September 4, 2021 • 38 mins
When your kid boils over in the grocery store, it can be tough to stay calm and ignore it, but that's precisely what experts prescribe parents do to deal with temper tantrums. Learn about the anatomy of a tantrum and the best way to deal in this classic episode.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
I don't want to do with select. My name's Chuck.
I don't want to pick out a select and do
an intro for this one. I don't want to work.
See that was play acting everyone. This is called how
Temper Tantrums work, And that was an example of a
temper tantrum. This is from and it was a good one.
It was um before I had a kid, and it
(00:22):
really was instructive on how things were gonna go once
I did have a kid. But I gotta tell you,
I'm five years into this thing, and she's great. She
rarely ever has thrown temper tantrums in her whole life.
She can be a real paint in the butt, but
she's never been a tantrum thrower. So I'm gonna listen
to this one again. Actually right along with you. Welcome
(00:45):
to Stuff you should Know, a production of I Heart Radio. Hey,
and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark Bush, Charles
Chuck Bryant, and again we have our guest producer Noel.
He's thrashing about on the ground, vomiting, screaming, capillaries bursting
(01:07):
in his cheeks, all because we wouldn't give him a
third pork chop not true. Yeah, boy, temper tantrums or
I always feel so bad for the parents in public,
you know, Oh really, I always think like, you screwed
up your kid already. See you're so wrong. And we're
about to dispel that. Yeah it's true, although I did
(01:29):
see a UM, we're about to talk a lot about
why it's not the parents fault. But I did some
extra research and there are experts that say you can
also be a bad parent and that could lead to
temper tantrums. Like, we don't want to blame parents, but
you can definitely play a part. And we as a
society of said, uh, from this age to this age,
(01:54):
temper tantrums are normal. And then after that then apparently
it's like the bad parenting really shines through and then
they think like, yeah, there's some real problems this kid
has and it's largely because of bad parenting or a
bad home environment, or troubles during pregnancy like abuse, things
like that. Um, that can all lead to temper tantrums
(02:16):
that turn into something else after a certain age. Yeah,
this whole thing, it makes me kind of uncomfortable. But
just parenting advice period is so like subjective and individual Yeah,
it's it's always feel like people shouldn't tell other people
how to parent, But I also I feel like they're
probably some pretty good guidelines to parenting too. So yeah,
(02:39):
and if you go back and look at, um, the
history of parenting, yeah, like it wasn't too long ago
that it was. It kind of seems to go on
a cycle. Like in the eighteenth century. Um Rousseau, the
Great Enlightenment thinker, basically was one of the first to say,
you know what, maybe kids aren't just internature adults and
(03:02):
like maybe child like something special. It's a time of development.
We should you know, become less parent centric and more
child centric as far as parenthood goes. And um, that
really kind of sparked this different idea of you know,
treating kids as kids rather than adults. And then that
(03:23):
was replaced later on by the whole like discipline and
all that of the late nineteenth early twentieth century, and
then that was replaced by the idea that kids their
childhood should be indulged, you know. And then Russo said, boy,
fetch me in my feather, I need to throw up?
Is that from fletch, No, fletch. This is what came
(03:45):
to mind. No, I just thought it'd be funny. You know,
I need to throw up, you know, the benjing and
purging back in the day, eat till you can't eat
anymore than you stick a feather it on your throat
and vomited it up. Supposedly, the vomitorium thing is a myth.
Have you heard that in Rome? Ancient Rome, vomitoriums they
supposedly had like pieces for that. I haven't heard. They
(04:07):
were a myth. Supposedly their myth mythological and not like
the Menatar, like a real myth, not like they want
you to think it's a myth. Got Okay, So we're
talking temper tantrums, and we've already kind of said, um
that during a certain period of your life, they're normal.
It's actually you would be a weird kid if you
(04:29):
didn't have a temper tantrum pretty frequently. Not weird, but
you would be in the minority for sure. Okay, but
it doesn't mean you're weird. Comparatively speaking, it means you're weird.
So like, from age one to age three ish, they
basically say, I have have your temper tantrums. It's normal. Yeah,
(04:50):
between fifty if you want a statistic of two to
three year old boys and girls have at least one
tantrum per week, and UM have a tantrum every day. Yeah,
those kids are fun between those those years. Yeah. Uh.
And then there was another study from the University of Minnesota.
I found even higher rates. UM. Nine percent of children
(05:14):
in this study between the ages of thirty, thirty months
and three years UM had a tantrum on a weekly basis. Right,
so it happens. If you had a kid, you've probably
had it happened. If you don't have kids yet, it
will happen to you. And if you have a kid
that doesn't have tantrums, they're weird. No, you're just lucky. Yeah,
you are pretty lucky. I wasn't a tantrum thrower. I know,
(05:37):
I'm sure I was, but I think I was a
pretty good kid. Yeah, I'm in saying it never happened
with me, but I was pretty chill. Yes the gate. Yeah,
my brother in law and sister in law lucked out
a good kid who's like more hard on herself than
like they are on her. That's the best self regulating kids. Yeah,
she's good and she's like right in the age two
(05:58):
and she's very good. So she's weird. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
weird and all the all the best ways. The good
news is, um, by the time they reach four or five,
you should be seeing a large drop off or complete
cessation of these tantrums. Yeah. And the reason why we
say the age um, that there is an age for
(06:23):
this to end, is because we finally figured out that
the mechanisms involved in temperate tantrums. Yeah, it's a thing.
It's not just my kid's pain in the butter, he's
in a bad mood, or he's spoiled. It's there's there's
brain activity that is causing this to happen. Yes, specifically
in the prefrontal cortex, or we should say there's a
lack of activity in the prefrontal cortex, which is the
(06:46):
last part of the brain to evolve. Yeah, like it
up until your eighteenth birthday, prefonal cortex is still evolving, right, Yes,
and developing, is I think what we mean? Yes, yes,
we do. Both said evolved, but it's true. I mean,
you know, the Victorians used to think that if you
looked inside an egg, you would see the animal that
(07:08):
species go through its full evolution, that that was its
process of development, And it kind of makes sense to
an extent, especially if you think of the brain, like
I'm sure the brain stem is the first part of
the brain to be constructed in utero, you know, and
then it goes all the way like after birth. Your
brain is still developing, and it's probably the most sophisticated
(07:29):
regions of the brain that take the longest to develop.
That makes sense. So the victorians were right all along
about throwing up All right, well should we talk about
what the tantrum? That there was a doctor who clearly
has uh some masochistic tendencies because he did a study
in which he rigged toddlers with microphones. He's the temper
(07:51):
tantrum specialist. He's like the guy he's definitely a masochist. Yeah. No,
I'm saying, God bless this guy, because it is not
fun work to chord and analyze audio tapes of temper
tantrums over and over and over. But that's what he did,
and he did find some patterns. First of all, they
only last a few minutes. Parents, it might seem like
(08:12):
an eternity there in target while your kid is like
buried in the clothes rack screaming, But it's only going
to be a few minutes, and then ten minutes later,
your kid has just probably forgotten about it, even though
you have not. The He also found that UM, based
on the types of sounds that the kids made, they
can basically be classified as sad sounds and angry sounds.
(08:34):
And he found that his name is Michael Protagal, and
Portagal found that UM, rather than one giving into the
other leading into the other, they're pretty much simultaneous. And
then once the anger, it's basically you have sadness all along,
and then it's overlaid with anger. And then once the
anger subsides, all this left to sadness, and now the
(08:58):
healing can begin because when kids are sad, they want
to be comforted, so they go to you, the parent
hopefully yeah, um, and and then the temper tantrum can subside. Yeah.
