Why they happen when they do
Tantrums usually start at around eighteen months and are very common through the third year. They become much rarer by about four, and the reason is mostly language: a child who can say what is wrong has far less need to demonstrate it. The toddler years are a period of enormous development in which the desire to do things independently arrives well before the ability, and frustration is the predictable result.
Tiredness, hunger and overstimulation all lower the threshold, which is why the same request produces a shrug at ten in the morning and a collapse at five in the afternoon.
The manipulation question
It is often said that toddlers use tantrums to get their way, and that the answer is to stand firm. Two separate things are mixed together there, and separating them is worth the effort because they point to different behaviour from the adult.
Giving in after saying no genuinely does teach a child that a tantrum works, and that is a real reason not to change the answer once it has been given. But that is learning after the event, not a plan formed in advance. A two-year-old in the middle of a tantrum is not running a negotiation; they have lost control of themselves, which is why the episode continues for a while even once they have been given exactly what they were asking for.
Treating a tantrum as calculated leads to punishing a child for distress. Treating it as meaningless leads to changing the answer and setting up the next one. The position that holds is to keep the answer and not treat the distress as an offence.
Heading one off
The most effective work happens before anything starts, and it consists mostly of noticing patterns.
- Work with the day a child already has. Most toddlers have reliably good stretches — often after breakfast, when they are rested and fed — and reliably bad ones. Errands booked into the good stretch are a different experience from errands booked into the bad one.
- Do not run an outing through a nap. Skipping it makes a meltdown later in the trip close to certain, and waking a child early from one is just as reliable.
- Carry food and drink. Small children run through what they eat faster than adults do, and a child who starts unravelling an hour after lunch is often simply hungry.
- Keep shopping short, and give the child something to do. Being pushed around a succession of shops with no role in any of it is a long time for a toddler. Choosing the apples is a job.
- Warn before a change of activity. Being removed without notice from something absorbing is one of the commonest flashpoints, and a minute of warning removes much of it.
- Step in early on a task going wrong. A child struggling with a shoe or a lid is building towards something, and help offered at the right moment — enough to get past the obstacle, not enough to take the job away — heads it off.
- Read jealousy as a request. Trouble that reliably starts when attention goes to a sibling is usually a bid for attention, and it is considerably cheaper to supply in advance than to referee afterwards.
Getting through one
Stay calm. This is not a counsel of perfection but the single most load-bearing item on the list. Losing one's temper or shouting back does not end a tantrum; it adds a second person who is out of control, and the child now has something new to react to.
Distract, but only at the very start. Caught in the first few seconds, a tantrum can often be diverted by something more interesting — delivered with as much enthusiasm as can be managed, usually pointing at something out of the window or across the road. Once it is properly underway, distraction no longer reaches.
Otherwise, wait it out. At home, where the child is safe, going into another room for a few minutes is a legitimate option rather than an abandonment, and it removes the audience without removing the parent.
Holding works for some children and not others. Holding a child firmly until it passes tends to help where they seem more upset than angry, and where the adult can stay calm and reassuring throughout. Where it escalates things, the alternative is to stay nearby, keep them from hurting themselves or anything else, and say little.
Name the feeling. Something as simple as noting that this is making them really cross does not stop the tantrum in progress, and it is not meant to. It is how a child acquires words for internal states, which is the mechanism by which tantrums eventually stop being necessary.
Do not ask questions mid-tantrum. Working out what is wanted and explaining it requires exactly the capacity that is currently unavailable, and being asked produces more frustration.
Afterwards, a cuddle, and move on. No post-mortem, no apology extracted, no explanation of how behaviour is expected to go in future. A child who has just lost control is in no state to absorb a lesson, and the attempt mostly serves to extend the unpleasantness. If something genuinely needs saying, it will keep until a calm moment, when it stands a chance of landing.
The public one
The hard part of a tantrum in a shop is almost entirely the audience, and most of the pressure is self-generated. Onlookers divide into people who have been there and people who have not, and neither group's opinion is worth the price of the alternative.
Where it can be done, taking the child somewhere quieter for a few minutes is worth the interruption. Where it cannot, the approach is the same as at home, with more composure required.
The one thing not to do is buy peace. A packet of sweets handed over at the checkout ends that afternoon and prices every subsequent trip accordingly.
What not to do
- Do not change the answer. Not because firmness is a virtue in itself, but because an answer that moves under pressure invites pressure.
- Do not bribe. Sweets or treats offered to end a tantrum work precisely once, and teach the same lesson as giving in.
- Do not shout, hit, bite or kick back. Responding to a child who has hit with being hit establishes that hitting is what adults do when angry, which is the opposite of the intended lesson.
- Do not label the child. Describing a child as naughty, bad or a monster attaches to the child rather than the episode. The behaviour can be refused outright while the child is left in no doubt they are loved.
Hitting, biting and kicking
Occasional hitting, biting and pushing is common in children of this age, often with no real grasp that it hurts, and it is not a forecast of an aggressive child.
What helps is saying plainly and immediately that it hurts and is not allowed, then looking at what sits behind it — aggression at this age frequently signals that a child is upset or unsettled about something else. Beyond that, affection and praise during the good stretches rather than attention only during the bad ones, and somewhere legitimate to put large feelings: a park, running, shouting where shouting is allowed.
Breath-holding, which is not a tantrum
Some children, when frightened, hurt, shocked or furious, stop breathing briefly and may faint. It is alarming to watch and it is almost always harmless. It is also not deliberate and not something the child can control, which means telling them off for it makes no sense.
There are two kinds. Blue breath-holding spells, the more common, follow a change in the breathing pattern. Reflex anoxic seizures happen when the heart rate slows. Episodes generally last under a minute, and a child who faints normally comes round within a minute or two. It is not an epileptic seizure, and most children have grown out of it by four or five.
During an episode: stay calm, stay with the child, lie them on their side and leave them there rather than picking them up, and move anything they could strike their head or limbs against. Afterwards, reassure them, let them rest, and carry on as normal.
Not during an episode: no shaking, no splashing with water, nothing put in the mouth including fingers, and no mouth-to-mouth or chest compressions.
Breath-holding is sometimes associated with iron deficiency anaemia, so blood iron levels may be checked and a supplement prescribed if they are low.
Call 999 if a child faints and cannot be woken, goes stiff or starts jerking, or their lips, face or skin turn pale, blue or grey. And where breath-holding has not previously been diagnosed by a doctor, an episode of this kind needs checking straight away rather than being assumed to be breath-holding, because the same picture has other and more serious causes. Once it has been diagnosed, a GP appointment is the right route if episodes become more frequent or more severe, or start affecting daily life; a heart-rhythm trace may be suggested.
When to ask for help
Tantrums are a developmental stage rather than a problem to be solved, and for most households the useful information is that they end. Some situations are worth raising with a health visitor or GP rather than waiting out:
- Tantrums that are still frequent and severe well past four or five.
- Episodes that routinely involve serious aggression towards other people, or a child hurting themselves.
- Tantrums alongside other worries about development — speech in particular, since frustration at not being understood is one of the main drivers. The signs worth raising are set out under baby milestones.
- A household that has run out of approaches, or where the strain is doing damage of its own. This is a legitimate reason to ask for help rather than a confession of failure, and group parenting programmes are commissioned in many areas with a reasonable evidence base behind them. A health visitor will know what is available locally.
Family Lives runs a free helpline staffed by trained family support workers on 0808 800 2222.