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Temper tantrums, stubbornness, anger, sadness and depression are usually the result of children not being able to express their feelings.   Most of the time children who experience these negative emotions are just as much the victim of the emotions as are the parents who have to deal with them.

You can help your child identify with their feelings by just helping them talk about them.  For example, if your child is becoming cranky and you don’t know the reason why,  it  can be effective to say “ I can see how frustrated you are.  Can you tell me what is making you so cranky?  Simply by asking this question you help your child to stop long enough to identify that he/she is angry and it gives the child the opportunity of discussing with you what is actually upsetting them. This gives you the opportunity of taking control of the matter by offering assistance or reassurance to your child. If on the other hand you react by saying “don’t start carrying on, I’m not in the mood for another one of your carry on” this will actual fuel the child’s anger because his/her needs are not met and the message you are giving them is that you don’t care about what they are feeling.

You need to understand that when your child displays negative emotion the best way to assist your child out of the negative emotion is to break the child’s pattern of thought. You can do this by asking questions. By asking simple direct open ended question you assist your child to associate with what is really happening.  Children really don’t benefit from negative emotions and most children are not mature enough to know how to control them.

How you communicate with your child will either dissipate or accelerate the child’s negative behaviour.

Take a look at some of the examples below:

Scenario:  You are on the phone and your child tugs at your clothing, whining to get your attention. 

Instead of completely ignoring the child or pushing them away or yelling at them to shut up it is better to stop the phone conversation for a moment make eye contact with the child and say ‘mummy is on the phone, if you wait just a little while I will give you all the attention you need’.

Scenario:  Your child comes home from school cranky and upset.