And he broke it down into three phase three stages. Uh,
you get your yelling and screaming. You've got your physical actions,
which is what we talked about, like throwing yourself on
(09:20):
the floor, and that's what you typically think of, like
kicking and screaming, and then um or biting, and then
you've got your whimpering and whining, which is the third
and saddest stage right to witness, because the kid has
just played out at this point and it's really sad. Yeah.
And protocol also found that if the kid goes straight
(09:41):
into the physical stage, Yes, the tantrum is even shorter lived.
I think because they text themselves more quickly. Yeah, that
makes sense. Uh. And these we talked earlier about Noel's
tantrum before we came in and how his face is flushed.
That is something that can happen if they are screaming
loud enough, they and pop blood vessels in the face
(10:01):
and capillaries, and they can induce vomiting. It can get
like really serious and violent and disturbing. Inducing vomiting is funny.
You don't just wouldn't you just be like, you stupid kid?
What is wrong with you? You just screamed until you
threw up? Yeah. I think that's a good approach. Well,
I mean you don't say, certainly think alright, So back, yeah, stupid,
(10:28):
Back to the prefrontal cortex. Uh. We said it develops
very Uh, I don't know about slowly, but it develops
over the course of your life until you're about eighteen. Um.
But it doesn't even start to till you're four and
they think the reason why, or not necessarily the reason
why they think. Because of this this malleability and plasticity
in the prefrontal cortex, we are able to acquire language
(10:52):
skills as humans. So it's kind of a trade off
because while we can acquire language skills while our p
is developing, we don't have the emotional stability that we
have later on in life with the fully developed PFC,
because the prefrontal cortex is in charge of regulating our
emotional stability. Yeah, and basically saying like whoa, it's the
(11:15):
part of the it's the joey part of the brain, right,
So your kid, your kid doesn't have the joey part
of the brain yet. There is since you brought up language,
there is a um there's a conflict between what the
kid can understand and then relay back to you at
that age, like they may be able to understand what
you're saying, but they can't speak the words yet. So
(11:36):
you've got a really frustrated kid because it can't get
out what it wants to say. And then you've got
the prefrontal cortex not doing anything yet, right, it's not
putting the brakes on. Yeah, so that is a tantrum.
I mean, that's a recipe for a tantrum. And why
don't you stew on that for a minute while we
take a message break because that was some heavy stuff. Okay,
(12:11):
so we're back. We just talked about the prefrontal cortex
and you, Chuck just explained what a temper tantrum is. Yeah,
because we all have like moments of frustration. We all
have um times when like we act out a little bit,
like you know, this light bulb is supposed to work,
(12:32):
you know that kind of thing, or road rage. That's
an adult temper tantrum exactly, you know, But we have
prefrontal cortex is we've been socialized to feel embarrassed for
acting out. Um, if you took that away and shrunk
us down by several feet, you would have what's a
normal temper tantrum and kids. Yeah, and we also should
(12:52):
point out that the fight or flight kicks into a
big shot of cortis all happens, and so everything is
just messed up. Like it's a wonder your kid doesn't
have more of these, right when you think about that,
So that frustration, Um, does trigger cortisol. It triggers Norah
and ephron. Uh, your fight or flight syndrome or responses
(13:13):
kicked into high gear. And again you have nothing to
put the brakes on all of this. What's interesting is, Um,
some of the physical signs that the fight or flight
responses kicked in are also signs that your kids about
to have like a major meltdown. Things like, um, you're breathing, flesh, skin, sweating, sweating,
(13:36):
pupils dilated, drooling and spitting. Yeah, all these things where
I like, you see your kids starting to do that,
you just felling the exorcists gonna blow yes. And the reason, um,
they stop or at least taper off by the ages
of four or five is because you're the joey part
of your brain starts to work and the kid can
(13:57):
now talk to you and all of these kind of
undo and the kids like that was the problem because
they can now tell you that, right, I couldn't talk. Yeah,
it smelled like chili dogs all the time, and I tried.
I just couldn't tell you that. Yeah, in my PFC
wasn't working. So what am I to do? Just go
berserk exactly? Um. The thing is is like, yes, your
(14:20):
kid is going to likely age out of this. If
your kid doesn't age out of it, then perhaps it's
time to consult a specialist, say around five six years
of age, usually six, I think. Um. But along the way,
you can help your kid have fewer temper tantrums, have
less severe temper tantrums, and basically just be a better
(14:44):
human being in general by how you as the parents
address the temper tantrums. By telling them they're dumb for
just throwing up. Just you think that in your head.
You don't say it out loud or else you're a
terrible parent. If you think it, you're fine, Okay. Um.
The number one thing you want to do, um, prior
to temper tantrums is giving the kid a a schedule. Yeah,
(15:10):
because apparently a lot of the temper tantrums come from
a fear that somethings that they're not going to get food,
whether they're not gonna get held or at tension or whatever.
If they're on a schedule, they'll know that it's coming.
And if they start to freak out, you can say,
of course, your goldfish are coming. It's almost two pm.
Settled down, you little goldfish. Junkie. Yeah, and I know
(15:34):
they stress scheduling all lot with kids with like Asperger's
uh and autism, But it's a big deal. Period. You
should get your kids on a schedule. Kids like knowing
what to expect. They don't like balls. If you have
to make your own bowl of cereal at age like two,
the parent needs to take some time and figure out
what's going wrong here with water? Yeah remember that what
(15:55):
was that Friday's Yeah, when they did that milk. Yeah,
that's funny that you said that is I just remembered yesterday.
What a good movie Friday. Oh yeah, it was really funny.
It's wonderful. Uh. Okay, So get your kids on a schedule.
That's a big one. This is this is preventing yes, um,
temper tantrum and that's regular sleep, regular feeding, uh, regular interaction.
(16:17):
Any kind of thing they can rely on is going
to help, like chill your kid out and get them stable.
I remember, um, one of the things one of the
bases of temper tantrums is frustration. Yeah, and one way
around that is to give your kid make them feel empowered. Yeah.
I like this bit of advice. I thought that was
spot on. So like in this article, I think Conger says, um,
(16:39):
if your kid hates putting shoes on, basically distract them
by saying, hey, big boy, do you want to wear
your duck boots or your cowboy boots? Yeah? You you
choose to you. Yeah, sort of like heading them off
at the templeton. You still have to wear shoes, but
you get to choose which one. Yeah, I've heard that's
a pretty common thing, if acause a lot of kids
(17:00):
don't want to get dressed when they should or put
on their shoes when they should. And um, a lot
of parents now are like letting their kids dress themselves.
Yeah you can tell, yeah, but look around. I know,
and it's I think it's great and fun to see
little kids walking around in these crazy outfits that they
clearly picked out. It's like a moment. It's like many
mental asylums all let out. It's like the Reagan era
(17:22):
all over again, but for kids. I think it's awesome. Um, Okay,
so empowering choices, great advice. So okay, you've taken these
steps to avoid it, it's still not gonna do. Your
kids still gonna have a temperature tantrum. It's just you
can expect it. It's inevitable. Um So, when a temper
tantrum happens, here's the hard part. You have to stay calm.
(17:48):
And apparently the the advice from parenting experts psychologists is
ignore it. Yeah, this is not us talking. We've researched this,
and they say to try and ignore it. They say
that that is the quickest way too, to put an
end to that particular tantrum. If they're not getting the attention,
(18:12):
then they will quit sooner. Yeah, and that's what they say.
So long as they're not hurting themselves or other people
or destroying property. If they're just screaming and being a
brat basically is what it amounts to, then ignoring it
is the best course of action. Yeah. The reason why is,
um if you say you are like, oh, I know,
(18:32):
you feel so bad, and you pick them up and
you hug them and everything, you're giving your kid positive reinforcement.
You're saying, hey, scream your head off and I'll pick
you up and rub your back and comfort you. You
don't want to do that. You want to remain neutral
and basically not associate this thing with anything during it.
