3 Reasons Your Toddler is Tantruming

Tantrums are hard.

They’re hard for you as a parent and they’re hard for your child. Tantrums are behavioral outbursts and are common in early childhood, with up to 83% of parents reporting that their toddlers have tantrums.

Sometimes it’s easy to spot the cause of a tantrum, but other times it might be more challenging. By understanding common causes of tantrums, you can work to prevent them or work through them with your child. Here are 3 possible reasons your toddler throws tantrums.

1 — Your child is hungry or tired.

When adults get tired or hungry, we are more likely to experience anger or frustration… we’ve even developed the word “hangry” to explain this feeling! Now imagine not understanding how “hungry” or “tired” feels in your body and not being able to fix the problem yourself.

As humans get older, our brains develop impulse control, emotional regulation, and decision making skills, but toddlers haven’t developed these abilities yet. So when they’re hungry or tired and something small goes wrong and… cue a tantrum!

2 — Your child is overwhelmed.

We typically think of the sensory system as including just the senses we learn about in school: sight, smell, touch, taste, and sound. But we have other senses as well: vestibular (sensation related to balance), proprioception (the feeling of our bodies in space), and interoception (feelings inside your body).

As our brains develop, many people learn to regulate their sensory systems. However, toddlers don’t yet have the skills to monitor and regulate the feelings they experience. A small sensation — the scratch of a tag, the seam in a sock, a loud noise, a strong smell — might lead to a big reaction.

3 — Your child is frustrated.

Toddlers can become frustrated for various reasons, but a common one is difficulty communicating. Language delay, language impairment, or late talking is associated with more severe tantrums. Imagine wanting to communicate but not being able to. Then add in all of the other toddler emotions we talked about above.

For children who are late to talk, speech-language therapy can help improve their communication skills, resulting in less severe tantrums.

When to contact a specialist

If your child has very long, severe tantrums, is unable to be soothed or redirected, injures themself or others during tantrums, has frequent tantrums, or has tantrums that are “out of the blue,” you should contact your child’s pediatrician for support, as severe, intense, or frequent tantrums might be a sign that your child needs more support.

Long, severe, or intense tantrums could be a sign of speech-language disorder or late talking, autism, or sensory differences. I specialize in supporting parents of toddlers teach their children to talk and manage behaviors such as tantrums.

Schedule a free consultation to see if speech-language therapy can help you manage your toddler’s tantrums!

Resource:

Manning, B. L., Roberts, M. Y., Estabrook, R., Petitclerc, A., Burns, J. L., Briggs-Gowan, M., Wakschlag, L. S., & Norton, E. S. (2019). Relations between toddler expressive language and temper tantrums in a community sample. Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology, 65, 101070. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.appdev.2019.101070