Children’s Tantrums and Parenting Roles. Too Strict vs Too Lenient
Wed, 03 Jul 2024
Children’s Tantrums and Parenting Roles.Too Strict vs Too Lenient
Yen
All of us are witness to tantrums thrown by children. Some, even as young as 2, often hold their parents (mostly mothers) hostage to get their way. Teenage tantrums were always a way of life and were ascribed to being a part of growing up. This is necessarily true, but the debate on whether this has now become a reason for domestic discord and parental and children’s stress, and on whether these behaviour patterns have increasingly grown more acrimonious spilling over into schools and colleges too, makes this a subject of immediate and serious concern.
We may broadly define parental systems into two kinds. Strict and authoritarian versus gentle / lenient or collaborative. The latter demands that the child be empowered, given some autonomy and entitlement on decision making.
Should a child's feelings take precedence over how others experience that child's actions? Who should be held accountable for a disturbance of peace in the household? Where is the line between a child who feels empowered to self-advocate and one who's simply entitled? Ongoing research indicates that firm rules and consequences are needed. Does respect for the child as a human being take precedence over social, ethical and moral codes?
There are certainly plenty of reasons why children act the way they do. In the case of younger children it may be hunger, tiredness, or just distress from the frustrations of a child-parent or child-adult relationship. Different children come equipped with different mental challenges that may make it easier or harder to emotionally self regulate or modulate their behaviour. They might also misbehave because misbehaving seems such a normal part of growing up. Learning about their own boundaries, testing them, and being an occasional pest are all part of the game.
Older children, especially teenagers, have different reasons and trigger points. Rebellion, or strong disagreements are a natural growing up emotion. Looking down at their ‘old fashioned parents’, are part of society’s paradigm shift in values, models and systems. Joining the ‘cool’ and ‘chilled’ peer group in whatever wrong they may be doing seems to be par for the course. This puts them straightway in a diametrically opposing viewpoint with elders, parents and even teachers.
But there's a difference between legitimising a child's feelings and letting those feelings run the show. What children want isn't always what they need. Sometimes the child asking for his third icecream or a teenager asking to stay overnight at a rave party, may just need a firm "No."
The pandemic and its long term effects on children
A word of caution is in order here when we look at some abnormal or aggressive behaviour in children. The pandemic’s babies, toddlers and preschoolers are now school going and a very large majority of them show developmental and psychological scarring, leaving them with inappropriate skills to manage or regulate their emotions. Studies show that boys were more affected than girls. We asked them to wear masks, keep away from adults, not play with their friends. That developmental time lost is lost forever. Some say that parental stress during those times in the home rubbed off on them. Throwing things, or hitting their peers, teachers and parents were commonplace. Time spent on display screens spiked, the results of which are obvious to this day.
Is there a problem with us parents?
However there are many areas where parents themselves turn out to be the problem. A new popular term which came from a tik-tok video by psychologist Kim Sage is called “eggshell parenting”. She explains this phenomenon as inconsistent parenting, where a child never knows what response or reaction to expect from a caregiver, causing them stress and feeling like they have to, well, walk on eggshells. Did any of us grow up feeling like we were walking on eggshells around a family member?
Many parents, especially those in the west and in westernised urban India, looked back on their own childhood, and expressed distress after being raised by an “eggshell parent.” Others, especially millennial (ages 28-43) parents are having moments of self-reflection, admitting to being this type of parent themselves.
So now we are beset not only by children’s behavioural problems, but by adult behaviour problems too. Which of these are to be prioritised and what immediate action is needed by adults to influence, modify and sculpt a more acceptable, less toxic, more benign, and importantly a more peaceful response from children, as they are tutored and mentored into inheriting a complex, socially degenerate world.
Let's look at the problem with ourselves first.
"Eggshell Parenting"
"Eggshell parenting" in Dr Sage’s own words, looks at the concept of a child walking on eggshells around a parent or caregiver to see how they will react next. Some characteristics of an ‘eggshell parent’ include acting inconsistently with your kids, not accepting their emotions, isolating, shaming or mocking them, and otherwise acting in a way that might make them question how you might react from one moment to the next.
If you're yelling or lashing out, and your own moods are swinging in a way that makes you unpredictable, this can be stressful for children.
Psychiatrists say that ‘eggshell parenting’ can lead to both bonding issues and also potential mental health or self-esteem concerns down the road for your child. In the shorter term, outcomes can include the development of acute stress symptoms in them, including social withdrawal, fearfulness, hyperarousal, sleep disturbances, and difficulty concentrating.