That's what I would do, especially in public and just
(18:54):
be like, man, whose kid is that? Right? I'm gonna
go over here and eat a box of neutral green
bars if i'm myself while this little kid finishes up,
and I'll just pay for it at the register with
an empty box and it's all good. Um. An sense
of shape. The other reason, and we're joking around here,
this is if someone like I have friends who have
(19:15):
had a big trouble with this and it's not a
laughing matter. It's really a lot of stress on a family. Oh,
I can't imagine we joke because it's just what we
always do. Another time, the guy in the grocery store
gets to go see you later, good luck. Um. Another
reason not to what like they say, to muffle that
is because there could be other underlying causes like hearing
(19:36):
problem or vision vision impairment that you won't notice. Um
if you're if you're not, just like you know, if
you've got the kid buried in your chest. Yeah it's weird.
It's like you want to ignore it. Let it run
its natural course, watch it out of like the side
of your eye, you know. Yeah. Um, Because you don't
want them to like you really don't want them to
(19:56):
think you're paying any attention to them at all. And
apparently and when that, when that's done, it just runs
its course and it's it's over with, and like we
said earlier, the kid forgets even what was bothering him
or her, you know, a few minutes afterward. Yeah, what
you really don't want to do is punish the kid
or reprimand the kid in the middle of a tantrum
(20:18):
or right after a tantrum, because it's a natural thing,
it's gonna happen. That is not a healthy approach to
getting your child to not do something because they're two
and three years old, and to be punished for something
that they don't understand, it's just that's not gonna help anything. Sure,
So what you do want to do is after a
meltdown has taken place and things are calm again, you
(20:41):
want to take some time to explain to the kid
basically what went wrong or what they didn't do. Let's say,
is over the shoes again. You you they've just told
you we need to talk about shoes again. Right now
that things are calm, we have to talk about shoe
was because I just had a meltdown about it. So
(21:02):
now that they're calm. You have to say you need
to wear shoes because they protect your feet from all
the terrible stuff that you can step on. That's why
you have to wear shoes and put them on when
I tell you too. And it's time to leave it
to them understanding the value of shoes right in a
very understandable two year old way. Apparently you don't want
(21:25):
to moralize it and say you better not you better
not pitch a fit when I tell you to put
your shoes on. Yeah, this happens every morning, right. That
doesn't help. It doesn't help. And if your kid the
next day says, well, I want to pick out my
shoes at a mom because they protect my feet, then
you are you get a toy? Yeah, you get a toy,
big playmobile box set. Well, depending on how much money
(21:49):
you have, you could at least give them positive reinforcement
and a cookie yeah boor a pat on the head.
You could also get a knockoff plood mobile not box set.
That's fine. The kid doesn't know. He's too. We got
so many knockoff toys growing up. Have you seen that
gallery of knockoff toys that I made? It's great if
you have not seen it go check it out and stuff.
(22:11):
I think I had a few of those, did you really? Yeah?
I mean my parents were teachers. We weren't like poor,
but we didn't. You know, there were three kids. We
didn't all get everything we wanted. I wanted the BMX
Mongoose and I got the Sears Goose. You know, I
wanted Pong again Sears like yeah, basically Nights of the
(22:31):
Round Table pretty much. You remember that? Yeah, but I
did look at me. Yeah, I never had brand name clothes. Uh,
unless they had you know, like a button missing or
the collar was miss shapen or something. Again, I don't
think I can stress enough how awesome that gallery of
beloved knockoff knockoffs of beloved toys that we made that's
(22:52):
on our site is. It's great. Yeah, we'll repost it,
but you can. You should definitely look under galleries. You
should dot com. There's some real missus yea. And I
have to say I remember going to plenty of stores
as a kid and being told I could pick out
a toy, but it was like something liquidators. Yeah, yeah,
like what is this thing? Did you have any rich
kid friends? Um? Yeah, they weren't like rich kids, but Yeah,
(23:16):
there were some parents were like lawyers and stuff like that.
It's like at a one particular that I was always
just so like his house was so cool. It was
like a modern house, and back then I'd never seen
a modern house. And he had, you know, the green
machine and in television, and horses and a trampoline and
a go kart and a motorcycle dude. Everything. Yeah, and
(23:39):
look at him now, he's super successful and wealthy. Yeah,
good for him. His parents raised him, right, they did. Okay,
so we're gonna hit what you touched on earlier of
when you might have a problem that's a little deeper
than your average temper tantrum and they say three or
more tantrums per day that lasts more than fifteen and
(24:00):
it's could qualify as what is now called in the
new d s M five disruptive mood disregulation disorder that
depends that is um that depends on the age two.
So there's a big hubub yeah over this right, yeah,
because it was just added to the new d s
(24:22):
M in two thousand. Yeah, a new disorder, yes, And
basically it turns temper tantrums into a mental illness, like yeah,
pure and simple if you were over age six between
six and ten. Yeah, and you have that number what
was at three three per day that last fifteen minutes
or more or it says here three or more for
(24:45):
one year, So I think there's a couple of criteria.
Then anyway, then you are eligible for anti psychotic medications
and all other manner of prescription drugs even though you're six. Yeah.
And critics are saying there's not enough data on this
(25:06):
to create a new diagnosis, Like some critics are saying
you shouldn't have done this at all. Proponents are saying, no,
this will actually help because kids are being diagnosis bipolar
at six and this will prevent that. So it's a
little awkward right now. But it's funny that they bring
up bipolar because when they when they expanded and basically
(25:26):
created children's bipolar disorder, pediatric bipolar disorder is what it's called.
UM When they expanded that, there was a fortyfold spike
in diagnoses, and as a result, the antipsychotic prescriptions for
kids aged two to five doubled between two thousand and
(25:47):
two thousand seven. So there's a definite trend of any
time a new disorder is identified or described everything I've
got that my kids they won't shut up. Can you
give them some anti psychotics please? Yeah? And uh, the
psychiatrists is sure right because he has this, because he
fits this criteria. Yeah. It's definitely been a controversial addition
(26:08):
to the d S m as are many additions to
the d S m uh. But that's not to say
that there isn't a larger issue at work, because some
of the times there is. So they want to teach
you his parents to monitor maybe don't like go put
them on psycho psychotropic drugs, but maybe monitor them after
(26:28):
the age of four and see how violent they are
and how long they last, and are they trying to
injure themselves or others? Are they holding their breath and
feigning like how severe is it? Um? Which is the
thing breath? Apparently the understanding of that now though, is
that kids don't necessarily hold them their breaths on purpose,
(26:49):
like it just kind of happens to they forget to breathe,
they get so worked up that they freathe yeah, and faint.
And apparently when your kid does that, for reek's parents
out and then kids to learn that if they hold
their breath or even threatened to hold their breath, they'll
get what they want. But apparently, if your kid holds
his or her breath or it's held for them when
(27:10):
they faint, their normal breathing will take over again, and
as a parent, you can kick start the whole process
by blowing air into their mouth. It almost like tickles
their breathing mechanism to take back over normally again even
though they fainted. And the advice is that I read
that if your kid is feigning from holding his or
(27:33):
her breath during a tantrum, you can't let that alter
your your parenting skills, like how you react to it. Yeah,
you can't be held hostage by it. Man, that's so challenging.
I can't imagine because your kid faints, it's bad news. Yeah,
I mean, hats offen, That's like going back to the
shark again. Good luck remembering to punch the shark in
(27:54):
the nose while you're paying attack. Yeah, but that is
a that is a criteria. If your kid is doing
this now and it's new and or like after age four,
and their tantrums are increasing rather than decreasing, these are
all red flags for Okay, this, this may be abnormal.
And let's see what's going on. The first step isn't
necessarily taking your kid to psychiatrists for drugs. It can.
(28:16):
You can also do a self survey of your house, like, uh,
is there a new step parent? Um, do we move recently?
