September 14, 2025 • 15 mins
Your sweet preschooler just turned into a pint-sized whirlwind—kicking, screaming, and even hitting.
Before you panic or punish, listen in. Dr Justin and Kylie Coulson unpack why three-year-olds lash out, why it’s actually developmentally normal, and the calm, practical steps that help them (and you) find peace.
Key Points
- Why hitting at age three is common—and not a sign you’re raising a violent teen.
- The real drivers: big emotions, low impulse control, limited language.
- Three core responses: stay regulated, set clear limits, redirect with movement or creative outlets.
- After the storm: empathic conversations and rehearsal for “next time.”
- Prevention tips: check the HALTS (Hungry, Angry, Lonely, Tired, Stressed) and keep screen time low.
Quote of the Episode
“Regulating emotions is harder than learning to walk or tie shoelaces. Your job is to stay the adult while your child learns.” – Dr Justin Coulson
Resources Mentioned
- Little People, Big Feelings [Webinar] – practical tools for parents of toddlers and preschoolers.
- Little People, Big Feelings [The Summit]
Action Steps for Parents
- Stay calm—model the regulation you want your child to learn.
- State the boundary—“We have gentle hands. Hitting hurts.”
- Redirect energy—offer drawing, movement, or grounding games.
- Debrief later—when calm, problem-solve and rehearse next time.
- Check the basics—food, sleep, connection, and screen habits.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:05):
One of the biggest challenges of early childhood is having
a child who hits. What do you do when you
have a violent child, a child who gets emotionally disregulated
and then they come at you. It's all arms and legs,
feet and hands. They're kicking, they're hitting, they're screaming at you,
they're telling you that they hate you. And all you
(00:26):
did was say, no, sweetie, you can't stay at the
park any longer. It's time to go home.
Speaker 2 (00:31):
Or you cut their sandwiches and triangles instead of squares.
Speaker 1 (00:33):
I know, I mean, I've said this before. You always
always cut in squares or rectangles first, because if they
want triangles, you can just go diagonal. If you're gone
triangular first, it's really hard to turn them into a square.
But we digress. What do we do when we've got
a child who is really upset so much so that
they're becoming physically aggressive towards us, towards usually towards mum.
(00:54):
The realities, they don't do it towards dad so much.
That's what we discussed today on the Happy Families podcast. Yes, Gooday,
Welcome to the Happy Families Podcast. Real parenting Solutions every
single day on Australia's most downloaded parenting podcast. We are
Justin and Kylie Colson and we are delighted to have
you join us today. If you knew to the pod,
thanks so much for jumping on board today. A conversation
(01:16):
about kids who get aggressive and violent. We've had this
happened in our family. I remember years ago my little
brother was terrified because one of his kids was constantly
hitting his wife. And it always seems to happen around
about the age of let's say three ish. As a
general rule, Kylie, you've got an early childcare background. This
(01:37):
is what you lived for when you were younger and
working in that industry. Were kids violent? Do they hit
each other at kindergarten preschool? I'll take that as a yes.
Speaker 2 (01:52):
Wherever there are children, there will be violence.
Speaker 1 (01:56):
Yeah, constant separation. How you to stop using your hands
we have we have soft we have pulling and scratching.
You've got to use those lines, right, It's all about
we have gentle hands, we have soft hands, we have
nice hands, we have kind hands. So let's discuss this.
I want to initially just make it really clear. This
(02:16):
is as you've laughed at me for asking the question.
And developmentally appropriate behavior that we see all the time
when you have children who don't know how to regulate
their emotions and therefore their behaviors, because your behavior follows
your emotion. If you're feeling disregulated emotionally, especially if you're young,
(02:36):
you'll typically become dysregulated in your behavior. Impulse control is
not the strong suit of a three year old.
Speaker 2 (02:45):
The reality is they've got these really big emotions and
they've got to be able to find a way to
let that emotion move through their body in an appropriate way.
But as a three year old, they don't learn that
on their own.
