Understanding the difference between tantrums and releasing feelings.
As an Aware Parenting instructor, I am often in sessions explaining to parents the difference between big feelings and what our mainstream culture calls Tantrums. This is a word I truly dislike, and I do feel like it does a huge disservice to our beautiful children.
In older parenting paradigms a tantrum was used to describe our children as:
Trying to manipulate you
They would need to be punished or bribed to get them to stop
We were told as parents to send them to ‘time out’ and leave them on their own to learn to “self-regulate” their emotions.
Just ignore them, or it will keep happening repeatedly.
What children who experience any of the above began to release is that, if they behave in these ways, the person they love and adore most in the world will take their love away from them. This teaches them not to “regulate” their emotions, but rather to suppress their feelings because they are not safe to share these with their parent.
What if we could rather rename these tantrums and call them a release of big feelings. That in this moment your baby, toddler, or child is not trying to manipulate you or make your life hard but is rather releasing their feelings in the most natural way their bodies knows how, crying is healing.
What if instead we saw these big feelings as:
A powerful way to move feelings through their bodies and allowing them to come back into balance.
A natural way to release accumulated stress, feelings, and trauma through the body.
Crying is the biggest and profound healing tool children have to come back into their center again.
Children can’t verbalise and share what they are feeling, and this is a healthy way from them to be able to express this.
By listening to their feelings, we can hold space for our children (more on this in future newsletters, so stay tuned!) and they learn that all of their feelings are welcome, that they are loved unconditionally, no matter how they show up!
The more we can see this new way of viewing our children, the easier it becomes as they can bring you all the parts of them that need to be heard and held.
If you need support with this or any other Aware and Connected Parenting support, please head to the website as I am available Thursday mornings at Village Birth for in person sessions.
Blessings on your parenting journey,