Toddlers are famous for their tantrums. We usually describe tantrums as a dreaded new behavior that emerges around the second birthday—hence the “terrible twos.” In Christian circles people also often cite them as the earliest examples of sin and proof that sin is innate and will emerge without being taught. And I get why people jump to that conclusion. After all, tantrums are universally unenjoyable for everyone involved, as well as those in the general vicinity. And which parent has ever sat their child down and taught them how to throw a tantrum? And yet tantrums emerge, like clockwork, as children enter the toddler years.
Or do they emerge?
I would like to try to persuade you of two things: 1) tantrums are not a new behavior 2) tantrums are a sign of an immature brain, not sin.
But before we get to that: why does it matter? Well, tantrums are stressful to manage. The way we think about them can increase or decrease our adult stress levels as we try to respond to a child-mid-tantrum. If our stress level is lower, it is easier to respond in kind, patient ways—which both feels better to us and our children and is much more effective in bringing a tantrum to its end. (Which is what we all desperately want anyway, right?)
Tantrums Are Not a New Behavior
What behavior is involved in a tantrum? What are children’s bodies doing? Typically: crying and flailing limbs. (And I guess we could also add flopping to the ground.) And when do children first start crying and flailing their limbs? The minute they come out of that birth canal, hopefully. (I will grant you flopping is a new behavior. You can’t do that until you can stand, so that’s an added feature that comes with development.) Tantrums are essentially the same behavior they’ve been doing for the first two years of their lives to interact with their world, communicate with caregivers, and get their needs met. It’s not only an established behavior and communication pattern, but also one that helped them survive and meet their growth and development milestones.
Hang on a minute, Sara, a crying infant and a screaming toddler are not the same situation. I agree with you. So now let’s think about how they’re different. The screaming and the flailing limbs are the same, but some significant details have changed:
1. The volume of their vocal cords
2. The size of their bodies (and ability to drop to the ground once they can stand)
3. The ability (in most cases) of speech
And all this contributes to the last one, which is…
4. How the adults feel about it
Even a screaming newborn can unravel you emotionally if it goes on long enough. Just ask anyone who’s cared for a colicky infant. But generally, we adults find baby cries much more tolerable. Toddlers’ increased size and volume alone naturally increase their ability to overwhelm our sensory thresholds for overload faster. It’s also easier to accept screaming as a form of communication when you know someone is incapable of anything else.
But does this mean I just give into them when they cry? Of course not. We need them to learn knew skills like using their words and tolerating frustration and it is our job as adults to help them develop those skills. But all skill building requires, time, practice, failure, and repetition to gain mastery. So, tantrums are part of the communication milieu until the new skills are mastered.
Tantrums Are a Sign of an Immature Brain, Not Sin
I suppose another difference I could have listed above is that toddlers have an awareness that sometimes we are making a choice not to give them what they want. In these instances, they may be angry as well. (Not always—sometimes they are just tired or hungry or whatever and have no idea why they’re crying.) Even though we as adults have the insight to know that what a child wants (staying up) is not what they need (a nap), toddlers have no cognitive ability to differentiate between what they want and what they need. So, when adult and child wills are in conflict and we refuse their demand, their limited cognitive skills for making meaning of their world have no other way to interpret it other than… their adult who they rely on to meet their needs is not meeting their need. Think about the last time you had a plan in your mind of how something was supposed to go and what a good outcome would be, and then due to forces beyond your control that good outcome didn’t happen or maybe even the opposite occurred. Remember how that felt? It’s hard, right? And if you’re anything like me you look back on those moments with mixed feelings. Sometimes I’m happy with how I handled the disappointment and sometimes I’m not. Because, let’s face it: even we adults don’t handle disappointments with poise and grace 100% of the time.
I always smile a little when I hear tantrums described as proof that you don’t have to teach kids how to sin. It strikes me as funny because one of the most powerful modes of teaching is modeling. And while I have never modeled a tantrum for my kids, by the time they threw their first tantrum they had witnessed more than one demonstration by mommy of how to miss the mark when it comes to tolerating frustration and disappointment. So, it’s just not true that a two year old has had no lessons in how to be selfish.
Now am I saying categorically that there is no element of sin in a tantrum? I don’t know. I’ll let God answer that. I will say that keeping my cool and responding well to a flailing child is hard enough as it is, and the idea that my kid is doing it because they’re bad only makes it harder for me to respond in a loving way.
But here’s something else to think about if you’re convinced that tantrums are sin. When’s the last time you saw a grown adult drop to the floor and cry and scream and flail their limbs around? Interesting to think about, right? The reason you haven’t seen that is because humans universally grow out of that behavior. And human beings don’t just grow out of sinning. We need Jesus for that.
Practical Help with Tantrums
If you were hoping for some practical helps with tantrums, there are a lot of great resources out there. Here are some that I love:
https://childmind.org/article/how-to-handle-tantrums-and-meltdowns
https://sesameworkshop.org/topics/social-emotional-skills/tantrums