Speaker 1 (02:56):
No, I mean, emotion regulation kind of begins in a
very ordinary way from about the age of three, and
it gets better and better until researchers believe that somewhere
between eight and ten is when the typical child can
usually regulate their emotions and therefore the behaviors in a
reasonable way most of the time, in most circumstances, with
(03:17):
a lot of caveats, right, because if they're hungry, or
they're tired, or they're stressed, or if they're.
Speaker 2 (03:20):
Feeling the forty two.
Speaker 1 (03:24):
Well I'm more than forty two, now, did I say
with it? No? But I did feel targeted when you
looked at me the way that you said that.
Speaker 2 (03:31):
Maybe I was talking about me.
Speaker 1 (03:33):
You're not quite forty two anymore either. It's not just
emotion regulation, though, there's also language limitations. So children do
know how to communicate, and therefore we expect, since they
know how to talk, we expect that they're going to
share with us their feelings all the time.
Speaker 2 (03:50):
At this age, as a young parent, there was a
massive emphasis on the terrible twos. Oh yes, but as
we parented each of our children, we actually recognize that
two was quite manageable compared to the three was not.
Three was where it really hit. And I don't know
if that's because we're progressed as a human race, and
we've been able to kind of start to manage our
(04:13):
own emotions around two years. But at three, they're so
much more articulate. They're so much more capable in these
tiny little.
Speaker 1 (04:22):
Bodies, except when they get angry, except when they become
emotionally dysregulated, and the size of their emotions, like the
emotional intensity of a three year old is massive. The
only other place that I see the emotional intensity of
a three year old is an angry red pea platter
who gets cut off or who isn't being allowed to
drive fast enough. That was so funny in my head.
(04:42):
You're not even smiling at me. I thought that was
a really great.
Speaker 2 (04:45):
No, because I wouldn't say it was a pea plater.
I'd say it's a middle age a.
Speaker 1 (04:49):
Boomer, maybe a boomer there is anyway, Let's move on.
So we've got inhibition and impulse control low, we've got
high emotional intensity. We've got limited language capacity. Hitting isn
munication when words fail, when frustration and other needs simply
become overwhelming. And I just want to emphasize before we
get into my three solutions, you might have others because
(05:11):
we haven't discussed this ahead of time. This behavior, well,
it isn't Every child doesn't do it. It's not considered
developmentally inappropriate. It's normal. It's typically going to happen when
children are less mature. The only time that I see
it with older children is when they are extremely dysregulated,
(05:32):
or when you have a neuro developmentally challenged child. So
if you've got a neurodivergent child, then you might see
it in older kids as well. In fact, I was
at a school about a month ago, and a child
escaped the classroom that they were and they ran into
the room where I was giving a talk to students,
literally raced up the front and looked at me and
then whacked me. They kind of as they did it,
(05:52):
I think they realized that I wasn't somebody that they
were familiar with. They didn't know who I was, and
they didn't know what they were doing, and they really
pulled the well, it wasn't a punch, but they really
pulled back as they made connection with me. And I mean,
I wasn't bothered by it, didn't hurt me at all.
They whacked me across the shoulder. It wasn't like they
hit me in the head or anything like that. But
this was a child who had some cognitive difficulties, some
(06:15):
cognitive challenges, and so sometimes you'll see that kind of
behavior with older kids as well. After the break, we're
gonna map out the three things that you can do
to help your child when they are hitting inappropriately and
it just keeps happening and happening. Okay, Kylie. I remember
(06:39):
getting this distressed phone call from my brother when he
just said, our child keeps on hitting his mum, and
it doesn't matter what we do. We've tried to hold
his hands down, we've tried to tell him to stop it.
We don't like it. We've lectured him, we've tried to
hit him back, and he's still doing it. We don't
know what to do. I mean, he was beside himself
and this has been going on for about three months.
It's not like it was a one and done thing.
It was in during So when this happens, I've got
(07:02):
a couple of things that I think are worth emphasizing.
The first is that hitting is not okay, period, and
our children need to know that we can. We should.
