One day I was with my daughter (~24 months old) at the Zoo and she wanted an Ice Cream and I said "nope". She looked around with wide eyes and noticed all the people near by. Then, she did something I had never seen before -- she dropped down on the ground, twisted and swirled, and started to scream; for quite some time. I calmly sat down nearby and asked her: "when you're done, could you let me know?". Over the next minute or so, several parents gathered around to gawk at the spectacle. When my daughter got close enough to some urine on the ground, I got up, walked over and said: "careful, icky pee here". Without stopping the rolling or the screaming, she immediately recognized and steered clear of the urine. I then sat down again and said, "when you're done, could you let me know?". After another minute or two longer, with hoarse voice and a few bruises, she stood straight up and said: "Fine; I'm done. Monkey next?".
What was problematic was the reaction of other parents. During the episode, they became increasingly anxious looking at each other and trying to catch my attention. One of the mothers asked me "Where is your wife?", to which I responded: "at work, but don't worry, I'm the primary care giver". A father said (after being nudged by his wife): "well, you're just going to sit there?" to which I calmly responded: "It's a temper tantrum". One final mother didn't say a word, but made sure to give my daughter comforting eyes and looked harshly at me, making sure I knew she was dialing someone (police?) on her cell phone.
Once my daughter got up, we inspected her pants for horse urine and talked about how that was an extreme waste of time. Later on I asked her what the Tantrum was about. She explained it quite clearly to me: "well, daddy, one other boy just had one and he got the ice cream, so I wanted to see if that would work". I explained to her that this was pretty bad behavior and that if I ever see it again, we will go home immediately. I've had a few tantrums since, but none of them have been public. My daughter and I then had a very fantastic afternoon talking about Monkeys and more effective ways to communicate her desires.
This was a very unexpected experience for me. I seriously didn't expect that in 1-2 minutes, I'd have a dozen adults gathering around in a circle. I didn't expect 2 of them would be brave enough to hurl insults. I didn't expect one of them to be implicitly threatening police (CPS?). I can see how many parents would have caved under such peer pressure. Perhaps it's not the parent's fear of the children that leads to these problems, but instead, fear of what other parents might say or do?
So. I'm not sure how to connect this to this thread. First I'm not sure a "rule" would have helped. Punishing her wasn't going to help (I evaluated going immediately home, but I think the event was traumatic enough for her already). I'm not sure. Would you do it differently? If you saw me on the bench, would you think that I had given up?
The point of my therapist's anecdote, and implicit in what you wrote as well, is that the tantrum isn't shameful or "wrong," it just is. You made it clear that it's not an acceptable way to get something from you but you neither condoned nor condemned the emotional reaction itself. I think the part that TCS gets "right" is that there's no need to shame an emotional reaction. I personally try to treat everyone in my life, adult or child, according to this principle.
I think the dangerous part of what I read in this article is that we shouldn't establish boundaries. Establishing a boundary, like telling a child that she won't get ice cream, is critical, not just for children but for adults. You can furthermore make consequences clear from the beginning so that if you need to "punish," really you're just enforcing the boundary. I think that's really healthy for all of us, children included. It provides stability and rationality, and it shows that you can treat people while respecting your own needs without resorting to anger and shame.
I'm not a parent yet, but I hopefully when I become one I'll be able to deal with such situations with the grace and compassion that you had! Thanks for sharing.
Wait.. it is wrong. If we don't get something that we want, we don't throw a tantrum. Yes, it is an emotional reaction, and it's one that isn't acceptable.
I'm not a perfect parent, but IMO if I were in GP's shoes, I'd leave immediately. Throwing a tantrum is not acceptable, and the consequence has to be immediate and clear. That's my boundary.
If your daughter learned by observing the boy using a tantrum to get his way, couldn't there be other children who observed both the boy and your daughter, see that a tantrum at the very worst amounts to a 50% chance of ice cream and a 50% chance of continuing the zoo trip?
If you had told her: "When you're done, let me know. And if this goes on much longer we're going home once you're done." The other children may have observed possible negative consequences for their actions.
