Dr. Harvey Karp — author, pediatrician — offers tantrum help


If you’ve ever been in the supermarket with a screaming toddler sprawled out in Aisle 7, a little advice on how to cope with tantrums is always helpful. Well, that or a reusable grocery bag to pull down over your face as you carry that toddler out the door.
We can’t help you with the bag, but we can offer you answers from renown California-based pediatrician Dr. Harvey Karp, author of the book “Happiest Baby on the Block” and “Happiest Toddler on the Block,” and star of DVDs with the same titles.

Q: You say we look at toddlers and preschoolers all wrong. Why is that?
A: It’s not even looking at them as a little child but really a primitive person as a little caveman. This is not just a theory. We know from the neurobiology that the left half of the brain, which is the patient’s logic and word center of the brain, gets dialed down when we get upset. Toddlers are like that on a good day, and when they get upset, they go really drastic on you. They throw things at your head or they’ll pee anywhere they want, and they just don’t understand our words, even if they understand it on a good day, when they are upset, that half of the brain turns off.
Once you understand that they’re cavemen, everything else makes sense when you have to speak to them. One thing about that analogy that is good is that it helps make parents not take things so personally. You understand that it’s not your fault … everyone who has been around toddlers knows they’re primitive. Your job is to teach them.
Q: So now that we understand they’re cavemen, what do we do to deal with tantrums?
A: We kind of think we’re going to talk them into being calm … it’s like a psychiatrist’s voice, and the key thing, and this is where that brain information comes in handy, is the difference between the way your child feels and the way you’re speaking. If there’s too much of a gap, then they feel that you don’t get it, and that makes them even more upset. If the child feels like you don’t get it, they only have two choices: either they shut down and think no one understands how they feel or they get louder.
There’s a very simple way of reversing that mistake — the fast food rule and toddlerease. The fast food rule means just acknowledging someone’s feelings. It doesn’t start out by discounting it or poo-pooing it, or minimizing it. Start out by acknowledging it. When they have feelings they want to be acknowledged before they hear your feelings.
(If they have a tantrum because they want a cookie), point up to the cookie and say, ‘You want you cookie. You want cookie now. You say my cookie.’ And after nine or 10 phrases, they see that you got it and then you get to the ‘no.’
What you’re doing is you’re sympathizing, and you’re letting them know, ‘I acknowledge it. I care. I’m interested, and I get it, but we can’t do that now, so here’s an option. Do you want to do it now? Do you want to do it tomorrow? Do you want to play with trains?’ Especially with little boys, they have to save face. The more upset you are, the more primitive you are, the more you have to save face, and it means the parent has to throw the child some type of reasonable compromise.
Q: Don’t parents feel silly talking to their child that way?
A: Some parents, when they hear this technique, they say, ‘I don’t know. I would never really talk like that. But what’s so strange about this? Every parent already uses the fast food rule and toddlerease when their kids are very happy. When your child is really glowing at you and really happy, you very naturally go, ‘You did it! You did it! You did a good job!’
Q: Are there other things parents need to consider when it comes to tantrums?
A: When you’re thinking about temper tantrums, you always have to understand and acknowledge the fact that kids have temper tantrums for situational issues — they’re bored, they’re hungry, they’re sick, they have too many temptations are around them. One of the things is trying to figure out is there some kind of pattern around here? It’s good to think of it not only as a discipline issue, but sometimes kids need a little help.
Q: What if you’ve got fighting siblings? Is there time to acknowledge the aggressor’s feelings?
A: If kids are being violent, you don’t say, ‘You really like hitting your brother in the head?’ You have to stop the violence right away. The fast food rule says that whoever is hungry for attention gets to go first, and if there’s a child being violent, then you get to go first.
If you have kids just yelling at each other and pushing a little bit, and they’re not drawing blood, you acknowledge it with ‘Why don’t you guys try to figure it out, see if you can trade or figure it out and take turns or something’ and then you can leave them alone. If you always get pulled into being the peacemaker, then you’re going to get sucked into it every time. You’re going to get pulled into it every time. Kids would rather get a soggy potato chip than no potato chip at all. They’d rather get you sucked in, even if you’re angry at them, than not at all.

Categories: Preschoolers
Jennifer Gish

4 Responses

  1. Josho says:

    We used “The Happiest Baby on the Block” (the book *and* the DVD) when our daughter was a baby, and we were delighted with the outcome, so much so that I generally buy either the book or the DVD whenever we have friends who are having babies. We’ve had less occasion to need his Toddler DVD (which we also own), but in general, we have nothing but good things to say about Dr. Karp and his advice.

  2. JK says:

    It’s important to know that for some childhood tantrums are not behavior problems as much as they are reactions to the stress of things such as food allergies. When my daughter was a toddler, and actually well into early childhood, she was quite calm and well-behaved. So much so that when anyone saw her “tantrums” they were astonished. What was happening, however, was a result of food allergies, and once I realized that, she never had tantrums unless someone slipped her something she shouldn’t eat. By the time she was in first grade, she could, and usually would, monitor it herself because, if she slipped up, she could see the results. Every time she acted unreasonably, I would find out she’d eaten something she was allergic to.
    Before I realized the cause of the problem, though, I was at a complete loss because I had been very consistent with her and she was easily helped to stay calm most of the time. For example, we were in a restaurant with a group of people we didn’t know well, and the unbrella the waitress had placed in her water glass broke. When she started to “could up,” I said, “If you’re going to cry, we’ll have to leave,” she stopped immediately. I heard someone across the table murmer, “Someone’s been consistent.” Her tantrums when she had eaten something she was allergic to could result from very small incidents and I was unable to do anything to settle her; I had to just sit it out. She’s an adult today, and seems to have outgrown most of her allergies.

  3. Magpies says:

    No, no, no! I don’t want to read now (thrash around), NO!!! :-)

    Similar to two cats wrestling for the same catnip toy, a good, stern “YOU TWO KNOCK IT OFF” did the trick. I think it stuns kids and brings them back into the reality mode.

  4. maggie says:

    Can we put all these so-called experts in a room with about 15 hungry toddlers and let them hash out one definitive book?

    I’m with Magpies, mostly we treat our toddler like our cats (except you are not allowed to lock a kid in the basement when they pee on the rug :))