5 Ways to Consciously Help Your Child Out of a Meltdown

I have practiced attachment parenting and gentle parenting methods from the start but brining in conscious parenting to the mix was a whole lot more about me than it was about my child.

It’s interesting to see the progression from what I thought was conscious to actually being a conscious parent and I know I’ve not got all the pieces together just yet but the more I heal the better I am at being an unconditionally loving and nurturing parent to my child.

I learn new things most days when they are reflected back to me from my daughter but the biggest thing has been healing my own childhood wounds so I could stop projecting them onto her. 

So, here are 5 ways I’ve learnt and that have worked to help a child feel loved, seen and heard when they are in the midst of a meltdown or “tantrum”.

1. Keep your cool, this isn’t about you personally although it may be about you not meeting your child’s need, such as them needing to feel unconditional love, or being heard. Don’t let your inner child react towards your child, you need to step out of your wound, your trigger and be there for your child while they express some big emotions.

2. Don’t try and reason with your child or ask them about what’s going on. When they are in meltdown mode they are in their limbic brain which is responsible for fight or flight so all they are doing is responding to emotions in the way their body knows how. Talking to them won’t help as they can’t switch to their thinking brain(pre frontal cortex) which is what governs emotional regulation.

Best thing to do is pop on some calming music if available and hold your child, you can sometimes do a gentle rock with them in your lap, they may protest but generally if you let them know you are there to help them express their emotions, no matter how long it takes, you’ve got all day for them, and that you love them so much. Ride this out for as long as it takes. If they don’t want to be touched and tell you to go away, just sit nearby them, repeat the above and then let them know whenever they are ready for a cuddle you’re there. They need to know you’ll always be there and that they have enough space to express their emotions freely with unconditional love. You need to show up for them calm and collected and open to helping them when they are ready.
As soon as I started doing this with my daughter, her 45 minute long outbursts reduced each time she had one to the point of her no longer having them, If she had one now it would be because I’ve not seen or heard her when she needed me the most, that is why I always make myself available when she needs me.

Another point to note is that children in their toddler years are discovering emotions, are learning how to regulate but they are also copping a lot of projected wounds from their wounded parents and most parents only know authoritarian parenting which harms children and doesn’t allow them to feel loved, so if you’ve started out this way (which is what happened in my case) then there is a chance to change your ways now and bring in gentle and conscious parenting techniques to help bring calm and harmony to the home. Truly, the outbursts will start to minimise and the connection between your children will start to come back and there will be more love than ever!

3. Be consistent with this method, your child needs to know they are loved no matter what, they need to know you support them and their big emotions, they need to know emotions are normal, being sad is ok, being angry is ok. When they are out of their limbic brain and they have had their emotional release then that is the time to chat about what happened. The child can never do anything wrong per se, they are perfect beings and just need to be loved unconditionally. And having an outburst is definitely not something to be frowned upon or told off about. There may be things that you need to explain to your child about how it’s not really kind if you ruin your brother’s painting and explain why or you may need to explain a boundary which would be hitting or kicking (being violent towards people) and this needs to be set and adhered to at all times, you can even say hours later, “hey, you know before, you seemed to be having some big emotions, which is totally fine, did you want to talk about what was going?, might be nice to chat about it so you can understand it better if it comes up again” if they don’t want to, that’s totally fine too, eventually they will learn that you are a very safe place to express their feelings and emotions and you’ll find them coming up to you at a later date going…”hey can we talk about so and so…?” This will only happen when you continue with the unconditional love, loving your child always, even if they broke your favourite cup or drew all over your favourite couch! Yup, this happened to me and yes I wasn’t pleased and probably didn’t handle it so well, but now, it’s all, ok it’s material, it’s fine, accidents happen and we learn that drawing on mummy’s things is not that nice and we won’t be doing that again, here, here’s some paper to draw on 😂.

4. Now to work on you! If you are triggered when your child has their outburst then this is an amazing opportunity to heal. Your little inner children are in battle mode. They may be angry or frustrated or annoyed that this real life child is having a meltdown and now your inner children have to deal with it, where is their parent to look after them, “we don’t want to deal with a screaming child” “ we want to scream and yell and kick walls” “that’s not fair, why do they get to meltdown and we have to act all grown up”, and so many more child like complaints. Inner children may also just make you switch off, you may just disconnect from your child completely and leave them to it. Personally this isn’t a good move, it’s telling your child that you don’t want to help them and that you have conditions on your love for them.

Inner child work can be tricky, they can be hard to see at first because you’re so used to them running the show that it’s just normal for you to be triggered at things and it’s normal for you to be angry and frustrated at your child/ren. Well this is good news, it’s not normal to be angry and frustrated at your children, but when ever you do feel this way towards your children it’s a moment where you can take a step back, dig into which inner child is coming up and speak to them as you would your own child. Ask them why they are upset and why they want to act out as well, try and dig deep back to that time and dig into what need they were missing from your own parents. Once you’re at that place, feel the emotions and let is come, let it all up to be released, help your little Inner child feel safe to express all of this and then cuddle them and love them to comfort them just as you would want from your own parents. This is called reparenting your inner children, you love them unconditionally, like your parents should have. My beautiful teacher and mentor Liana Shanti talks about a lot of childhood wounding and inner children in her programs and how majority of people on planet earth grew up with conditional love which causes childhood trauma and the cycle just keeps repeating itself until someone like you decided that enough is enough, and you’re ready to heal your core wounds and inner children and give your own real life children a better life, one that is filled with unconditional love and nurture.

5. Bring in techniques that help build connection, calm and harmony to your family life. Tradition is an amazing way to build lifelong memories for your children, a once a week outing or games night or a special movie night. Something your child can look forward to and feels connected to you because it’s their thing with you, that they do every week, it’s special! Try a beautiful morning routing of breathing, doing a round of what your grateful for with your kids and maybe a little fun and games of rough and tumble. Kids love this and are able to express any pent up energy, often exercise and movement are the key to keeping emotions regulated.
Getting creative and painting, drawing, cooking or crafting, getting together to make something build confidence and a sense of togetherness. Kids love to spend time with you, it usually doesn’t matter what it is but having that 1:1 time is so so important, it lights up their world more than you would know, to have that sense that wow mum is here with me, she loves spending time with me. Most parents are quite distant with their kids and don’t carve out that daily 1:1 time with their kids, I believe it’s an absolute must!

Bonus Tip: If your child whines a lot of is asking for your attention a lot it’s because they actually need your attention, don’t make other things more important than your kids. Your kids are your number 1 priority, if you are on your phone, computer, tv, reading, cooking, cleaning, whatever it is, and they come up and ask for your attention and you say no I’m busy right now, you’re basically saying the cleaning, cooking, tv, phone etc is more important than you and you’re second to all those things. If you put yourself in their shoes you know straight away how that would feel, treat your kid’s as the beautiful tiny humans they are, they have so much to teach you if you only open up, hear them, see them and make them your number 1!

Sending love to all the mummas out there! You’ve got this, step by step is all you need to do. 💜🙏🏻

Rebecca x.