Am I an alcoholic? And do we always fight? Yeah?
You know it happens where parents and kind of like kids,
you know, they don't even they don't understand what's going on.
We keep the fighting away from them, but they understand
and they pick up on body language and emotional cues
(28:37):
that you don't think are there, and they're little sponges,
and that could be a reason if uh, did you
mention maybe if you've moved. Yeah, yeah, that's a big one.
I think I said moved. Yeah, did his best friend
get a better bike than him or something? Right, you
need to go get that bike then too. But the
point is to not be freaked out by isolated incidences
(28:58):
past the age of four, uh, because they they happen,
and um, it's not a typical You just need and
if your kid has a problem with this, As parents,
you probably have a plan in place, like you're not
just reacting to each incident, like you get together and
you huddle and be like, all right, we have an
issue because little Timmy is a nightmare, and so how
(29:20):
are we going to deal with this? And then let's
stick to it. If little Timmy also is breaking your
humble figurines all the time now, then good because those
are awful, then um, well, that's actually it can be
a sign, but it's not necessarily a sign. Right. For example,
there is a study that had a pretty decent population
size from two seven research temper tantrums among two hundred
(29:43):
and seventy nine preschoolers almost two preschoolers um and uh.
They found that kids who are considered healthy um had
were less likely to become violent, self injurious, destructive, or
verbally combative like during their ten for tantrums. But it's
also been found that around of quote mentally stable preschoolers
(30:08):
will still become you know, one of these unhealthy things
during a temper tantrum from time to time. It's not
like there goes a homo figuring you have to go
to the psychiatrist now. Or if your kid like rips
the head off their barbie in a violent way, that
might be disturbing to you, but that is about as
(30:28):
normal American behavior as has ever been generated by a child. Yeah,
if your kid is being mean to animals, that's a
different story, because that that is uh, you know, it's
not a good sign. And it's certainly you want to
stop any kind of uh like violent aggression towards humans
or animals. Like that's not like, oh, let's just see
(30:48):
how'll put this plays out. You want to get in
there take care of business. Yeah, in the right way. Fish.
(31:16):
So you raise your kid, you get them out of
the terrible two's. Age four comes along, and all of
a sudden, they're like talking to you and making sense
and expressing themselves. They're able to settle themselves down. Um,
they they they're just human beings. You made it out
of the woods until the teenage years come, and then
(31:39):
it starts all over again. Yes, and then it starts
all over again. For the same reason. The prefrontal cortex
undergoes a new round of development during puberty from age
about eleven to eighteen, and as a result, the emotional
breaks that are provided by that region of the brain
(31:59):
are lost again for several years. Yeah. And it's also
similar in that teenagers might not feel like they can
express themselves even though like as a toddler you literally
can't talk, but as a teen, you know, parents just
don't understand. That's the old adage. And you've got the hormones,
and you've got new things happening to your body, and
you've got new things happening in your heart for you know,
(32:23):
the little girls and little boys. You start feeling those
feelings and it's confusing, and it's just it's it's all
happening all over again, all these things you don't understand
and can't express, and then you've got your prefemal cortex
not helping you out. And that's why you're going to
see the same similar behaviors at least. It's basically temper
tantrums the sequel. Yeah, And it may not manifest itself
(32:44):
the same way. They may not be on the floor
like kicking and screaming and vomiting, but they may rampage
through your house and slam the doors and scream and
yell and uh. They'll grow out of that though, And
again if they don't, then psychiatry is there to back
you up with some diagnoses and pills. There's oppositional defiant disorder, yeah,
(33:06):
which is basically it sounds like temper tantrums. That it
sounds like temper tantrums, basically the same thing. Yeah. This
study from University of San Diego was pretty interesting. I
thought they studied kids between the ages of ten and
twenty two. It's not a kid, by the way, and
um between eleven and eighteen years old. During that window,
(33:29):
the speed that they identified emotions indicated by facial expressions dropped.
So between ten and eighteen, if you're like your kid
can't even look at your face and read your emotional cues, Like,
that's how out of it they are, you know? Yeah,
teenagers like I couldn't even tell Dad was mad at me. Yes,
(33:52):
because the wires aren't connecting upstairs. And apparently the prefecial
corps prefernal cortex is also involved in um regulating behavior. Yeah,
which explains why teenagers are prone to like risk taking. Well, yeah,
because if the pre phone cortex isn't doing the job,
(34:13):
then I think the amygdala takes over, and the amygdala
is is not a good thing to be running your
emotions running the show, No, not emotionally. So, are you
got anything else you want to talk about? That girl
from Millieville? Yeah, go ahead, I'll actually read that part.
There was a girl, UH who in two thousand and twelve, UH,
(34:35):
at the age of six, was arrested and taken to
the police station from her kindergarten class because the temper
tantrum she threw was so bad she was wrecking her
kindergarten class. She was taken to jail for a temper
tantrum like knocking over bookcases onto the principle, yeah, and
injuring the principle yeah. Um. And she apparently was just
(34:59):
on a rampage and the cops took her to jail,
didn't book her process or anything, but I'm sure scared
the daylights out of this little girl. And the school
said she can't come back the rest of this year.
She's just invited. Yeah. Luckily it was in April, so
I imagine there was only a couple of months left
to school. Still, so we hope she's doing better. Sure,
(35:22):
we won't say her name. We didn't say her name, Tony, Nope,
the article does, which I thought was slightly irresponsible. Oh,
she was a news item. Yeah, I guess you're right. Yeah, Hey,
you don't want to be in the news. Little girl,
right to you that's it, all right. If you want
to learn more about temper tantrums, you can procreate and
(35:43):
have a kid and then see it firsthand. That's right.
You can also before you do that, if you want
to find out if you're interested in that kind of thing,
type in temperate tantrums in the search bar at how
stuffworks dot comm and will bring up this article. And
I said search bar, which means it's time for listener mail.
I'm gonna call this UH positive amnesia. Hey, guys, Nearly
(36:04):
five years ago was in and uh Portland, Oregon. I
was in a near fatal motorcycle wreck that not only
knocked my brain around in my full face helmet, but
also shattered my pelvis, broke two ribs too, vertebrae, left wrist,
right thumb, left collarbone is showing all I know, Evil kinevil.
I was in the hospital for two weeks, but only
(36:24):
remember bits and pieces of the last few days of
my stay, though I was mostly awake the whole time.
The doctors told me that nearly UH I had a
nearly two week gap in my memory, and it was
a combination of shock and medically induced amnesia. I learned
a lot about the different kinds of amnesia from your
show in ways that my team of doctor never took
the time to explain me. But I didn't. You're like, yeah,
(36:46):
that always happens. But I didn't hear you mentioned any
positive effects of memory loss. Uh, through my memory loss,
it did not. Though my memory loss did not prevent
severe ps PTSD after the incident. I think it is
all to manly help me be less afraid of red
light running land rovers. I think we did mention that
it was that was one positive effect of it. I thought,
(37:09):
did we I think so? Maybe not. Well, if we're not,
then we're glad that. Adrian wrote in he said, Um, also,
I don't have the additional trauma of remembering the numerous
surgeries and operations. Your podcast made ampniesia sound confusing and scary,
which it is. But I'm living proof that sometimes it's
best if you don't remember. Well, Thanks a lot, Adrian.
(37:29):
We're glad you are doing okay. Yeah, be careful, man,
watch out for those land rovers. Yeah, red light running
land rovers. Hope they hope the dude got in trouble. Yeah, yeah,
I got nothing else. If you if you want to
let us know about well, if you want to fill
in the gaps on our memories, something we left out
(37:50):
of an episode, we always want to hear that kind
of thing. You can go on to stuff you Should
Know dot com and check out our social links, and
you can also send us a good old fashion an email,
wrap it up, spank it on the bottom with it
some good old country goodness and send it off to
stuff Podcast at iHeart radio dot com. Yeah.
