What To Do When Your Child Has A Meltdown
“The LORD is kind and merciful,
slow to get angry, full of unfailing love.
The LORD is good to everyone.
He showers compassion on all His creation.”
This year Scarlet started kindergarten. She’d looked forward to going to school for months, counting the days until what seemed the best possible reward for turning five. Everything about the idea of school appealed to Scarlet’s super-extroverted, always-engaged outlook on life.
When September dawned, she was up early with her chosen outfit on, hair slicked into place, grinning from ear to ear. Finally!
And it’s true: she loved it all. Twenty new friends in her class, a teacher she adored, matching lunch box and backpack, recess!
Yet within weeks, Scarlet started having regular meltdowns, seemingly out of nowhere. Wailing, sobbing, unreasonable and inconsolable. So out of character for our happy little grand-girl that when Elizabeth first mentioned the problem I could hardly believe it.
But the more I heard, the more it made sense. Scarlet was not throwing temper tantrums— those I-want-my-way-and-I-want-it-now angry head-on’ collisions of a child’s will vs. a parent’s authority.
No, she was having emotionally overloaded meltdowns. The two might look the same, but the causes and therefore the solutions are vastly different.
Whereas a temper tantrum should be disciplined decisively (more on that next week), an emotional meltdown is best met with a combination of compassion and training: with calmness, comfort, understanding, and logic.
No one understood those swirling, pulsing, messy emotions like David, the writer of most of the Psalms. And no one grasped the gracious, welcoming love of God in the midst of messy emotions quite like the man often called the “sweet Psalmist of Israel”.
Somewhere along the way, David learned to turn his deepest feelings—
of failure, of fear, of remorse, bitterness, anger, and shame— into worship. Instead of restricting his rampant feelings, he worked through them until his soul caught glimpses of God in the middle of his own messiness.
“Save me from my enemies, LORD; I run to You to hide me.
Teach me to do Your will, for You are my God.
May Your gracious Spirit lead me forward on a firm footing.
Bless the Lord, who is my rock…
He stands before me as a shield, and I take refuge in Him.”
That’s what we want for our children, isn’t it? Not perfect, unruffled emotional stoicism, but an instinctive turning to God when real life is more than they can handle.
I didn’t fully grasp this when we were raising our kids, but I’ve been slowly unlearning— along with my adult children— much of what our intolerant-of-emotions culture teaches. I am learning that big emotions are often an indication of a rich, deep interior world. A world in which compassion flourishes and worship abounds.
Here are some ways you can help your child avoid major meltdowns:
1. Give your child a descriptive emotional vocabulary.
Words like frustrated, angry, intimidated, sad, rejected, weary, irritable, overwhelmed… Honey, are you feeling rejected? Son, you seem overwhelmed. Do you feel lonely? Sweetheart, are you afraid?
2. Help your child form statements expressing their emotions.
I feel rejected ‘cuz my brother doesn’t want to play with me. I am frustrated that she won’t leave me alone. I am tired of being with people. I am afraid… I feel like no one likes me… My best friend was mean to me on the bus and I’m so sad.
These one-sentence statements are like vents on a pressure cooker, releasing some of those pent-up emotions in small bursts. Apt words lessen the likelihood of a massive, hurtful explosion.
3. Coach your child into taking the emotion into a constructive action.
This is where good questions help a parent immensely. Take the above statement, I feel frustrated that she won’t leave me alone.
A wise response might be: Why don’t you let her know that you need some alone time after a tiring day at school? That way she won’t feel like you just don’t like her. Then you can play alone in your room until you’re ready to be nice to your sister.
As opposed to punishment, these are training methods meant to enable your child to recognize and own what he feels rather than blame those around him.
At the same time, our kids need to know that their lashing out hurts people, and that’s not okay. They need to understand and practice the steps to an effective apology. They cannot be allowed to vent, heedless of who they hurt in the process.
There is so much more I’d like to explore about dealing with your child’s emotions, but hopefully, this will get us thinking.
For now, remember this:
Emotions are like windows into the state of our soul. Parents can turn those windows into doorways God can use to invite their child into the refuge of the Kingdom; that place where God’s presence changes everything, where our children experience for themselves the life-giving love of Christ.
Just like David.
May God give you understanding as you search out the heart of your child, and wisdom as you bring the Comforter into your child’s inner world.
From my heart,
Diane
P.S. Would you like to learn more about dealing with big emotions in a way that brings your child deeply into the love of God? Let me know, because we’ve just barely scratched the surface here...