It's incumbent upon us to set really clear limits to
let our children know, and maybe even by holding their
hand and holding it away and saying we have soft hands.
We do not hit. It's not nice to hit. It
hurts the whole gentle parenting thing. I'm not suggesting that
(07:26):
we get tough, that we get nasty, that we even
hurt our child, but we have to communicate clearly, absolutely,
this is a boundary. You've crossed it. It's not okay.
Now we can do it lovingly, we can do it gently,
but our children need to know clearly you are not
allowed to hit me.
Speaker 2 (07:45):
You gave that big long list that your brother shared
with you. Of all the things they tried, the one
thing they didn't try up until that point was actually
providing him with another outlet. The biggest challenge we have
is that we think that because emotions are something that
we feel, then they don't require action. But in order
(08:08):
for us to process emotion, the most effective way is movement.
So when we're frustrated or when we're angry, that's actually
when I do the best cleaning in my house. Not
only is it the.
Speaker 1 (08:19):
Best cleaning should get you irritated more, I do it
so fast right.
Speaker 2 (08:24):
There is so much energy stored in my body through
that emotion that the best thing I can do is
find a positive outlet. I remember when our eldest was
probably she'd actually started school, and she was having some really,
really big emotions, and so we taught her to draw
angry pictures. When she was really worked up. We'd pull
(08:47):
out the crayons and she would just do these massive
storm clouds, and we told her she could draw as
big as she wants, and it worked really well, so
well that we got a quite frustraded phone call from
the school one day because she'd gotten in trouble and
she was really frustrated. So she grabbed a text and
(09:08):
drew all over the carpet, And when they rang and
told me, I knew exactly what she'd done, and I
was so proud of her because instead of her using
all of these terrible words or worse, beating someone, beating
somebody else up, she had done exactly what we taught her.
We just obviously had an emphasized paper was a really
important part of the process.
Speaker 1 (09:28):
All right, So I'm going to check out all of
my notes and I'm just going to run through handful
things that are going to be useful. Number One, we
need to stay regulated ourselves. If we become disregulated, it's
not going to work. So we've got to be the adult.
Even though they're trying to hit us they're three, the
reality is, yes, it hurts a little bit, but they're
not generally going to cause any significant damage either to
us or to property.
Speaker 2 (09:47):
I think the thing that parents get really scared of
is my child's hitting me at three, They're going to
still be hitting me at fifteen. They're still going to
be hitting me. You know, and become violent.
Speaker 1 (09:54):
Yeah, they will grow out of it, especially if you
set clear limits. So be regulated, be the adult the
note that's not okay. But you can also then redirect them.
So distraction and redirection are the answers. Like you said, movement,
doing some drawing.
Speaker 2 (10:09):
Maybe they want to hit a pillow, Like, if they
really want that punching kind of motion, then give them
a punching pillow or a punching bag.
Speaker 1 (10:18):
I don't like that one. I mean, people can make
up their own minds. I don't like the one because
it's still it normalizes the act of hitting as an
outlet for aggression or frustration or dysregulation. And I'd rather
redirect it into something else that can be physical. But
perhaps that's less violent, because if it.
Speaker 2 (10:34):
Is okay, if you're making a bigger deal of it
than it needs to be. I think that it's a
completely appropriate way to let off some steam. Maybe did
we should do a smashroom for toddlers?
Speaker 1 (10:46):
How good would that bee? Put the helmet on, put
the gloves on, let's go. There are a couple of
other things to keep in mind. To bear in mind
here high emotions, long intelligence, so as so long as
the kids know they're not allowed to hurt people of property.
I'm probably not too bothered about what they're doing. It's
really about that distraction. And I also think once they've
(11:07):
calmed down, we want to have I'm constantly emphasizing the
three is of effective discipline. What do you need right now?
If you can't give them what they need right now
because they're so disregulated that you can't communicate, wait till
they've calmed down and then problem solved. There was clearly
an unmet need there. What are we going to do
next time? And with rehearsal, I mean you're not going
to get their first first go.