I don't want to do with select. My name's Chuck.
I don't want to pick out a select and do
an intro for this one. I don't want to work.
See that was play acting everyone. This is called how
Temper Tantrums work, And that was an example of a
temper tantrum. This is from and it was a good one.
It was um before I had a kid, and it
(00:22):
really was instructive on how things were gonna go once
I did have a kid. But I gotta tell you,
I'm five years into this thing, and she's great. She
rarely ever has thrown temper tantrums in her whole life.
She can be a real paint in the butt, but
she's never been a tantrum thrower. So I'm gonna listen
to this one again. Actually right along with you. Welcome
(00:45):
to Stuff you should Know, a production of I Heart Radio. Hey,
and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark Bush, Charles
Chuck Bryant, and again we have our guest producer Noel.
He's thrashing about on the ground, vomiting, screaming, capillaries bursting
(01:07):
in his cheeks, all because we wouldn't give him a
third pork chop not true. Yeah, boy, temper tantrums or
I always feel so bad for the parents in public,
you know, Oh really, I always think like, you screwed
up your kid already. See you're so wrong. And we're
about to dispel that. Yeah it's true, although I did
(01:29):
see a UM, we're about to talk a lot about
why it's not the parents fault. But I did some
extra research and there are experts that say you can
also be a bad parent and that could lead to
temper tantrums. Like, we don't want to blame parents, but
you can definitely play a part. And we as a
society of said, uh, from this age to this age,
(01:54):
temper tantrums are normal. And then after that then apparently
it's like the bad parenting really shines through and then
they think like, yeah, there's some real problems this kid
has and it's largely because of bad parenting or a
bad home environment, or troubles during pregnancy like abuse, things
like that. Um, that can all lead to temper tantrums
(02:16):
that turn into something else after a certain age. Yeah,
this whole thing, it makes me kind of uncomfortable. But
just parenting advice period is so like subjective and individual Yeah,
it's it's always feel like people shouldn't tell other people
how to parent, But I also I feel like they're
probably some pretty good guidelines to parenting too. So yeah,
(02:39):
and if you go back and look at, um, the
history of parenting, yeah, like it wasn't too long ago
that it was. It kind of seems to go on
a cycle. Like in the eighteenth century. Um Rousseau, the
Great Enlightenment thinker, basically was one of the first to say,
you know what, maybe kids aren't just internature adults and
(03:02):
like maybe child like something special. It's a time of development.
We should you know, become less parent centric and more
child centric as far as parenthood goes. And um, that
really kind of sparked this different idea of you know,
treating kids as kids rather than adults. And then that
(03:23):
was replaced later on by the whole like discipline and
all that of the late nineteenth early twentieth century, and
then that was replaced by the idea that kids their
childhood should be indulged, you know. And then Russo said, boy,
fetch me in my feather, I need to throw up?
Is that from fletch, No, fletch. This is what came
(03:45):
to mind. No, I just thought it'd be funny. You know,
I need to throw up, you know, the benjing and
purging back in the day, eat till you can't eat
anymore than you stick a feather it on your throat
and vomited it up. Supposedly, the vomitorium thing is a myth.
Have you heard that in Rome? Ancient Rome, vomitoriums they
supposedly had like pieces for that. I haven't heard. They
(04:07):
were a myth. Supposedly their myth mythological and not like
the Menatar, like a real myth, not like they want
you to think it's a myth. Got Okay, So we're
talking temper tantrums, and we've already kind of said, um
that during a certain period of your life, they're normal.
It's actually you would be a weird kid if you
(04:29):
didn't have a temper tantrum pretty frequently. Not weird, but
you would be in the minority for sure. Okay, but
it doesn't mean you're weird. Comparatively speaking, it means you're weird.
So like, from age one to age three ish, they
basically say, I have have your temper tantrums. It's normal. Yeah,
(04:50):
between fifty if you want a statistic of two to
three year old boys and girls have at least one
tantrum per week, and UM have a tantrum every day. Yeah,
those kids are fun between those those years. Yeah. Uh.
And then there was another study from the University of Minnesota.
I found even higher rates. UM. Nine percent of children
(05:14):
in this study between the ages of thirty, thirty months
and three years UM had a tantrum on a weekly basis. Right,
so it happens. If you had a kid, you've probably
had it happened. If you don't have kids yet, it
will happen to you. And if you have a kid
that doesn't have tantrums, they're weird. No, you're just lucky. Yeah,
you are pretty lucky. I wasn't a tantrum thrower. I know,
(05:37):
I'm sure I was, but I think I was a
pretty good kid. Yeah, I'm in saying it never happened
with me, but I was pretty chill. Yes the gate. Yeah,
my brother in law and sister in law lucked out
a good kid who's like more hard on herself than
like they are on her. That's the best self regulating kids. Yeah,
she's good and she's like right in the age two
(05:58):
and she's very good. So she's weird. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
weird and all the all the best ways. The good
news is, um, by the time they reach four or five,
you should be seeing a large drop off or complete
cessation of these tantrums. Yeah. And the reason why we
say the age um, that there is an age for
(06:23):
this to end, is because we finally figured out that
the mechanisms involved in temperate tantrums. Yeah, it's a thing.
It's not just my kid's pain in the butter, he's
in a bad mood, or he's spoiled. It's there's there's
brain activity that is causing this to happen. Yes, specifically
in the prefrontal cortex, or we should say there's a
lack of activity in the prefrontal cortex, which is the
(06:46):
last part of the brain to evolve. Yeah, like it
up until your eighteenth birthday, prefonal cortex is still evolving, right, Yes,
and developing, is I think what we mean? Yes, yes,
we do. Both said evolved, but it's true. I mean,
you know, the Victorians used to think that if you
looked inside an egg, you would see the animal that
(07:08):
species go through its full evolution, that that was its
process of development, And it kind of makes sense to
an extent, especially if you think of the brain, like
I'm sure the brain stem is the first part of
the brain to be constructed in utero, you know, and
then it goes all the way like after birth. Your
brain is still developing, and it's probably the most sophisticated
(07:29):
regions of the brain that take the longest to develop.
That makes sense. So the victorians were right all along
about throwing up All right, well should we talk about
what the tantrum? That there was a doctor who clearly
has uh some masochistic tendencies because he did a study
in which he rigged toddlers with microphones. He's the temper
(07:51):
tantrum specialist. He's like the guy he's definitely a masochist. Yeah. No,
I'm saying, God bless this guy, because it is not
fun work to chord and analyze audio tapes of temper
tantrums over and over and over. But that's what he did,
and he did find some patterns. First of all, they
only last a few minutes. Parents, it might seem like
(08:12):
an eternity there in target while your kid is like
buried in the clothes rack screaming, But it's only going
to be a few minutes, and then ten minutes later,
your kid has just probably forgotten about it, even though
you have not. The He also found that UM, based
on the types of sounds that the kids made, they
can basically be classified as sad sounds and angry sounds.
(08:34):
And he found that his name is Michael Protagal, and
Portagal found that UM, rather than one giving into the
other leading into the other, they're pretty much simultaneous. And
then once the anger, it's basically you have sadness all along,
and then it's overlaid with anger. And then once the
anger subsides, all this left to sadness, and now the
(08:58):
healing can begin because when kids are sad, they want
to be comforted, so they go to you, the parent
hopefully yeah, um, and and then the temper tantrum can subside. Yeah.
And he broke it down into three phase three stages. Uh,
you get your yelling and screaming. You've got your physical actions,
which is what we talked about, like throwing yourself on
(09:20):
the floor, and that's what you typically think of, like
kicking and screaming, and then um or biting, and then
you've got your whimpering and whining, which is the third
and saddest stage right to witness, because the kid has
just played out at this point and it's really sad. Yeah.