Children not bonding with their parents, surely leads to attachment issues later in life, and even personality disorders.
Other risks include depression and anxiety, oppositional behaviours, irritability, argumentativeness, aggression, PTSD.
Confusing eggshell parenting with typical parenting anger, or frustration
All parents experience moments of frustration with children. After all, it’s one of the hardest jobs in the world. But there’s a distinct difference between eggshell parenting and typical parental anger. Parents of toddlers may at times struggle to keep their cool, but the goal is to work through emotions alongside their child with empathy and understanding.
For example, with a 3 year old, we might see a parent counting to ten alongside the toddler to help them deal with a tantrum. In the case of an older child challenging or disobeying, one could perhaps say “I can see you're having a hard time. I'm with you and here to help. I'm frustrated too. Can I make a cup of tea and help us to think about what to do?” By acknowledging and empathising with their child's feelings while also setting limits, parents can help regulate their child's emotions. This is called co-regulation, and the approach involves acknowledging the child's struggle, taking a moment to calm down, and modelling a healthy emotional response (regulation). In contrast, eggshell parents may remain dysfunctional and unregulated in their own emotions and struggle to provide a calming presence for their child.
This co-regulation is a process where parents model behaviour to help children learn to self regulate.
What to do if you had an eggshell parent yourself
Parenting can stir up umpteen kinds of emotions about some of the negative aspects of their own childhood, necessitating them to unlearn some of the aspects of their upbringing. If our own parents didn't teach us to adapt in the face of stress, it’s likely that we might have eggshell parenting behaviours ourselves.
Simply watching for these behaviours can help us identify a need to make an extra effort with our own children. Sometimes, we may even need additional support from a therapist to overcome our own childhood trauma.
So what if we identified ourself as an eggshell parent?
We can take two basic steps.
Step 1: Ask open-ended questions and resist the urge to judge. For example, you can simply say, “I understand you are upset seeing your sister going over to a friend’s house when you couldn’t. I’d be upset too.”
Step 2: Offer practical and emotional support. In the same scenario above, you could say, “I know you are upset, but that does not permit you to throw things onto the floor. Can we spend a little time together.” Maybe you can sit with him and play a board game, help him throw a ball, or give him an ice cream or some small treat.
By age 6, children already have a basic belief about themselves and a fertile world view. We can encourage a healthier mind set from a young age, thus creating a bulwark against future mental health challenges.
Avoid yelling, which works against that. Instead, try to use calmer tones, even kneeling to their eye level when conversing, helping them to regulate their big feelings. Just because we think we may be an eggshell parent (or we were parented by an eggshell parent) doesn't mean we have to continue these patterns. We want to be the best parent, and our child's well being is the most important. Change is not always easy, but making small tweaks in our parenting game, seeking help and being open to self reflection can go a long way in improving the way our families function.
So now we have learnt to observe ourselves and correct our approaches to tantrum throwing children. Now we have to observe the children and note how we can modify their aggressive responses to our calm demeanour.
What is Gentle Parenting? Is it the best way?
Sarah Ockwel Smith defines it well in her “The Gentle Parenting Book”. She advises embracing the needs of parent and child, while being mindful of current science and child psychology.
Gentle parenting is now the default among westernised, urban, professionals. It is more of a guiding set of ideals assuming an assortment of labels — ‘intentional parenting’, ‘mindful parenting’, ‘respectful parenting’, and ‘attachment parenting’. All are designed to swap out the old-fashioned, "because I said so" ethos of "authoritarian" upbringing, with one grounded in empathy and negotiation. Gentle parents supposedly give their children choices, while respecting their wants and needs. Instead of punishing unwanted behaviour, gentle parents aim to validate their child's feelings and help them out of distress, by letting them learn through natural consequences. It is, in short, a very different way of raising children than what most of today's adults received from their parents.
However parents in general are also realising that this time and energy intensive method is producing ambiguous results. Restrained from issuing a firm "No" and modifying it to a soft "No”, “Please” or a “Thank you”, does not get them the outcomes they desired, leaving all sides more vexed than before.
Proponents of gentle parenting say it produces securely bonded, and emotionally balanced children, claims that seem to be supported by research in developmental psychology. However in practice, the parental authority required to make the approach work often falls short and is poor. Too often, gentle parenting, and a servile devotion to their children’s happiness gives way to leniency and overindulgence, creating brittle and self centred “smart phone” kids, who are found to be ill equipped to navigate life’s challenges.