Speaker 2 (11:25):
And not with a three year old. It's it's going
to take a long time.
Speaker 1 (11:28):
Yeah, Like you look at how long it takes to
learn to tie up shoelacers or learn how to write
their name, learn to walk. Regulating emotions is way harder
than any of those things. But on repeat, what are
we going to do next time that happens? We failed
that time? What did we agree on? So? What can
we do next time? How can I remind you? On repeat?
Lots of empathy, lots of perspective taking, lots of conversation,
(11:49):
around this, and by the time they're around about I
don't know, thirteen fourteen, they usually will have stopped it
just in time for the next brain explosion, which will
kick it off for again.
Speaker 2 (11:57):
You're not making anyone feel very good right now. You
know one of the other techniques that's so powerful, And
I remember reading somewhere it's not enough to do it
in the moment. You actually have to practice with your
kids when they're calm. Yeah, yeah, but breathing is so powerful,
teaching your children to take some deep breaths when they
(12:18):
feel like all of that pent up energy is about
to explode out of them.
Speaker 1 (12:22):
I remember that time when Emily was probably about four
or five and she was having the biggest dummy spit.
She had been violent, she'd been throwing things and kicking,
and I took it to her bedroom and said, I'm
going to stay with you unless you kick me out.
But I know that you're really angry right now and
we need to work through this. And she jumped on
the bed hit under the blankets and starting it and
(12:44):
just being a white animal under the blankets. And we
did that grounding technique, the five four three two one
grounding technique and she did not want to do it.
I said, I, reckon, even under the blankets, there's five
things you can see. Tell me five things you can see.
And she's screamed and she said, no, I'm not doing it.
And I said, well, I reckon, if I was under
the blanket with you, I'd be able to see. And
I five things the hair on her arms, her knee
sticking into her chin because of the way she was sitting,
(13:06):
the sheets, and so on, and then four things you
can feel, and I talked her about how I could
feel it getting hot under there, and I could feel
the sheets rustling against my arm and so on. And
then three things that you can hear. And I said,
can you tell me three things that you can hear?
And she said no, And I said, I bet that
if you did tell me, you could hear your breathing.
(13:28):
You're heavy, angy breathing, and you could hear my voice,
and maybe you could hear the sheets rustling. And then
I said, work about two things you can smell? Can
you tell me that? And I could feel I could
hear her calming down, and she said, I'm not telling
you what I can smell. And I said, I reckon,
you can smell your stinky feet under the sheets, and
(13:50):
she laughed and I was like, gotcha. And then one
thing you can taste, and then she told me what
she could taste. She gave me her standard answer, my spit,
and within a minute she was calm, and she climbed
out from under the sheets and she gave me a cuddle,
and then we had the chat what do we do
next time? Should we practice it now? And it was
(14:10):
so useful. Grunting techniques, breathing, distraction, drawing, physical activity, these
are the solutions to work through it, and then the
problem solving conversation comes later.
Speaker 2 (14:21):
So you've talked about all of these things that we
can do to help kind of work through it after
the fact, but there's a couple of things that we
probably just need to tap into to help kind of
prevent us from getting to that point. We talk about holts.
If we can make sure our children are fed, they're
not hungry.
Speaker 1 (14:39):
Not hungry, angry, landly title stress.
Speaker 2 (14:41):
We're kind of go a long way to actually preventing
having these major meltdowns. We're not going to be able
to stop it all the time. But I think that
food and sleep there are biggest contributors more times than not.
Speaker 1 (14:53):
Yeah, and connection. I mean sometimes kids are just lashing
out because they're bored. And keep your kids off screens
because they will often like shout when they can't have
a screen. And frankly, if your child is under three,
your kids don't need screens. The reason they've got screens
because they're convenient for us, not because they're good for
the kids. We need to wrap that up there, otherwise
we're going to turn this into a full length seminar.
(15:15):
The Happy Families Podcast is produced by Justin Roland from
Bridge Media. Memhammits provides research, amin and additional support and
if you would like more resources to help your little
people and their big feelings, we're going to link to
our Little People Big Feelings webinar in the show notes.