That said, after the tantrum was over and the crowd had dispersed, my daughter and I stayed and discussed the situation (and consequences). One mother and her 3 year old boy lingered, eventually joining in. Her young boy was very assured that he would never, ever have such a tantrum like that! I told him I was so relieved, especially because of hidden dangers like stinky horse urine puddles.
For A: As stated, I would leave immediately. I'll hedge that a bit and say that getting to the point where a child is rolling around on the ground is a failure for everyone concerned, so ideally we'd never reach this point in the first place. If there's a disagreement, my kids and I can talk it out without resorting to a tantrum.
For B: I don't care what you do with your kids. In public at a zoo in an open area, have at it. It's a tough situation all around and I'm not going to make another parent's day worse by saying anything.
When you say "I would leave immediately", you do mean that you would physically intervene to remove your child, correct? Doing this at 2 years is pretty easy; you can just pick them up and leave. How do you do it at 6 years (50 lbs, 42")? Do you try at 10 years? How do you "leave immediately" with an older child if they physically resist?
If you transition from physical to physiological intervention at a later year, what sort of practice will you and your children have had will make this likely to succeed? If you could make that transition (away from physical manipulation) earlier, is there a reason to wait?
This is tougher, and really I can only offer my own experience and thoughts. For context, I have a 9yo and a 18yo. I don't actually recall needing to intervene with any of them engaging in full-on temper tantrum mode. At their worst, usually pulling them aside, explaining their behaviour is not appropriate, and staying with them with the idea that when they're ready to behave correctly we can resume whatever it was we're doing is enough. Often it would be something that we could talk about together and reflect on their feelings. Depending on their age, if they're very young it's the kind of thing that can happen, and maybe some time out together is enough. If they get older and are still having this kind of behaviour then maybe you do need to leave for the day.
My youngest will often talk to me at bedtime about how she felt about certain things that happened that day. For example, if she yelled at me that day I'll bring it up and we can talk about how she felt, how that made me feel, and how to deal with it in the future. More commonly it's about something that happened at school that day.
> If you transition from physical to physiological intervention at a later year, what sort of practice will you and your children have had will make this likely to succeed? If you could make that transition (away from physical manipulation) earlier, is there a reason to wait?
IMO (and I'm just a random person with no training, so don't take this as actual advice), parenting succeeds when expectations are clear, consequences are not arbitrary and promises are kept. If you say X is going to happen when they do Y, then you better follow through. Whether X is a punishment or a reward, it doesn't matter. Trust is what probably makes it easier to transition to you using words to de-escalate situations. At a very young age children just can't remember or understand your reaction to their behaviour, and it takes time for them to learn that.
All that said, it's been awhile since I've needed to deal with children throwing a temper tantrum, so I've probably left a lot out. All I can say is that at my kids' age today I don't need to deal with this problem. Sure, sometimes they're disappointed at not getting what they want. We can talk about it and if they feel they're not being treated fairly we can usually come to some sort of compromise.
It's OK to be angry. It's not OK to let that anger take over physically once a child has more emotional maturity than a baby.
For those who permit their children to behave like that, what will be the cut-off age when they have to stop? 12, 16, 18? Or 32 and throwing a tantrum in a workplace?
Some kids do lose emotional control - a close (minor) family member had that problem, probably due to difficult childhood moments - but in that case they need help in handling it, not punishment.
These are just my personal views; I'm certainly not an expert.
The point is that children need to LEARN to control themselves, emotional or otherwise.
I'm distinguishing between something being "wrong" vs. something being "acceptable." Wrongness to me is a moral attribute; whether something is acceptable is a purely subjective and individual quality. Maybe the tantrum is unacceptable to us and to nearly every other adult in human society, but it's still subjective. I think that parents absolutely should show with their actions and words whether something is acceptable _to them_ and give advice about what will be acceptable to others (they will learn soon enough anyway). That's what GP did by showing that throwing a tantrum was an unacceptable way to get ice cream.
The key part is that he didn't then go on to say/communicate "and what you're doing is wrong and you should be ashamed of yourself," or something to that effect. The exact words don't matter, kids internalize shame very easily: if you think it's wrong or shameful, then they will get the point. It will be effective at preventing the behavior in the future, but damn, shame is like the nuclear option in my opinion when it comes to parenting. Obviously there's a healthy amount of shame that we should all have for things that are genuinely shameful. But is there really anything shameful or wrong about a lack of emotional control? The child is a child, they don't know any better.