Teachers, too, blame gentle parenting for selfish and bad behaviour in classrooms, and new research suggests that the helicopter parenting that often goes hand in hand with gentle parenting is somewhat contributing to the youth mental health crisis.
What is Helicopter Parenting?
Helicopter parents pay extremely close attention to their children’s activities and schoolwork to protect them from pain and disappointment, and also to help them succeed. They're known to micromanage them and become extremely entwined in every aspect of their lives.
As a result, "gentle parenting" has become a loaded buzzword. The gentle parenting boom, is beginning to look more and more like a bust.
Can we find a middle ground?
But what if we can find a middle ground? Suppose we can process parenting with our child's feelings in mind as much as possible and then take those feelings into consideration when deciding how to react. In her book Sarah says, the key here really is thinking, “Would I like it if somebody did this to me? If the answer is 'no,' then why would you do it to your child?" She called it an "authoritative" parenting style, a somewhat conscientious middle ground between a "permissive" style of parenting in which the child is in charge and the strict “authoritarian” parenting tactics of the past — both of which researchers have found create long term problems for children.
For many parents, the guidance adds up to good common sense, making them gravitate towards a gentle, more informed parenting approach as a correction for the rules and expectations that came to bear on their own upbringing. Infact this method could be adapted to accommodate different developmental needs like spectrum disorders of Autism or ADHD, and that it didn't force children to meet society's ever shifting goalposts for success.
If a parent's job is to help their child process their big and messy feelings, does that mean every negative emotion needs to become a conversation? Clearly where some parents run into trouble is in the method's implementation. Limits need to be clear and kind, but firm too.
Is Gentle Parenting going wrong? Can we make it work?
Gentle parenting works only when there are ground rules in place for what constitutes acceptable behaviour. It works when they consistently ensure that those boundary lines are not crossed. However an endless crowd of parenting experts and social media influencers, bring a plethora of their own buzzwords, confusing parents to redraw these lines, making even sensible guidelines hard to follow.
Without meaning to, some of these parents may drift into permissiveness, ending up with children who feel empowered to do everything except respect others. If a child is meant to feel empowered to make their own choices about how to engage with the world, when should the adult step in and say that the child's choices were wrong — to declare, " You've had enough icecreams," regardless of whether the child agrees?
When gentle parenting veers off course, it can be detrimental. Former gentle parents are now contending with kids who throw their food down, slap their parents and throw tantrums at the slightest provocation.
Research recently published in The Journal of Pediatrics found that this trend toward high parental involvement, aligns itself with rising rates of depression and anxiety in children and teens, which have reached a record in the west. Separate research links permissive parenting with "high levels of aggressiveness, antisocial behaviour problems, and lack of self-discipline." These attributes are not only unpleasant for all stakeholders, but also handicaps a child's ability to form meaningful relationships. This is a key factor of lifelong physical and psychological well being.
No doubt with gentle parenting, there is this constant focus on helping children deal with 'big feelings’. But who says they're big? We adults are the ones that say they're big. Feelings are feelings. We have all sorts of feelings all day. When we focus on the negative ones, we start feeling worse rather than better.
Emphasising a child's feelings can magnify minor problems and effectively puts the child in the driver's seat when what they really need is adult guidance. If we stop doing whatever we are doing and let our day be dictated by their behaviour, we effectively become their slaves. Parents cannot afford to lose control. When gentle parenting goes wrong, everyone takes note.
Even though the dynamics between parents and children are a private matter, their implications are not. When a child's immediate desires become the lens through which they're expected to treat others, and vice versa, that framework becomes everybody's business - teachers, society and the world at large.
To conclude, too much kindness and empathy towards our children are clearly counter productive. Giving them autonomy is good when the boundary conditions are well defined, monitored and accepted.
At the same time we need to take a call on whether there is a needless authoritarian streak in us, leading to dysfunctional behaviour, yelling, endless discord and strife. We need to embrace co-regulation, acknowledge the child's struggle, and in turn provide a calming environment to help the child modulate a healthy emotional response.
If bad and unacceptable behaviour is on display, there is no debate on what our response should be. It is a clear and firm “NO”.
We have to choose a conscientious middle ground - an "authoritative" parenting style, bringing co-regulation into play, than the two extremes of a permissive style of “gentle parenting” in which the child is in charge, and the overtly strict “authoritarian” parenting, which throws everyone into a chaotic combat zone.
