The first time my son flew into a rage over something completely minor, I genuinely had no idea what to do. When my initial attempts at calming him down resulted in more screaming, I considered jumping into the toilet and flushing myself into another dimension. What got to me the most was not even the tantrum itself, but the feelings of helplessness and utter confusion it triggered in me. It also made me quite indignant: raising small children is a near-universal human experience, I rage-thought. We should surely have some uncontroversial, tried-and-tested system for managing this stuff! Turns out, we do — and I’ve since spent months researching it so you don’t have to. Here’s the bullshit-free guide to managing challenging behaviour, with all receipts attached for your perusal.
WHY IS THERE SO MUCH CONTROVERSY?
As everyone with a working internet connection will know, there’s literally endless conflicting information available on this topic. That can be overwhelming, but it doesn’t mean that there is no right answer. Succumbing to the illusion of insurmountable controversy is not a useful response to informational overload. There are lots of different diets out there? Oh well, I guess there are no objective truths about human health! Influencers disagree on parenting questions? I guess we’ll remain in the dark forever! Having too much information isn’t a bad problem to have. It just means that, rather than diving in headfirst and hoping for the best, we have to properly explore whose advice to trust and why.
Distinguishing between signal and noise in parenting is a research project in itself. Each knowledge source comes with unique trade-offs and I want to make a point of explaining how I navigated these complexities in my research for this piece (I would encourage you to be sceptical of anyone who doesn’t do this).
Academic research can be a mixed bag for parents. Although I do cite academic papers, many parenting interventions are tested in unusual settings (e.g. fostering networks or families who self-select due to severe behavioural issues). Child psychology researchers are often focused on supporting children at risk of abuse. Research conducted in these settings, albeit necessary and methodologically robust, can yield conservative and risk-averse recommendations. These are not always optimal for the average family who’s just trying to get little Trevor to stop losing his shit because the dog is looking at him. As such, I give preferential treatment to studies conducted in more neutral settings, like randomly selected nurseries or preschools.
Then there’s the weird and wonderful world of ‘parenting experts’ and ‘parenting coaches’ who boast various credentials in education, psychology or medicine, or no credentials at all. Some of them are brilliant, but many are just highly neurotic women with an iPhone (the neurotic men are too busy commenting on the Whatever podcast, clearly). To me, a genuine parenting expert is someone who (1) has raised multiple children, (2) enjoyed it, (3) has a good relationship with said children, (4) seems like a person I could have a drink with. So while I do draw on advice from parenting experts, Lisa Bunnage carefully explaining different facets of healthy parental leadership on her podcast is not in the same bucket as a wide-eyed millennial mother-of-one uploading an Instagram Reel about ‘the one trick that changed everything’.
Next up, there are more informal interdisciplinary researchers who analyse parenting practices from around the world and across history, based on the assumption that traditional cultures share some foundational parenting principles from which we can all learn. The obvious issue is the relevance of such findings to families in the modernised world. It would be nice to live in a big tribe and all nap together — but we don’t! Luckily there are amazing writers who bridge the gap between traditional parenting methods and modern living: Hunt, Gather, Parent is the blockbuster in this category and there are some wonderful blogs here on Substack (Elena Bridgers and Guen Bradbury both have back catalogues worth exploring in full).
Finally, we all have to retain some trust in our ability to watch and learn from our environment. In some ways this is the ‘deepest’ research we can conduct — paying close attention to the parenting we see allows us to properly account for the unique circumstances of every family. I’m lucky that my own mum is a bit of a toddler-whisperer (my son is always deliriously happy and perfectly behaved in her care) and I have plenty of friends and family members who are experienced parents. I also live in Walthamstow (for the uninitiated, this is where East London’s formerly indie millennials migrate to breed) so I see countless parent-child interactions in my neighbourhood on a daily basis.
Everything I’ve summarised here comes from these four main sources, and where possible I’ve provided a good mix of all of them. Let’s dig in!
ARE WE JUST PATHOLOGISING NORMAL BEHAVIOUR?
Researchers and parents agree that emotional outbursts are a normal and developmentally appropriate response to challenges which exceed the ‘processing capability’ of the toddler’s brain. Toddlers have immature executive function (impulse control, planning and emotional regulation), so they have real trouble dealing with frustration. Developmental leaps, tiredness, hunger or discomfort make them more fragile. An otherwise chill toddler might be blinded by rage, screaming like they’re undergoing an exorcism, hitting and kicking. In most cases, as our dear leader Cartoons Hate Her put it, a tantrum is not an emergency.
But even if some emotional outbursts between the ages of 1 and 5 are unavoidable, their frequency, intensity and duration vary significantly depending on parental response. It’s worth considering that many parents will spend something like a decade of their lives dealing with small children non-stop. Frequent episodes of challenging behaviour can have profoundly negative impact on the whole family’s wellbeing. Some parents are battling their children to get dressed every morning, managing an emotional outburst every time a courgette appears, and then entering lengthy negotiations before they can finally switch off Peppa Pig for the night and clock off. It all quickly adds up when multiplied by 3 years by 3 children. Parents deserve to have the best information about managing these interactions so they don’t end up feeling drained and dejected almost every day for years.
EMOTIONAL OUTBURSTS: RESPONDING IN THE MOMENT
The popular ‘emotionally responsive’ tantrum-management advice encourages parents to validate their children’s feelings while reinforcing appropriate behavioural norms (‘I can see you’re upset, but hands are not for hitting’). The approach is popular among influencers and many parenting ‘coaches’. It sounds good… except every time I’ve tried to intervene in this way, I made it worse.
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