How I Deal with My Overemotional Child

Do you have a strong-willed or overemotional child? If you do, you may find some of the following tips helpful in dealing with your child's temper tantrums and mood swings.

My 5-year-old daughter is a very overemotional little girl. One minute she's happy as can be, then the next minutes it's as if all hell has broken loose and she's throwing a temper tantrum.

For the longest time, I had such difficulty figuring out how to calm her down because it seemed like no matter what I said or did, her tantrums only got worse. I tried figuring out what kinds of things would set her off the most so I could attempt to stop the tantrums before they'd start, but I soon discovered that it wasn't just one or two particular things that would do it; anything and everything set her off from not getting what she wanted to drink when she wanted to drink it, to fighting with her sisters over a toy, to simply being tired.

Finally, after a lot of trial and error, I figured out a few ways to deal with her temper tantrums and to calm her down before the tantrums get out of hand. Most of the time when she starts throwing one of her temper tantrums, it's due to something silly that she has just gotten all worked up over, such as one of her sisters taking a toy that she wanted to play with, or something else just as trivial so most of the time it's quite easy to get the tantrums to stop. Here's how I do it.

I speak calmly to her and I ask her to tell me what is wrong and how she thinks we can fix the problem. Sometimes this takes awhile as she is very stubborn and it gets quite frustrating, but I found that if I lose my patience with her it only makes things worse so I try to remain calm and continue to speak to her and ask her questions until we get to the bottom of the problem.

I mock her actions. Yes, I know it sounds like a strange way to keep her from throwing temper tantrums, but it works. I copy her actions so she can see how she looks or sounds to others when she is throwing her fits. This works 9 times out of 10 because she sees how silly she looks and sounds, especially when she's doing something like stomping her feet or jumping up and down. When she sees me doing what she's doing, it causes her to start laughing, ending the temper tantrum immediately. Then we talk about what upset her and we attempt to fix the problem.

I tickle her. Again, I know it sounds strange, but when she's whining about something less trivial than normal, such as whatever television program she's watching going to commercial (she hates that!) or something along those lines, I start tickling her, she starts laughing and she forgets about whatever it was she was whining about.

While I know these tips, being so unusual, may not work for everyone, they're what I've found to work for us and I thought I'd share them just in case they may keep another parents from pulling their hair out of their head while trying to deal with their strong-willed or overemotional child.