It will make a world of difference when you're dealing
with your kiddos and their big moments. If you need
(15:36):
the pod, thanks so much for listening, Have a wonderful,
wonderful day, and we will be back tomorrow to talk
about how we can filter apps for a phone or
whether we should just trust our child. It's a tricky question.
On the Happy Families Podcast tomorrow we'll talk to you,
then
One of the biggest challenges of early childhood is having
a child who hits. What do you do when you
have a violent child, a child who gets emotionally disregulated
and then they come at you. It's all arms and legs,
feet and hands. They're kicking, they're hitting, they're screaming at you,
they're telling you that they hate you. And all you
(00:26):
did was say, no, sweetie, you can't stay at the
park any longer. It's time to go home.
Speaker 2 (00:31):
Or you cut their sandwiches and triangles instead of squares.
Speaker 1 (00:33):
I know, I mean, I've said this before. You always
always cut in squares or rectangles first, because if they
want triangles, you can just go diagonal. If you're gone
triangular first, it's really hard to turn them into a square.
But we digress. What do we do when we've got
a child who is really upset so much so that
they're becoming physically aggressive towards us, towards usually towards mum.
(00:54):
The realities, they don't do it towards dad so much.
That's what we discussed today on the Happy Families podcast. Yes, Gooday,
Welcome to the Happy Families Podcast. Real parenting Solutions every
single day on Australia's most downloaded parenting podcast. We are
Justin and Kylie Colson and we are delighted to have
you join us today. If you knew to the pod,
thanks so much for jumping on board today. A conversation
(01:16):
about kids who get aggressive and violent. We've had this
happened in our family. I remember years ago my little
brother was terrified because one of his kids was constantly
hitting his wife. And it always seems to happen around
about the age of let's say three ish. As a
general rule, Kylie, you've got an early childcare background. This
(01:37):
is what you lived for when you were younger and
working in that industry. Were kids violent? Do they hit
each other at kindergarten preschool? I'll take that as a yes.
Speaker 2 (01:52):
Wherever there are children, there will be violence.
Speaker 1 (01:56):
Yeah, constant separation. How you to stop using your hands
we have we have soft we have pulling and scratching.
You've got to use those lines, right, It's all about
we have gentle hands, we have soft hands, we have
nice hands, we have kind hands. So let's discuss this.
I want to initially just make it really clear. This
(02:16):
is as you've laughed at me for asking the question.
And developmentally appropriate behavior that we see all the time
when you have children who don't know how to regulate
their emotions and therefore their behaviors, because your behavior follows
your emotion. If you're feeling disregulated emotionally, especially if you're young,
(02:36):
you'll typically become dysregulated in your behavior. Impulse control is
not the strong suit of a three year old.
Speaker 2 (02:45):
The reality is they've got these really big emotions and
they've got to be able to find a way to
let that emotion move through their body in an appropriate way.
But as a three year old, they don't learn that
on their own.
Speaker 1 (02:56):
No, I mean, emotion regulation kind of begins in a
very ordinary way from about the age of three, and
it gets better and better until researchers believe that somewhere
between eight and ten is when the typical child can
usually regulate their emotions and therefore the behaviors in a
reasonable way most of the time, in most circumstances, with
(03:17):
a lot of caveats, right, because if they're hungry, or
they're tired, or they're stressed, or if they're.
Speaker 2 (03:20):
Feeling the forty two.
Speaker 1 (03:24):
Well I'm more than forty two, now, did I say
with it? No? But I did feel targeted when you
looked at me the way that you said that.
Speaker 2 (03:31):
Maybe I was talking about me.
Speaker 1 (03:33):
You're not quite forty two anymore either. It's not just
emotion regulation, though, there's also language limitations. So children do
know how to communicate, and therefore we expect, since they
know how to talk, we expect that they're going to
share with us their feelings all the time.