So the question is what is unacceptable? I would argue that the tantrum itself is totally acceptable, assuming (as GP has said in follow-up comments) that it's a safe space for the child and the parent has the capacity in that moment to hold emotional space for the child. I would even argue that although the tantrum is obnoxious, the part of the tantrum where the parent says "yes, it's good to express and vent your anger"--even more so for a girl in a world where girls are told not to show anger--is downright healthy. The part that's totally unacceptable, in my opinion, is the idea that the anger will get her the ice cream. But if you say "not only will you not get this ice cream, but also you're not allowed to throw a tantrum ever because it's wrong," that kid will more likely than not internalize a certain amount of shame for her actions, and next time she wants to express anger she will feel ashamed about it. Which sucks, because that stuff, built up over time, will stick with you well into adulthood. Hence the therapist :-).
Pretty advanced for a 2 year old.
With 2 year olds in general, and any discipline advice: YMMV for everyone because they are very unpredictable at that age.
Any "I did this with my 2 yr old" and "I got this result" causality should be taken with a pinch of salt.
This seems advanced to me. Of course this could be a stock phrase copied from an adult. My 2 year old does this a lot and it makes her sound grown up. As an adult I use confirmation bias to say "yup she's smart".
I'm more interested in how observers could be more helpful in these situations. When I see children out of control and an overwhelmed parent, I will sometimes try to help by de-escalating. In fact, I'm coming to think that we should learn as a culture how to talk to other people's children directly in a way that grows community and mutual respect. Children will often listen more intently to another parent (or, even better, especially a slightly older child).
It seems to me, reading this from your perspective, is that the correct attempt at intervention would simply be asking, "Is everything OK?" And after hearing it's a temper tantrum, a hearty "good luck" before walking off!
Not every single child is the same. Some need more powerful nudge towards behaving while others can sit in the carryon for 2 hours at movie theatre totally awake and not enjoying grown-up movie..
Question: how do you handle other types of bad behavior, like when your kids are running around in a tightly packed shop?
IMHO you acted the best way you could. I've seen to many kids traumatized by a lack of a framework that would allow them to think about consequences. The key is communication and respect for the rules from both sides.
We cannot expect a 24 months old to understand all our explanations. Sure, we DO explain things, but sometimes a rule it's just a rule, and an outburst is just an outburst.
I agree with the article in that, when they grow up, we should prefer explanations over rules, while we parents may tend to "keep enforcing arbitrary rules" forever.
> Some parents are having a hard time. They sacrifice for their children and give so much. They want some rules to keep things under control. But rules can’t create good family relationships. Cooperative learning and problem solving is the only win/win approach.
You can't spend time explaining ALL the rules around in society because it takes literally years to explain the ins and outs of everything. And kids need to know how to behave well before they can master speech and language, so it's pretty obvious you need some level of rules and some level of obedience. I am totally for "explaining why", but just saying "rules are bad" sounds like a very poor generalizing principle.
Explaining all the rules is what school is for, basically.
And this is where so many people go wrong. Parents are teachers too, and it's their job to teach their children how to fit into society, behave, be decent people, etc.
A lot of rules, like math tables, help you learn the basic foundational building blocks. Once you have those, you have a reference to understand more things.
School is, basically, for most of the other stuff.
Heh. My school published a list of rules which included: 'Any breach of common sense is also a breach of school rules.'
If the rules are consistent, some things can't be explained.
It is one of my main conflicts with homeschooling, the point of conventional schooling is that everyone must fit a mould and conforming to a structure. The lesson of that point is finding a way to deal with that conformity, you need to know the rules of hierarchical groups in order to break them or succeed inside or outside of them.
Would you mind editing out such name-calling from your comments here? The rest of your comment makes your point just fine.
Even as adults, there are plenty of "rules first, explanation later" situations — and there are plenty of rules that people obey without knowing why. It's not so bad.
I don’t think “This wouldn’t have happened if the parent followed my parenting philosophy.”
