Living With Live Wires

For the “normal” tantrums, follow the traditional advice.  But, if you are experiencing a spill-over tantrum with your spirited child, a few other strategies are needed. 

Mary Sheedy Kurchinka (2006), in Raising Your Spirited Child, states:

A spill-over tantrum can’t be stopped by ignoring it because your child is dealing with a tempermental issue that has triggered a physical reaction and sent him squarely into the red zone.  Your child needs you to help him discover the source of the emotional flood and stop it.  He needs your direction to help him calm himself and regain self-control.  Without that direction, he can rage for hours because his inner restrtaints have busted, letting loose a hurricane of wild emotions.

How do you begin to handle spill-over tantrums since they can begin in infancy and continue throughout childhood?

Identify Triggers and Keep Your Cool

Kurchinka continues,

It’s much easier to keep your cool when you can quickly identify the reason for the spill-over tantrum.

Identify Peak Times 

Kurchinka advises parents to keep track of the times that there children tend to have more tantrums.  It could be a day of the week, or a particular time of day.  Late afternoons are prime time for melt-downs after a full day of stimulating activity.  Also check for times when your own stress is high. Kids go through developmental surges when change in their bodies can be rapid.  Check around the time of their birthday and their half birthday for times when they are more cranky and uncooperative.  Check for difficulties during transition times, such as getting up and getting out of the house.  And, be aware of empty energy banks.  Introverts may need more time alone to recharge, and extroverts may need more time to play with friends.  

I know from my own experience that it can be crucial to make sure your child is fed on a regular schedule to avoid low blood sugar. Activity levels may need to be adjusted to avoid overstimulation.  It is a common practice of some parents to have their kids run around to burn off extra energy.  But with intense spirited children, you may be fueling the fire and setting them up for more stimulation.  It may look like your child is relaxing while they are watching TV, but TV and video-games may be adding more fuel to the overstimulating fire.  

Engage your best observational skills and see if you can identify triggers.  The first defense against tantrums is to try and prevent, or modulate their intensity before they get out of control.

What if your child is already into a spill-over tantrum?  Check out part 2 and part 3 of this series.

Recently I posted a few comments about how to handle Four-Year Old tantrums.

Part 1
Part 2

Those posts included some of the traditional advice for parents to use to handle tantrums. And, there are many times that advice works quite well. But, do gifted children have different types of tantrums that require different strategies?

Yes they can. Many gifted children are highly sensitive. This sensitivity can be to many things – physical sensations and aversions (tags on clothes, seams on socks, loud noises, bright lights, crowds of people, overstimulating environments), stress from multiple sources (home, school, social settings), and most of all, emotional intensity and sensitivity in response to the other stimulating situations.

Many of the intellectually gifted kids also have emotional overexcitabilities.  This means that a lot of gifted children are very emotionally sensitive. Some kids are introverted and withdraw, others are more outwardly intense. Whatever the temperament of the child, the emotional sensitivity to various overstimulating and stressful situations can cause a melt-down.  Mary Sheedy Kurchinka describes sensitive, intense and persistent children as “spirited.”

Mary Sheedy Kurchinka (2006) in Raising Your Spirited Child, describes spill-over tantrums that many spirited children experience,

Beth’s tantrum looked like a classic temper tantrum.  it sounded like one, too, but it wasn’t.  As I talked with Beth’s mom, I relized that Beth’s tantrum had nothing to do with power or getting attention.  It wasn’t even meant as a personal attack on her mother.  Her tantrum had been building for hours, even days.  for the last three weeks her father had been locked in negotiation meetings from six in the morning until well past midnight.  Alone at home with three preschoolers, Mom was exhausted and short on patience.  Beth is spirited.  Beth is temperamentally sensitive.  She absorbed the stress and strains her family was experiencing until she reached her limit.  Then she blew, literally knocking her mother down in the process.  This is a spill-over tantrum.

Kurchinka continues,

Dr. Stella Chess and Alexander Thomas were the first to describe spill-over tantrums.  In thier now-classic book, Know Your Child, they define a spill-over tantrum as “an outpouring of emotiontion in a disorganized way.”  The genetic makeup of spirited children that fosters a tendency toward steamy reactions makes them much more vulnerable to spill-over tantrums – a flood of emotions that overwhelms them and pushes them beyond their temperamental ability to cope.  In my experience, most of the tantrums experienced by spirited chidlren are actually spill-over tantrums.  They are not premeditated.  They are not intended to manipulate.

So, if spill-over tantrums are so common in sensitive and spirited children, how do you handle these tantrums differently?

 From Behavioral Management of Gifted Children: A Neuropsychological Approach by By Paul Beljan, PsyD, ABPdN on GiftedHomeschoolers.org

A widely used [behavior managment] intervention is the “time out.” Despite its popularity, it may not be the best choice [for gifted children]. Children often view a time out as a “time to go off.” The time out often ends up being the trigger that causes a tantrum. Because a time out is timed externally, by a parent for example, it does not help the child learn how to self-soothe.

Here are two examples of soothing interventions to try in place of a time out. The first intervention, called Separate the Beans, is appropriate for children from ages 3 through 9. It requires them to spend time separating two types of uncooked beans from an empty coffee can into two smaller bowls. The activity soothes the various senses of touch, hearing, and vision. This activity helps calm children by limiting extraneous environmental stimuli, while not stressing cognition. The result is being once again available for social interaction or learning.

The steps involved in this intervention are:

Combine uncooked lima and red beans in an empty coffee can.
Have the child separate the beans by color into two bowls.
When the cups are full, the discipline is over. The child then amends the behavior that warranted the discipline in the first place and is free to return to his/her activities.

We called them the calming beans and had great sucess.  We used them from age four to seven.  There is a slight risk that the beans will be thown, but we never had that problem.  Sometimes Sean would sort the beans on his own as a meditative activity.  Be sure to use only lima and red beans, we read in another place that other types of uncooked beans can be poisonous if ingested.  When the beans were combined, there was 4-6 cups of beans to sort, taking 10-15 minutes or more to complete.

A similar intervention for older children is Sentences. It involves writing sentences that state: “I will not do this… I will do this…” Rules to follow when using this intervention are:

Dispense no more than five sentences at the time of a behavioral infraction.
Instruct the child to write sentences that include what the child is not to do and what appropriate behavior would have been instead.
Avoid power struggles that may result in adults assigning more sentences.
Keep in mind that discipline teaches without anger and avoids damage to the child’s self-esteem. Remember to suspend privileges until the beans are all separated or the sentences are completed at a proficient level. Remind the child that the discipline “lasts as long as you want it to.” Once it’s completed, it’s time to help the child to re-engage. For example, you might say, “Let’s go apologize…”

We haven’t tried this yet, but probably will soon.  We’ll let you know how it goes.