Thanks for joining me for the 100th edition of the SerenityThroughSweat blog. This past week has seen a dramatic uptick in tantrums from El Duderino, and the following quote from Frank Herbert’s Dune Messiah seemed especially fitting.
“Reason is the first victim of strong emotion”. If that doesn’t sum up a toddler tantrum terrifically, I don’t know what does.
It doesn’t matter what set it off, or what he was or wasn’t allowed to do/have/play with/ etc. Once he is in tantrum mode there us no reasoning with him.
A toddler temper tantrum is a pretty obvious example of reason giving way to strong emotion, but I started thinking about how often I’m guilty of the same thing, (and without the excuse of an underdeveloped frontal lobe)
The past year, with stresses from work, family, and everything COVID, how many times has my reason been the victim of my emotios? The answer is probably too many.
SerenityThroughSweat, breathing, exertion, perspiration, all help tremendously in processing, deciphering, and managing that emotion in order to return me to a reasonable state.
Sometimes that’s not a viable option for me, and telling El Duderino to go take a lap doesn’t seem like the best parenting for a three year old, so my wife provided some much needed guidance.
From the Harvard Health Blog, the three steps to parenting a tantrum are to validate the emotion, ignore the dandelions, and praise good behavior.
Validating the emotion yelled your toddler you are listening to them and even if you don’t agree, you understand what the are feeling.
Dandelions, are the bad behaviors that pop up as a result of the tantrum. The blog equates giving them attention to watering them in your garden. What you water grows, or the behaviors you respond to persist.
Likewise, praising cooperative and good behavior will help the toddler come out of the tantrum and back into a reasonable state, or at least as reasonable as a three year old can be.
I think these same principles can serve adults with some sense of emotional awareness. Validate your own emotions. Be aware of them and feel them, but beyond awareness, only spend your time and energy on the emotions and actions that you want to grow, otherwise you’ll get stuck in the weeds.
And if all else fails, go take a lap and sweat your way to serenity.
Thanks for joining me, stay safe and stay sweaty my friends.