Handling Unruly 3-Year-Old Behavior the Beyond Gentle Way

Someone recently asked on one of my posts what I thought about three-year-olds misbehaving, the specific scenario of a three year-old throwing food at a meal. How do you handle it and what’s going on? Do you confront the misbehavior? Do you let it go? What’s reasonable to expect of a child this age?

I want to say two things that might seem to be in conflict, but the point of this piece is actually to cohere and resolve both the firmness and kindness needed by a 3-year-old.

On one hand, you truly don’t want to overreact to three-year-old antics or lose your cool. They’re just three years old and they still have a lot of potatoes in their ears, so to speak. On the other hand, it’s genuinely not acceptable behavior, and you do need to find a way to move them out of this pattern and ensure that they listen to you about what’s allowed.

Before I talk about how I would react in that moment, the most important thing to consider in a scenario like this is how did we get here? What led up to this moment? Ronald Morrish, a wonderful author and educator, says in one of his books that a child who has listened to your last nine instructions probably won’t disregard the tenth. That’s the first thought that comes to mind with a really unruly three-year-old—this child has likely been disoriented and struggling to listen all day to get to this point. And now something really outrageous has bubbled over. The parents were ineffectively dealing with minor disobedience up to this point; they may have been letting little things slide, thinking, “don’t sweat the small stuff,” or they may have been overreacting in a way that accidentally reinforced the child’s misbehavior. Either way, they didn’t nip it in the bud. Prevention in the future should be the priority when a three-year-old (really, a child of any age) does something super outrageous, not necessarily what you do in this specific scenario. It’s part of a larger pattern that got them to this point.

There is good news and bad news. The bad news is that you may not be able to resolve the specific incident in a way that feels perfect, but the good news is that you can probably prevent future incidents, and you have much more in your control than it feels like in this specific moment. Going forward, do sweat the small stuff. Start the day with little compliances and don’t let the little stuff slide early on. This is one of the reasons why I’m such a big fan of teaching kids to make their bed, eat breakfast at the table, and clear their plate after breakfast. Starting the day with little directions successfully followed helps kids get on track with both following adult instructions when needed and exercising autonomy within structure. (At some point, I would like to do a whole piece about morning routines. Breakfast at the table is also an opportunity to read books, sing songs, learn about calendaring—in general, a wonderful venue for developing executive functioning skills and bonding time.)

Okay, so how do you handle the specific situation in the moment? You take the child’s hand—maybe both hands, look them in the eyes, and say very calmly, “We do not throw food.” You keep your hand in theirs, and you guide one of their hands to pick up some of the food and put it back on the plate and clean up, not to completion but a meaningful gesture. You don’t insist that they clean up everything because the risk of a power struggle outweighs the reward of that specific lesson. It would be different for an older child, but not at 2 or 3.

What you’re doing is rerouting that neural pathway into cooperating and listening to you, not a power struggle. You don’t want to ignore the significance of the infraction, but also don’t want to accidentally reinforce oppositional behavior. They’re acting disoriented because they are so you’re going to provide more orientation, and you’re going to do that by taking their hand, telling them—not asking them—“We don’t do this,” and then you guide their hand to clean up, and then you say something like, “We clean up messes that we make. Dinner time is all done now.” You don’t need to put them on timeout or punish them after something like this—you don’t want to become an object of their anger when they actually need to keep the focus on their own behavior and accountability.

If you handle it this way, you accomplish a few things without it depending on your child’s choices. This is important: they showed they are struggling to self-manage, so you provide love in the form of direction. They were digging themselves into a hole, and you took away the shovel. This is why I don’t recommend a punishment or asking/instructing them further. No more chances to disobey. It feels very reassuring and relieving to a child who is acting out of control for a loving adult to end it without drama.

You guided them from not listening to you to listening to you, and you facilitated the repair work that they needed to do without it being up to them; they basically showed you that they were struggling with making good choices, and you stepped in as the grown-up to make all the choices for them. You can also know that you, as the parent, didn’t let something slide and didn’t tolerate intolerable behavior, nor did you overreact or harm your relationship.

Depending on the time of day, I would follow this incident by getting ready for bed, getting ready for a nap, going outside, or maybe reading a book. I wouldn’t worry that you’re rewarding their behavior; you interpret their behavior as saying, “I’m disoriented! I’m disoriented, somebody get me back on track! HELP!” and just get them back into the frame of listening and cooperating.

A lot of times, I think of this as looking through the misbehavior, not ignoring it. There’s a lot of advice online about being more photogenic, and one of the things that comes up again and again is that you should look through the camera, not look at the camera. It sounds a little silly, but it actually works. We want a similar approach with three-year-old behavior, don’t look at their behavior. Don’t ignore their behavior. Look through their behavior and be the bridge into the future child you know they can be and you want them to be.

So to recap, in a situation like this with a misbehaving three-year-old, the first thing is to zoom out and think about building more little compliances into their day and prioritizing those so you never get to the point of major non-compliance. (It almost goes without saying, but I will say that of course this is all supported by routines and rhythms that are right for a three-year-old: getting enough sleep, exercise, reading time, play, etc.) The second thing is that, in the moment, what you want do is step in as the leader and execute for them, have them do it alongside you. You take their hand, you tell them—not ask them—the proper behavior. You tell them—not ask them—how to make it right, as you guide their hand to participate in clean up and then you move on, the meal and the incident are over.

You are sending a clear message: “This is what we do and don’t do. I am in charge here. You do listen to me. I do understand you’re struggling. I am here for you.” You accomplish all of that, and then you just focus on making sure things don’t get to that point in the future and forgive yourself and your child for the specific incident.

Three-year-olds are really wonderful. They’re capable of so much, yet they’re still quite little (and very adorable). You don’t need to tolerate outrageous antics, but you don’t need to overreact to them either. When behavior gets to a major escalation point, an adult de-escalates and prioritizes their own sphere of control in preventing further escalations. The outrageous behavior most likely happened because grown ups allowed too many little noncompliances OR lost their own cool over little noncompliances leading up to the incident. Do sweat the small stuff, and you will have way fewer big moments where things fall apart.

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