Parenting is hard, we all struggle, and dismissing other people’s ways is easy, but it doesn’t do anything besides making you feel good about yourself.
Parenting is very hard, if these mothers are the sole/primary care-givers they are doing an extremely difficult job.
For those who haven't experienced this, the difficulty in my view is not dealing with an isolated situation. It's dealing with these situations every day, over an extended period of time. It's hard work, and it's hard to get everything right.
It may make them well behaved, but it makes for terrible leaders who need to defy societal norms to perpetuate or see through a novel idea or business model, terrible self esteem for STEM fields when women need to feel confident in their own understanding of how things work and be willing to dig into the why's instead of mentally reoienting to the politically correct or expected answer.
It's bad for basically every level of Independence that women need to excercise to be socioeconomic equals.
Bringing up well behaved women with excessive boundaries in correlation to children is precisely the issue with society.
I think I'm going to go ahead and buy that t-shirt that says "raise boys and girls the same way"
If boys get to play in the woods and turn their sisters curling irons into backyard bombs, go out late at night then girls should have the same freedom to comfortably practice exploration, tinkering with stuff and breaking stuff and building stuff and roaming about without their mothers worried about where they are going and loading them down with more domestic chores than their male siblings.
No. Seriously, what would be said about myself if I started making huge sweeping generalizations about a gender? Its bad for males, and its bad for females. Primarily, any effect one "tries" to find is so close to 50% its useless.
Tl;Dr. Reviving Ophelia is junk science, meant only to sell more of their books.
Children learn by example and they are always watching. If a child is misbehaving In public, the child is still watching. How does my parent (my role model) solve their problems? By yelling? By hitting? Or by talking?
And to counter anecdote with anecdote, I have seen plenty of misbehaving children in public with parents frantically trying to control them by yelling at them or spanking them, and it usually only results in even louder crying and more defiance.
Children misbehave as a kind of experimentation. At least some bad behavior is unavoidable, and it is an excellent chance for parents to give their children a lesson in conflict resolution.
Children thrive on boundaries. It gives them an 'area' within which they can fully explore, learn, play, etc, while KNOWING that as long as they stay within those lines, everything will be fine.
I call it THE VOICE, and I try and keep its use to the minimum, so as to not reduce its effectiveness. However, when I do use it, mine knows he has to stop pushing boundaries, or there will be repercussions.
The other important part - remeber to losen the boundaries as they continue growing up, so when they are 18-ish there is no difference between boundaries on and off.
Also, Daniel Tiger is amazing. There's a song for everything and he's memorized all of them.
TCS explicitly says don't sacrifice yourself, even in the specific essay linked. The people in the Netherlands are not doing TCS.
It's a common trap people fall into though, even with conventional parents. I agree that self-sacrifice is bad. There's a lot to TCS other than not having rules though.
You can't just drop rules and expect everything to work out great. That would be naive. You have to actively seek out solutions that work for you and your kid. And really work, not "work" in a compromising, sharing-of-misery kind of way.
>I see a lot of parents (mothers mostly) in public places desperately trying to explain their dissatisfaction to their misbehaving children.
What you aren't seeing is the thousands of times the child has been thwarted, denied, forced, coerced, dragged around, insufficiently helped, etc.
>The children meanwhile are completely disregarding them and will continue doing whatever they were doing untill the parents give up.
Does that strike you as the approach a child would take if their parent were typically super helpful, responsive, and had a really strong strong track record of taking the child seriously?
>The parents will end up awkwardly trying to ignore their children,
this is not TCS!
>visibly ashamed
ashamed of their helpless, dependent children who are actively upset about something!
>but still unable to use their authority for fear of breaking their chosen path to happy parenting.
You describe a sad situation but something that is not at all a criticism of TCS. It's rather compatible with the TCS worldview (the bare facts of the situations described, not your interpretation)
>They won't even raise their voice.
Having a big person yell at you isn't helpful or nice.
How many 2 year olds have you raised? I ask, because that’s exactly how many kids act naturally. They don’t realize when parents are ‘super helpful’, their behavior is much more base than that.
I can tell you first hand, a small percentage of kids will behave well almost naturally n matter what you do, and some will behave poorly no matter what is done. Most though seem to thrive with sensible boundaries in place.
