The occasional childhood tantrum happens. It’s embarrassing for all involved as it can be difficult to manage. But what does a parent do when a tantrum crosses the line into something more serious? A recent article in the New York Times explores that very thing. And for those in Westside Cleveland, our own Dr. Marlena Achim, a specialist in the area of child psychiatry, is here to help.
“I don’t think any child having a tantrum can respond to what I hear all the time: ‘Use your words,’” Dr. Egger said. [Dr. Helen Egger is a psychiatrist specializing in early childhood]
Tantrums typically happen when children are hungry or tired or when there has been some significant change in their routine, Dr. Egger said. The children with more problematic tantrums, she said, are the ones who are triggered by anger and frustration, or by transitions — they aren’t particularly tired, they’re just furious that it’s bedtime or bath time.
And sometimes there’s no clear trigger, which can be a sign that all is not well. “Parents describe the tantrums just coming out of the blue,” Dr. Egger said, “‘Do you want to wear your blue shoes or your red shoes?’ and you’re done.”
It’s less common and more concerning for children to have tantrums regularly with babysitters or teachers, and in fact, Dr. Egger said, “kids who have tantrums outside of the home at school and day care, at church, outside, that’s another flag.”
Children with increased frequency of tantrums — almost every day, or even more often — and who bite, kick, hit or break things during the tantrums are the children to worry about, Dr. Egger said. Such children are eight times more likely to meet criteria for “impairing mental health disorders,” such as anxiety disorders, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and depression, and also more likely to develop problems later on. “And when we follow these children into early and middle childhood, these aggressive early childhood tantrums may be associated with emotional disorders like anxiety and depression,” she said.
“Most children who have tantrums that are really severe in duration and intensity aren’t just normally angry, they have something else wrong with them,” said Dr. Gabrielle Carlson, professor of psychiatry and pediatrics at Stony Brook University School of Medicine. “They may have A.D.H.D. or depression or another psychiatric disorder.” For a long time, she said, tantrums were understood as aggression, but more recently, psychiatrists have begun to think of these children with “a very short fuse and a very large explosion” as being highly irritable, rather than aggressive.
Click here to continue reading this article at the New York Times.