How to Help Your Toddler Deal with Frustration

Frustration is a fact of life for toddlers. They get ahead of themselves often and want to do things their bodies or minds are not ready for yet. Toddlers have many ways of dealing with their frustration. Unfortunately, many of them involve whining, throwing things, storming off into another room, or even tantrums, among many other responses. In order to help your child grow up to respond in a favorable way to frustration, here are a few things you can try.

Acknowledge your child's frustration

The first step of dealing with an emotion is to recognize what that emotion is. Ask your child, "Are you feeling frustrated?" Acknowledge the fact that he is feeling this way, and remember to try to show him that the fact that he is frustrated is not a bad thing…that the way he deals with that frustration is what matters. It also helps to try to put yourself in your child's shoes for a second when thinking about how to deal with his outburst.

Remain calm yourself

You might feel like losing it yourself when your toddler has just thrown her doll across the room because its shoe won't fit, but doing so will just reinforce her behavior as you're showing her how you deal with frustration. If you model calmness to your child, she will pick up on it and calm down herself. If you do accidentally respond in a frustrated voice or huff and puff as you help her, just take a deep breath and jump right into calm mode. If she is frustrated because you won't let her do something she's not supposed to be doing, calmly explain to him why she can't be doing that thing. Sometimes you don't need to explain "why" to your child, but even in those cases, you can simply calmly repeat what you said, taking care not to lose it yourself.

Help your child with what is frustrating

After responding calmly to your child's fit, you don't want to simply fit the piece into the puzzle for him or fit the blocks on top of each other for him. Show him how to slowly and calmly do whatever it was that was frustrating him. If he's frustrated because he can't go somewhere, or because you won't let him do something, explain that we can't always do or get what we want. Give him a better way to deal with his frustration. For example, if he wants to do something but it's too hard, let him know he can always ask for help from you.