And protocol also found that if the kid goes straight
(09:41):
into the physical stage, Yes, the tantrum is even shorter lived.
I think because they text themselves more quickly. Yeah, that
makes sense. Uh. And these we talked earlier about Noel's
tantrum before we came in and how his face is flushed.
That is something that can happen if they are screaming
loud enough, they and pop blood vessels in the face
(10:01):
and capillaries, and they can induce vomiting. It can get
like really serious and violent and disturbing. Inducing vomiting is funny.
You don't just wouldn't you just be like, you stupid kid?
What is wrong with you? You just screamed until you
threw up? Yeah. I think that's a good approach. Well,
I mean you don't say, certainly think alright, So back, yeah, stupid,
(10:28):
Back to the prefrontal cortex. Uh. We said it develops
very Uh, I don't know about slowly, but it develops
over the course of your life until you're about eighteen. Um.
But it doesn't even start to till you're four and
they think the reason why, or not necessarily the reason
why they think. Because of this this malleability and plasticity
in the prefrontal cortex, we are able to acquire language
(10:52):
skills as humans. So it's kind of a trade off
because while we can acquire language skills while our p
is developing, we don't have the emotional stability that we
have later on in life with the fully developed PFC,
because the prefrontal cortex is in charge of regulating our
emotional stability. Yeah, and basically saying like whoa, it's the
(11:15):
part of the it's the joey part of the brain, right,
So your kid, your kid doesn't have the joey part
of the brain yet. There is since you brought up language,
there is a um there's a conflict between what the
kid can understand and then relay back to you at
that age, like they may be able to understand what
you're saying, but they can't speak the words yet. So
(11:36):
you've got a really frustrated kid because it can't get
out what it wants to say. And then you've got
the prefrontal cortex not doing anything yet, right, it's not
putting the brakes on. Yeah, so that is a tantrum.
I mean, that's a recipe for a tantrum. And why
don't you stew on that for a minute while we
take a message break because that was some heavy stuff. Okay,
(12:11):
so we're back. We just talked about the prefrontal cortex
and you, Chuck just explained what a temper tantrum is. Yeah,
because we all have like moments of frustration. We all
have um times when like we act out a little bit,
like you know, this light bulb is supposed to work,
(12:32):
you know that kind of thing, or road rage. That's
an adult temper tantrum exactly, you know, But we have
prefrontal cortex is we've been socialized to feel embarrassed for
acting out. Um, if you took that away and shrunk
us down by several feet, you would have what's a
normal temper tantrum and kids. Yeah, and we also should
(12:52):
point out that the fight or flight kicks into a
big shot of cortis all happens, and so everything is
just messed up. Like it's a wonder your kid doesn't
have more of these, right when you think about that,
So that frustration, Um, does trigger cortisol. It triggers Norah
and ephron. Uh, your fight or flight syndrome or responses
(13:13):
kicked into high gear. And again you have nothing to
put the brakes on all of this. What's interesting is, Um,
some of the physical signs that the fight or flight
responses kicked in are also signs that your kids about
to have like a major meltdown. Things like, um, you're breathing, flesh, skin, sweating, sweating,
(13:36):
pupils dilated, drooling and spitting. Yeah, all these things where
I like, you see your kids starting to do that,
you just felling the exorcists gonna blow yes. And the reason, um,
they stop or at least taper off by the ages
of four or five is because you're the joey part
of your brain starts to work and the kid can
(13:57):
now talk to you and all of these kind of
undo and the kids like that was the problem because
they can now tell you that, right, I couldn't talk. Yeah,
it smelled like chili dogs all the time, and I tried.
I just couldn't tell you that. Yeah, in my PFC
wasn't working. So what am I to do? Just go
berserk exactly? Um. The thing is is like, yes, your
(14:20):
kid is going to likely age out of this. If
your kid doesn't age out of it, then perhaps it's
time to consult a specialist, say around five six years
of age, usually six, I think. Um. But along the way,
you can help your kid have fewer temper tantrums, have
less severe temper tantrums, and basically just be a better
(14:44):
human being in general by how you as the parents
address the temper tantrums. By telling them they're dumb for
just throwing up. Just you think that in your head.
You don't say it out loud or else you're a
terrible parent. If you think it, you're fine, Okay. Um.
The number one thing you want to do, um, prior
to temper tantrums is giving the kid a a schedule. Yeah,
(15:10):
because apparently a lot of the temper tantrums come from
a fear that somethings that they're not going to get food,
whether they're not gonna get held or at tension or whatever.
If they're on a schedule, they'll know that it's coming.
And if they start to freak out, you can say,
of course, your goldfish are coming. It's almost two pm.
Settled down, you little goldfish. Junkie. Yeah, and I know
(15:34):
they stress scheduling all lot with kids with like Asperger's
uh and autism, But it's a big deal. Period. You
should get your kids on a schedule. Kids like knowing
what to expect. They don't like balls. If you have
to make your own bowl of cereal at age like two,
the parent needs to take some time and figure out
what's going wrong here with water? Yeah remember that what
(15:55):
was that Friday's Yeah, when they did that milk. Yeah,
that's funny that you said that is I just remembered yesterday.
What a good movie Friday. Oh yeah, it was really funny.
It's wonderful. Uh. Okay, So get your kids on a schedule.
That's a big one. This is this is preventing yes, um,
temper tantrum and that's regular sleep, regular feeding, uh, regular interaction.
(16:17):
Any kind of thing they can rely on is going
to help, like chill your kid out and get them stable.
I remember, um, one of the things one of the
bases of temper tantrums is frustration. Yeah, and one way
around that is to give your kid make them feel empowered. Yeah.
I like this bit of advice. I thought that was
spot on. So like in this article, I think Conger says, um,
(16:39):
if your kid hates putting shoes on, basically distract them
by saying, hey, big boy, do you want to wear
your duck boots or your cowboy boots? Yeah? You you
choose to you. Yeah, sort of like heading them off
at the templeton. You still have to wear shoes, but
you get to choose which one. Yeah, I've heard that's
a pretty common thing, if acause a lot of kids
(17:00):
don't want to get dressed when they should or put
on their shoes when they should. And um, a lot
of parents now are like letting their kids dress themselves.
Yeah you can tell, yeah, but look around. I know,
and it's I think it's great and fun to see
little kids walking around in these crazy outfits that they
clearly picked out. It's like a moment. It's like many
mental asylums all let out. It's like the Reagan era
(17:22):
all over again, but for kids. I think it's awesome. Um, Okay,
so empowering choices, great advice. So okay, you've taken these
steps to avoid it, it's still not gonna do. Your
kids still gonna have a temperature tantrum. It's just you
can expect it. It's inevitable. Um So, when a temper
tantrum happens, here's the hard part. You have to stay calm.
(17:48):
And apparently the the advice from parenting experts psychologists is
ignore it. Yeah, this is not us talking. We've researched this,
and they say to try and ignore it. They say
that that is the quickest way too, to put an
end to that particular tantrum. If they're not getting the attention,
(18:12):
then they will quit sooner. Yeah, and that's what they say.
So long as they're not hurting themselves or other people
or destroying property. If they're just screaming and being a
brat basically is what it amounts to, then ignoring it
is the best course of action. Yeah. The reason why is,
um if you say you are like, oh, I know,
(18:32):
you feel so bad, and you pick them up and
you hug them and everything, you're giving your kid positive reinforcement.
You're saying, hey, scream your head off and I'll pick
you up and rub your back and comfort you. You
don't want to do that. You want to remain neutral
and basically not associate this thing with anything during it.