Speaker 2 (03:50):
At this age, as a young parent, there was a
massive emphasis on the terrible twos. Oh yes, but as
we parented each of our children, we actually recognize that
two was quite manageable compared to the three was not.
Three was where it really hit. And I don't know
if that's because we're progressed as a human race, and
we've been able to kind of start to manage our
(04:13):
own emotions around two years. But at three, they're so
much more articulate. They're so much more capable in these
tiny little.
Speaker 1 (04:22):
Bodies, except when they get angry, except when they become
emotionally dysregulated, and the size of their emotions, like the
emotional intensity of a three year old is massive. The
only other place that I see the emotional intensity of
a three year old is an angry red pea platter
who gets cut off or who isn't being allowed to
drive fast enough. That was so funny in my head.
(04:42):
You're not even smiling at me. I thought that was
a really great.
Speaker 2 (04:45):
No, because I wouldn't say it was a pea plater.
I'd say it's a middle age a.
Speaker 1 (04:49):
Boomer, maybe a boomer there is anyway, Let's move on.
So we've got inhibition and impulse control low, we've got
high emotional intensity. We've got limited language capacity. Hitting isn
munication when words fail, when frustration and other needs simply
become overwhelming. And I just want to emphasize before we
get into my three solutions, you might have others because
(05:11):
we haven't discussed this ahead of time. This behavior, well,
it isn't Every child doesn't do it. It's not considered
developmentally inappropriate. It's normal. It's typically going to happen when
children are less mature. The only time that I see
it with older children is when they are extremely dysregulated,
(05:32):
or when you have a neuro developmentally challenged child. So
if you've got a neurodivergent child, then you might see
it in older kids as well. In fact, I was
at a school about a month ago, and a child
escaped the classroom that they were and they ran into
the room where I was giving a talk to students,
literally raced up the front and looked at me and
then whacked me. They kind of as they did it,
(05:52):
I think they realized that I wasn't somebody that they
were familiar with. They didn't know who I was, and
they didn't know what they were doing, and they really
pulled the well, it wasn't a punch, but they really
pulled back as they made connection with me. And I mean,
I wasn't bothered by it, didn't hurt me at all.
They whacked me across the shoulder. It wasn't like they
hit me in the head or anything like that. But
this was a child who had some cognitive difficulties, some
(06:15):
cognitive challenges, and so sometimes you'll see that kind of
behavior with older kids as well. After the break, we're
gonna map out the three things that you can do
to help your child when they are hitting inappropriately and
it just keeps happening and happening. Okay, Kylie. I remember
(06:39):
getting this distressed phone call from my brother when he
just said, our child keeps on hitting his mum, and
it doesn't matter what we do. We've tried to hold
his hands down, we've tried to tell him to stop it.
We don't like it. We've lectured him, we've tried to
hit him back, and he's still doing it. We don't
know what to do. I mean, he was beside himself
and this has been going on for about three months.
It's not like it was a one and done thing.
It was in during So when this happens, I've got
(07:02):
a couple of things that I think are worth emphasizing.
The first is that hitting is not okay, period, and
our children need to know that we can. We should.
It's incumbent upon us to set really clear limits to
let our children know, and maybe even by holding their
hand and holding it away and saying we have soft hands.
We do not hit. It's not nice to hit. It
hurts the whole gentle parenting thing. I'm not suggesting that
(07:26):
we get tough, that we get nasty, that we even
hurt our child, but we have to communicate clearly, absolutely,
this is a boundary. You've crossed it. It's not okay.
Now we can do it lovingly, we can do it gently,
but our children need to know clearly you are not
allowed to hit me.
Speaker 2 (07:45):
You gave that big long list that your brother shared
with you. Of all the things they tried, the one
thing they didn't try up until that point was actually
providing him with another outlet. The biggest challenge we have
is that we think that because emotions are something that
we feel, then they don't require action. But in order
(08:08):
for us to process emotion, the most effective way is movement.
So when we're frustrated or when we're angry, that's actually
when I do the best cleaning in my house. Not
only is it the.