I know that some people had horrible parents that mistreated them and hence they ended up being very sensitive to any parental reprimand. That sucks. None the less, kids need unconditional love, but they also need boundaries. Loving them means you sometime have to lay down the law. It’s not fun. It’s a hell of a lot easier to not do it.
Bring up kids is hard, what those “mothers” are doing is hard, physically exhausting work which often takes 18 hours a day. You know nothing of their personal circumstances but decide to judge them anyway. For me, it’s amazing that many full time care givers can hold it together as well as they do.
Anecdotal evidence is a really terrible way to inform your parenting.
I mean, your original post was really about how to enforce rules, though you spent most of it conjuring up the image of publicly annoying children and then assuming their parents don't set any rules.
Somewhat surprisingly you also describe how the same parents that supposedly don't set rules clearly trying (but failing) to enforce said non-existing rules...
Just say what you mean: you make your children obey you by physical means.
You say this like its inherently a bad thing. Do you think children are abused by their nervous system that keeps them from biting their tongue and chewing on their jaw by causing them pain when they do so? Does this process cause them mental trauma? If not then why do we act like using a proportional amount of physical means to instill correct behavior in young children is inherently a bad thing? This "enlightened" parenting movement has really jumped the shark.
Because we don't know its a problem. We have ideas that may or may not be sound. But we push them on the world with a fervor far beyond that which is justified by the facts, going so far as to criminalize non-abusive spanking in some places.
>Does it seem brutish or incivil to stoop to physical means to adjust your child?
These just aren't the types of judgments that a make sound basis for widespread forcible change of parenting styles.
We should operate on our best understanding, no? You're right we don't know it, as we don't know anything. I suppose we should not act like we know it, as you say, and should not punish people too severely for such things. Thats not to say we shouldn't use our best judgement, which is that such parenting styles are perhaps "savage" (i hesitate to use that word in particular, but maybe you get the meaning). If verbal conflict is enough to be incredibly stressful, can you imagine physical conflict? Verbal conflict already gives me immense anxiety.
>These just aren't the types of judgments that a make sound basis for widespread forcible change of parenting styles.
Why not? And then what types of judgements would? THis sounds like a comment just intended to resist change, and the kinds of judgements I imagine you supporting are ones that dont cause change.
>Thats not to say we shouldn't use our best judgement, which is that such parenting styles are perhaps "savage"
My concern is the value of these judgments in getting at the truth of the matter. Judging corporal punishment as harmful because we as a society have decided that violence is savage, is just an invalid deduction. But we've become so accustomed to reasoning-by-emotion that its hard to push back against loud voices that declare corporal punishment no longer acceptable. But the risks are too high to let our emotions overtake the science on the issue.
That isn't to say that all children who aren't spanked grow up into these sorts of adults. But some children inherently have more behavioral issues, or are brought up in bad environments with a lot of negative influences, and they can grow into serious deviant adult behavior if not properly addressed when they're young. Corporal punishment is an effective tool and it needs to be on the table unless proven otherwise.
This comment badly breaks the HN guideline which asks you to "respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize." I know it's not always easy, but please follow it when commenting here. Otherwise we just end up with misplaced outrage compounded.
Ironically the problem arises from a self inflicted rule: "don't be angry". If they truly thought from first principles they would have realized.
But the "rules are bad" trope is, unfortunately, a trend in The Netherlands. Parents that live by this rule are sacrificing themselves. It's bad parenting.
I see a lot of parents (mothers mostly) in public places desperately trying to explain their dissatisfaction to their misbehaving children. The children meanwhile are completely disregarding them and will continue doing whatever they were doing untill the parents give up. The parents will end up awkwardly trying to ignore their children, visibly ashamed but still unable to use their authority for fear of breaking their chosen path to happy parenting. They won't even raise their voice.
As a parent, I see this all the time. In school, on the street, in stores, it's everywhere.
Reasoning with kids that are completely unwilling to listen to your "adult talk" is completely hopeless. Rules aren't fun but they aren't bad either. You don't have to explain your rules everytime, just make sure you enforce them consistently.