That's what I would do, especially in public and just
(18:54):
be like, man, whose kid is that? Right? I'm gonna
go over here and eat a box of neutral green
bars if i'm myself while this little kid finishes up,
and I'll just pay for it at the register with
an empty box and it's all good. Um. An sense
of shape. The other reason, and we're joking around here,
this is if someone like I have friends who have
(19:15):
had a big trouble with this and it's not a
laughing matter. It's really a lot of stress on a family. Oh,
I can't imagine we joke because it's just what we
always do. Another time, the guy in the grocery store
gets to go see you later, good luck. Um. Another
reason not to what like they say, to muffle that
is because there could be other underlying causes like hearing
(19:36):
problem or vision vision impairment that you won't notice. Um
if you're if you're not, just like you know, if
you've got the kid buried in your chest. Yeah it's weird.
It's like you want to ignore it. Let it run
its natural course, watch it out of like the side
of your eye, you know. Yeah. Um, Because you don't
want them to like you really don't want them to
(19:56):
think you're paying any attention to them at all. And
apparently and when that, when that's done, it just runs
its course and it's it's over with, and like we
said earlier, the kid forgets even what was bothering him
or her, you know, a few minutes afterward. Yeah, what
you really don't want to do is punish the kid
or reprimand the kid in the middle of a tantrum
(20:18):
or right after a tantrum, because it's a natural thing,
it's gonna happen. That is not a healthy approach to
getting your child to not do something because they're two
and three years old, and to be punished for something
that they don't understand, it's just that's not gonna help anything. Sure,
So what you do want to do is after a
meltdown has taken place and things are calm again, you
(20:41):
want to take some time to explain to the kid
basically what went wrong or what they didn't do. Let's say,
is over the shoes again. You you they've just told
you we need to talk about shoes again. Right now
that things are calm, we have to talk about shoe
was because I just had a meltdown about it. So
(21:02):
now that they're calm. You have to say you need
to wear shoes because they protect your feet from all
the terrible stuff that you can step on. That's why
you have to wear shoes and put them on when
I tell you too. And it's time to leave it
to them understanding the value of shoes right in a
very understandable two year old way. Apparently you don't want
(21:25):
to moralize it and say you better not you better
not pitch a fit when I tell you to put
your shoes on. Yeah, this happens every morning, right. That
doesn't help. It doesn't help. And if your kid the
next day says, well, I want to pick out my
shoes at a mom because they protect my feet, then
you are you get a toy? Yeah, you get a toy,
big playmobile box set. Well, depending on how much money
(21:49):
you have, you could at least give them positive reinforcement
and a cookie yeah boor a pat on the head.
You could also get a knockoff plood mobile not box set.
That's fine. The kid doesn't know. He's too. We got
so many knockoff toys growing up. Have you seen that
gallery of knockoff toys that I made? It's great if
you have not seen it go check it out and stuff.
(22:11):
I think I had a few of those, did you really? Yeah?
I mean my parents were teachers. We weren't like poor,
but we didn't. You know, there were three kids. We
didn't all get everything we wanted. I wanted the BMX
Mongoose and I got the Sears Goose. You know, I
wanted Pong again Sears like yeah, basically Nights of the
(22:31):
Round Table pretty much. You remember that? Yeah, but I
did look at me. Yeah, I never had brand name clothes. Uh,
unless they had you know, like a button missing or
the collar was miss shapen or something. Again, I don't
think I can stress enough how awesome that gallery of
beloved knockoff knockoffs of beloved toys that we made that's
(22:52):
on our site is. It's great. Yeah, we'll repost it,
but you can. You should definitely look under galleries. You
should dot com. There's some real missus yea. And I
have to say I remember going to plenty of stores
as a kid and being told I could pick out
a toy, but it was like something liquidators. Yeah, yeah,
like what is this thing? Did you have any rich
kid friends? Um? Yeah, they weren't like rich kids, but Yeah,
(23:16):
there were some parents were like lawyers and stuff like that.
It's like at a one particular that I was always
just so like his house was so cool. It was
like a modern house, and back then I'd never seen
a modern house. And he had, you know, the green
machine and in television, and horses and a trampoline and
a go kart and a motorcycle dude. Everything. Yeah, and
(23:39):
look at him now, he's super successful and wealthy. Yeah,
good for him. His parents raised him, right, they did. Okay,
so we're gonna hit what you touched on earlier of
when you might have a problem that's a little deeper
than your average temper tantrum and they say three or
more tantrums per day that lasts more than fifteen and
(24:00):
it's could qualify as what is now called in the
new d s M five disruptive mood disregulation disorder that
depends that is um that depends on the age two.
So there's a big hubub yeah over this right, yeah,
because it was just added to the new d s
(24:22):
M in two thousand. Yeah, a new disorder, yes, And
basically it turns temper tantrums into a mental illness, like yeah,
pure and simple if you were over age six between
six and ten. Yeah, and you have that number what
was at three three per day that last fifteen minutes
or more or it says here three or more for
(24:45):
one year, So I think there's a couple of criteria.
Then anyway, then you are eligible for anti psychotic medications
and all other manner of prescription drugs even though you're six. Yeah.
And critics are saying there's not enough data on this
(25:06):
to create a new diagnosis, Like some critics are saying
you shouldn't have done this at all. Proponents are saying, no,
this will actually help because kids are being diagnosis bipolar
at six and this will prevent that. So it's a
little awkward right now. But it's funny that they bring
up bipolar because when they when they expanded and basically
(25:26):
created children's bipolar disorder, pediatric bipolar disorder is what it's called.
UM When they expanded that, there was a fortyfold spike
in diagnoses, and as a result, the antipsychotic prescriptions for
kids aged two to five doubled between two thousand and
(25:47):
two thousand seven. So there's a definite trend of any
time a new disorder is identified or described everything I've
got that my kids they won't shut up. Can you
give them some anti psychotics please? Yeah? And uh, the
psychiatrists is sure right because he has this, because he
fits this criteria. Yeah. It's definitely been a controversial addition
(26:08):
to the d S m as are many additions to
the d S m uh. But that's not to say
that there isn't a larger issue at work, because some
of the times there is. So they want to teach
you his parents to monitor maybe don't like go put
them on psycho psychotropic drugs, but maybe monitor them after
(26:28):
the age of four and see how violent they are
and how long they last, and are they trying to
injure themselves or others? Are they holding their breath and
feigning like how severe is it? Um? Which is the
thing breath? Apparently the understanding of that now though, is
that kids don't necessarily hold them their breaths on purpose,
(26:49):
like it just kind of happens to they forget to breathe,
they get so worked up that they freathe yeah, and faint.
And apparently when your kid does that, for reek's parents
out and then kids to learn that if they hold
their breath or even threatened to hold their breath, they'll
get what they want. But apparently, if your kid holds
his or her breath or it's held for them when
(27:10):
they faint, their normal breathing will take over again, and
as a parent, you can kick start the whole process
by blowing air into their mouth. It almost like tickles
their breathing mechanism to take back over normally again even
though they fainted. And the advice is that I read
that if your kid is feigning from holding his or
(27:33):
her breath during a tantrum, you can't let that alter
your your parenting skills, like how you react to it. Yeah,
you can't be held hostage by it. Man, that's so challenging.
I can't imagine because your kid faints, it's bad news. Yeah,
I mean, hats offen, That's like going back to the
shark again. Good luck remembering to punch the shark in
(27:54):
the nose while you're paying attack. Yeah, but that is
a that is a criteria. If your kid is doing
this now and it's new and or like after age four,
and their tantrums are increasing rather than decreasing, these are
all red flags for Okay, this, this may be abnormal.
And let's see what's going on. The first step isn't
necessarily taking your kid to psychiatrists for drugs. It can.
(28:16):
You can also do a self survey of your house, like, uh,
is there a new step parent? Um, do we move recently?
Am I an alcoholic? And do we always fight? Yeah?
