We’ve all seen it and heard it – and many of us have experienced it first-hand – a child melting down in a store or restaurant. Sometimes the cause is easy to figure out – the child is overly hungry or tired, overstimulated, or being told no. Other times the cause is much more complex.
Often people think that children’s meltdowns are efforts to manipulate and control. In many, possibly most situations, this is not the case. Young children do not even have the thought processes and brain development to be able to plan to manipulate the behavior of others.
via The Morning Sun – Mental Health Matters: Managing meltdowns in children.
I completely agree with the statement that children that throw tantrums have just learnt to manipulate their parents. They know that their parents don’t want to be embarrased, and they take full advantage of it. It starts when they’re young, and suddenly you have a nine year old child crying in the middle of a supermarket. Parents are too soft these days, they keep trying to wrap their children in bubble wrap. It’s so detrimental to their future as well; when they get to school, they shouldn’t need to be taught that they can’t have everything they want – that is the job of the parent, not the teacher.