Speaker 1 (08:19):
Best cleaning should get you irritated more, I do it
so fast right.
Speaker 2 (08:24):
There is so much energy stored in my body through
that emotion that the best thing I can do is
find a positive outlet. I remember when our eldest was
probably she'd actually started school, and she was having some really,
really big emotions, and so we taught her to draw
angry pictures. When she was really worked up. We'd pull
(08:47):
out the crayons and she would just do these massive
storm clouds, and we told her she could draw as
big as she wants, and it worked really well, so
well that we got a quite frustraded phone call from
the school one day because she'd gotten in trouble and
she was really frustrated. So she grabbed a text and
(09:08):
drew all over the carpet, And when they rang and
told me, I knew exactly what she'd done, and I
was so proud of her because instead of her using
all of these terrible words or worse, beating someone, beating
somebody else up, she had done exactly what we taught her.
We just obviously had an emphasized paper was a really
important part of the process.
Speaker 1 (09:28):
All right, So I'm going to check out all of
my notes and I'm just going to run through handful
things that are going to be useful. Number One, we
need to stay regulated ourselves. If we become disregulated, it's
not going to work. So we've got to be the adult.
Even though they're trying to hit us they're three, the
reality is, yes, it hurts a little bit, but they're
not generally going to cause any significant damage either to
us or to property.
Speaker 2 (09:47):
I think the thing that parents get really scared of
is my child's hitting me at three, They're going to
still be hitting me at fifteen. They're still going to
be hitting me. You know, and become violent.
Speaker 1 (09:54):
Yeah, they will grow out of it, especially if you
set clear limits. So be regulated, be the adult the
note that's not okay. But you can also then redirect them.
So distraction and redirection are the answers. Like you said, movement,
doing some drawing.
Speaker 2 (10:09):
Maybe they want to hit a pillow, Like, if they
really want that punching kind of motion, then give them
a punching pillow or a punching bag.
Speaker 1 (10:18):
I don't like that one. I mean, people can make
up their own minds. I don't like the one because
it's still it normalizes the act of hitting as an
outlet for aggression or frustration or dysregulation. And I'd rather
redirect it into something else that can be physical. But
perhaps that's less violent, because if it.
Speaker 2 (10:34):
Is okay, if you're making a bigger deal of it
than it needs to be. I think that it's a
completely appropriate way to let off some steam. Maybe did
we should do a smashroom for toddlers?
Speaker 1 (10:46):
How good would that bee? Put the helmet on, put
the gloves on, let's go. There are a couple of
other things to keep in mind. To bear in mind
here high emotions, long intelligence, so as so long as
the kids know they're not allowed to hurt people of property.
I'm probably not too bothered about what they're doing. It's
really about that distraction. And I also think once they've
(11:07):
calmed down, we want to have I'm constantly emphasizing the
three is of effective discipline. What do you need right now?
If you can't give them what they need right now
because they're so disregulated that you can't communicate, wait till
they've calmed down and then problem solved. There was clearly
an unmet need there. What are we going to do
next time? And with rehearsal, I mean you're not going
to get their first first go.
Speaker 2 (11:25):
And not with a three year old. It's it's going
to take a long time.
Speaker 1 (11:28):
Yeah, Like you look at how long it takes to
learn to tie up shoelacers or learn how to write
their name, learn to walk. Regulating emotions is way harder
than any of those things. But on repeat, what are
we going to do next time that happens? We failed
that time? What did we agree on? So? What can
we do next time? How can I remind you? On repeat?
Lots of empathy, lots of perspective taking, lots of conversation,
(11:49):
around this, and by the time they're around about I
don't know, thirteen fourteen, they usually will have stopped it
just in time for the next brain explosion, which will
kick it off for again.
Speaker 2 (11:57):
You're not making anyone feel very good right now. You
know one of the other techniques that's so powerful, And
I remember reading somewhere it's not enough to do it
in the moment. You actually have to practice with your
kids when they're calm. Yeah, yeah, but breathing is so powerful,
teaching your children to take some deep breaths when they
(12:18):
feel like all of that pent up energy is about
to explode out of them.
