wants to vanish into thin air while her kid rolls on the ground, and surrounding people shake their heads reproachfully. How to construct communication with the child at these difficult moments? The experts at the Feldman Ecopark Centre for Psychosocial Rehabilitation give advices.
“Children are very limited in forms of communication. Most often tantrum is a challenge for contact, a request to talk and pay attention” — note in the Centre. The experts suggest following simple rules in this case:
• Forget about shame. You are the parent who wants to hear his/her own child: let your child express himself even in the crowded place.
• Embrace. Embraces have the most wonderful force to calm, at the level of feelings they carry the person to that period when he was in mother’s womb, the safest and protected place for all his life.
• Apologize. The child has to know that you respect his feelings — be not afraid to apologize for neglecting his requests.
• Make a compromise. If desirable purchase is too expensive, offer your child the cunning choice: “What do you want more, this red car or to visit the real lion in Feldman Ecopark?”
• Teach the child patience. Do not hurry to run for a favorite bear or tasty cookie on short notice. First, tell: “I will surely bring you everything, wait until I finish my business.”
• Do not ignore tantrum. Frequent crying that the parent ignores can cause headaches, temperature increase, vomiting. It is far worse if the child stop searching for communication with the parent, indifferent to his feelings.
“Build a tent at home and invite your child to stay there for a while. Now it is your oasis where it is convenient to be secretive and tell important events of the day. Apologize, talk about the cause for resentment and think up together how to resolve a conflict. You can draw each other cards or collect bouquets of field flowers, non-standard creative decisions will be useful” — the head of psychological service of Feldman Ecopark Centre for Psychosocial Rehabilitation Tetiana Aliieva advises.