You know it happens where parents and kind of like kids,
you know, they don't even they don't understand what's going on.
We keep the fighting away from them, but they understand
and they pick up on body language and emotional cues
(28:37):
that you don't think are there, and they're little sponges,
and that could be a reason if uh, did you
mention maybe if you've moved. Yeah, yeah, that's a big one.
I think I said moved. Yeah, did his best friend
get a better bike than him or something? Right, you
need to go get that bike then too. But the
point is to not be freaked out by isolated incidences
(28:58):
past the age of four, uh, because they they happen,
and um, it's not a typical You just need and
if your kid has a problem with this, As parents,
you probably have a plan in place, like you're not
just reacting to each incident, like you get together and
you huddle and be like, all right, we have an
issue because little Timmy is a nightmare, and so how
(29:20):
are we going to deal with this? And then let's
stick to it. If little Timmy also is breaking your
humble figurines all the time now, then good because those
are awful, then um, well, that's actually it can be
a sign, but it's not necessarily a sign. Right. For example,
there is a study that had a pretty decent population
size from two seven research temper tantrums among two hundred
(29:43):
and seventy nine preschoolers almost two preschoolers um and uh.
They found that kids who are considered healthy um had
were less likely to become violent, self injurious, destructive, or
verbally combative like during their ten for tantrums. But it's
also been found that around of quote mentally stable preschoolers
(30:08):
will still become you know, one of these unhealthy things
during a temper tantrum from time to time. It's not
like there goes a homo figuring you have to go
to the psychiatrist now. Or if your kid like rips
the head off their barbie in a violent way, that
might be disturbing to you, but that is about as
(30:28):
normal American behavior as has ever been generated by a child. Yeah,
if your kid is being mean to animals, that's a
different story, because that that is uh, you know, it's
not a good sign. And it's certainly you want to
stop any kind of uh like violent aggression towards humans
or animals. Like that's not like, oh, let's just see
(30:48):
how'll put this plays out. You want to get in
there take care of business. Yeah, in the right way. Fish.
(31:16):
So you raise your kid, you get them out of
the terrible two's. Age four comes along, and all of
a sudden, they're like talking to you and making sense
and expressing themselves. They're able to settle themselves down. Um,
they they they're just human beings. You made it out
of the woods until the teenage years come, and then
(31:39):
it starts all over again. Yes, and then it starts
all over again. For the same reason. The prefrontal cortex
undergoes a new round of development during puberty from age
about eleven to eighteen, and as a result, the emotional
breaks that are provided by that region of the brain
(31:59):
are lost again for several years. Yeah. And it's also
similar in that teenagers might not feel like they can
express themselves even though like as a toddler you literally
can't talk, but as a teen, you know, parents just
don't understand. That's the old adage. And you've got the hormones,
and you've got new things happening to your body, and
you've got new things happening in your heart for you know,
(32:23):
the little girls and little boys. You start feeling those
feelings and it's confusing, and it's just it's it's all
happening all over again, all these things you don't understand
and can't express, and then you've got your prefemal cortex
not helping you out. And that's why you're going to
see the same similar behaviors at least. It's basically temper
tantrums the sequel. Yeah, And it may not manifest itself
(32:44):
the same way. They may not be on the floor
like kicking and screaming and vomiting, but they may rampage
through your house and slam the doors and scream and
yell and uh. They'll grow out of that though, And
again if they don't, then psychiatry is there to back
you up with some diagnoses and pills. There's oppositional defiant disorder, yeah,
(33:06):
which is basically it sounds like temper tantrums. That it
sounds like temper tantrums, basically the same thing. Yeah. This
study from University of San Diego was pretty interesting. I
thought they studied kids between the ages of ten and
twenty two. It's not a kid, by the way, and
um between eleven and eighteen years old. During that window,
(33:29):
the speed that they identified emotions indicated by facial expressions dropped.
So between ten and eighteen, if you're like your kid
can't even look at your face and read your emotional cues, Like,
that's how out of it they are, you know? Yeah,
teenagers like I couldn't even tell Dad was mad at me. Yes,
(33:52):
because the wires aren't connecting upstairs. And apparently the prefecial
corps prefernal cortex is also involved in um regulating behavior. Yeah,
which explains why teenagers are prone to like risk taking. Well, yeah,
because if the pre phone cortex isn't doing the job,
(34:13):
then I think the amygdala takes over, and the amygdala
is is not a good thing to be running your
emotions running the show, No, not emotionally. So, are you
got anything else you want to talk about? That girl
from Millieville? Yeah, go ahead, I'll actually read that part.
There was a girl, UH who in two thousand and twelve, UH,
(34:35):
at the age of six, was arrested and taken to
the police station from her kindergarten class because the temper
tantrum she threw was so bad she was wrecking her
kindergarten class. She was taken to jail for a temper
tantrum like knocking over bookcases onto the principle, yeah, and
injuring the principle yeah. Um. And she apparently was just
(34:59):
on a rampage and the cops took her to jail,
didn't book her process or anything, but I'm sure scared
the daylights out of this little girl. And the school
said she can't come back the rest of this year.
She's just invited. Yeah. Luckily it was in April, so
I imagine there was only a couple of months left
to school. Still, so we hope she's doing better. Sure,
(35:22):
we won't say her name. We didn't say her name, Tony, Nope,
the article does, which I thought was slightly irresponsible. Oh,
she was a news item. Yeah, I guess you're right. Yeah, Hey,
you don't want to be in the news. Little girl,
right to you that's it, all right. If you want
to learn more about temper tantrums, you can procreate and
(35:43):
have a kid and then see it firsthand. That's right.
You can also before you do that, if you want
to find out if you're interested in that kind of thing,
type in temperate tantrums in the search bar at how
stuffworks dot comm and will bring up this article. And
I said search bar, which means it's time for listener mail.
I'm gonna call this UH positive amnesia. Hey, guys, Nearly
(36:04):
five years ago was in and uh Portland, Oregon. I
was in a near fatal motorcycle wreck that not only
knocked my brain around in my full face helmet, but
also shattered my pelvis, broke two ribs too, vertebrae, left wrist,
right thumb, left collarbone is showing all I know, Evil kinevil.
I was in the hospital for two weeks, but only
(36:24):
remember bits and pieces of the last few days of
my stay, though I was mostly awake the whole time.
The doctors told me that nearly UH I had a
nearly two week gap in my memory, and it was
a combination of shock and medically induced amnesia. I learned
a lot about the different kinds of amnesia from your
show in ways that my team of doctor never took
the time to explain me. But I didn't. You're like, yeah,
(36:46):
that always happens. But I didn't hear you mentioned any
positive effects of memory loss. Uh, through my memory loss,
it did not. Though my memory loss did not prevent
severe ps PTSD after the incident. I think it is
all to manly help me be less afraid of red
light running land rovers. I think we did mention that
it was that was one positive effect of it. I thought,
(37:09):
did we I think so? Maybe not. Well, if we're not,
then we're glad that. Adrian wrote in he said, Um, also,
I don't have the additional trauma of remembering the numerous
surgeries and operations. Your podcast made ampniesia sound confusing and scary,
which it is. But I'm living proof that sometimes it's
best if you don't remember. Well, Thanks a lot, Adrian.
(37:29):
We're glad you are doing okay. Yeah, be careful, man,
watch out for those land rovers. Yeah, red light running
land rovers. Hope they hope the dude got in trouble. Yeah, yeah,
I got nothing else. If you if you want to
let us know about well, if you want to fill
in the gaps on our memories, something we left out
(37:50):
of an episode, we always want to hear that kind
of thing. You can go on to stuff you Should
Know dot com and check out our social links, and
you can also send us a good old fashion an email,
wrap it up, spank it on the bottom with it
some good old country goodness and send it off to
stuff Podcast at iHeart radio dot com. Yeah.
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