Speaker 1 (12:22):
I remember that time when Emily was probably about four
or five and she was having the biggest dummy spit.
She had been violent, she'd been throwing things and kicking,
and I took it to her bedroom and said, I'm
going to stay with you unless you kick me out.
But I know that you're really angry right now and
we need to work through this. And she jumped on
the bed hit under the blankets and starting it and
(12:44):
just being a white animal under the blankets. And we
did that grounding technique, the five four three two one
grounding technique and she did not want to do it.
I said, I, reckon, even under the blankets, there's five
things you can see. Tell me five things you can see.
And she's screamed and she said, no, I'm not doing it.
And I said, well, I reckon, if I was under
the blanket with you, I'd be able to see. And
I five things the hair on her arms, her knee
sticking into her chin because of the way she was sitting,
(13:06):
the sheets, and so on, and then four things you
can feel, and I talked her about how I could
feel it getting hot under there, and I could feel
the sheets rustling against my arm and so on. And
then three things that you can hear. And I said,
can you tell me three things that you can hear?
And she said no, And I said, I bet that
if you did tell me, you could hear your breathing.
(13:28):
You're heavy, angy breathing, and you could hear my voice,
and maybe you could hear the sheets rustling. And then
I said, work about two things you can smell? Can
you tell me that? And I could feel I could
hear her calming down, and she said, I'm not telling
you what I can smell. And I said, I reckon,
you can smell your stinky feet under the sheets, and
(13:50):
she laughed and I was like, gotcha. And then one
thing you can taste, and then she told me what
she could taste. She gave me her standard answer, my spit,
and within a minute she was calm, and she climbed
out from under the sheets and she gave me a cuddle,
and then we had the chat what do we do
next time? Should we practice it now? And it was
(14:10):
so useful. Grunting techniques, breathing, distraction, drawing, physical activity, these
are the solutions to work through it, and then the
problem solving conversation comes later.
Speaker 2 (14:21):
So you've talked about all of these things that we
can do to help kind of work through it after
the fact, but there's a couple of things that we
probably just need to tap into to help kind of
prevent us from getting to that point. We talk about holts.
If we can make sure our children are fed, they're
not hungry.
Speaker 1 (14:39):
Not hungry, angry, landly title stress.
Speaker 2 (14:41):
We're kind of go a long way to actually preventing
having these major meltdowns. We're not going to be able
to stop it all the time. But I think that
food and sleep there are biggest contributors more times than not.
Speaker 1 (14:53):
Yeah, and connection. I mean sometimes kids are just lashing
out because they're bored. And keep your kids off screens
because they will often like shout when they can't have
a screen. And frankly, if your child is under three,
your kids don't need screens. The reason they've got screens
because they're convenient for us, not because they're good for
the kids. We need to wrap that up there, otherwise
we're going to turn this into a full length seminar.
(15:15):
The Happy Families Podcast is produced by Justin Roland from
Bridge Media. Memhammits provides research, amin and additional support and
if you would like more resources to help your little
people and their big feelings, we're going to link to
our Little People Big Feelings webinar in the show notes.
It will make a world of difference when you're dealing
with your kiddos and their big moments. If you need
(15:36):
the pod, thanks so much for listening, Have a wonderful,
wonderful day, and we will be back tomorrow to talk
about how we can filter apps for a phone or
whether we should just trust our child. It's a tricky question.
On the Happy Families Podcast tomorrow we'll talk to you,
then
Popular Podcasts
24/7 News: The Latest
The latest news in 4 minutes updated every hour, every day.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
The Clay Travis and Buck Sexton Show
The Clay Travis and Buck Sexton Show. Clay Travis and Buck Sexton tackle the biggest stories in news, politics and current events with intelligence and humor. From the border crisis, to the madness of cancel culture and far-left missteps, Clay and Buck guide listeners through the latest headlines and hot topics with fun and entertaining conversations and opinions.