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There Really Is No Such Thing As A Temper Tantrum Trigger

Sunday, March 23, 2014

By Leanna Rae Scott


I:0:T During the forty years I've been parenting, the most consistent advice from tantrum experts has been for parents to ignore their children's tantrums. The theory behind such techniques of ignoring temper tantrums, in my understanding, has been that ignoring them prevents the validation of them. The ignoring-the-tantrums parent avoids rewarding children for the tantrums and avoids positively reinforcing the negative behavior by giving any kind of attention.

According to this theory of don't-reinforce-negative-behavior, in such a situation the basic assumption is that children throw the tantrum in order to get undeserved attention (this is negative behavior), and if parents avoid reinforcing such negative behaviors, they should stop, go away, and cease to occur. Despite this basic theory behind the ignoring-tantrums techniques, throughout the modern history of parenting advising, most experts who've recommended using them have not claimed that they will stop tantrums in progress or prevent them.

Only two decades ago, parenting advisors still weren't putting the word prevention along with the word tantrum in the same sentence. Their advice was given really only to help parents know how to best manage and deal with temper tantrums, the same as it primarily is today. However, today's parenting advisors currently teach parents how to prevent some temper tantrums by handling children's tantrum triggers, such as hunger, frustration, and tiredness. In other words, these expert parenting advisors teach parents to prevent the hunger, frustration, and tiredness in their children. They really don't teach parents to prevent temper tantrums in spite of normal living, which can include tiredness, frustration, and hunger.

My temper tantrum prevention and elimination method is vastly different from that of others. I instruct parents in how to respond to their offspring in a way that makes it absolutely unnecessary to be vigilant for temper tantrum triggers (which are actually only anger triggers). This happens because the usual infant and childhood frustrations don't any longer trigger temper tantrums. Despite this basic theory behind the ignoring-of-tantrums technique, through the recent history of parenting advice, most experts who recommend using the technique don't claim that it will prevent or stop tantrums in progress.

I teach parents to totally, 100% eliminate temper tantrums from their children's behavioral repertoire so there are no longer any tantrums in progress to have to stop, handle, manage, or deal with. I also teach parents to consistently respond to their newborn infants in ways that the babies never develop a tantrum-throwing pattern or even of escalating when angry. I teach parents these abilities with clarity and with many examples in hopes that they will learn them quickly and easily.




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