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Dealing With Your Child’s Meltdown

Hey, parents! Once again, Denny Strecker, here, from Skillz Dynamic Martial Arts. We’re continuing our series on discipline. It just so happens I was at the store today and had the opportunity to watch a parent dealing with an complete and utter meltdown, from their young child, right in the middle of the store. I’m sure you can relate. Every parent has had that experience, at some point, where your kid is just completely lost it, you’re at your wits end and your willing do to just about anything to get them to stop having that temper tantrum, right in the middle of the store. Lot of parents find it embarrassing and that’s all natural and understandable, but we wanna do a couple things.

The parent was making two classic mistakes. The first one, I’m gonna suppose because I wasn’t there before the situation, but I’m willing to bet that they did not pre-frame the situation, going into the store with, “This is what’s gonna happen and this is how we need to behave.” I did pre-framing at a previous video, so that’s why I don’t wanna talk about it too much, today. If you don’t sure how that works or what pre-framing is, take a look back at earlier videos, this week, and you’ll see a whole discussion on that topic.

Today, I wanna talk about the second mistake that the parent was making. That basically was the child is in a complete emotional state, they are having a melt down temper tantrum, right there in the middle of the store, and the parent was trying to rationalize and speak logically to the child. At that point, they are completely incapable of understanding logic and/or applying it. Whenever a human being, it doesn’t even have to be kids, whenever a person is in a completely emotional state, the whole half of the logic brain literally shuts off. The biggest mistake that we make, whenever we’re talking to somebody emotional, is trying to be rational and logical.

What work is you need to align yourself with the child emotionally. Then, slowly start to bring them back, into their rational mind. Once they’re back into their rational mind, now, after the fact, you can start to talk logically. What that would mean would be, in the temper tantrum, you’re not basically caving in and doing whatever it is that they want. This parent was standing here saying, “Hey, look, you’re really embarrassing yourself, you know, kids don’t act this way,” and just giving them all kinds of logical explanations and reasons why they shouldn’t be having that temper tantrum.

Absolutely to no avail the child’s not gonna suddenly stand up. Picture this: complete temper tantrum on the floor, they’re yelling, they’re screaming, they’re kicking and all of a sudden you say, “You know you shouldn’t be doing that,” and the child stands up and goes, “You know, Father, you’re correct, I apologize, I shouldn’t have done that.” That’s never gonna happen and that just blows your mind to think that that even would, but, again, that’s what we go to whenever we’re talking to kids and we don’t know what to do.

My goal, today, is to give you that skill and know exactly what to do in the middle of that temper tantrum. Basically, you wanna find that emotional state. Attach yourself with the child, “I can really see that you’re upset, I’m sorry that you’re so upset, come here, give me a hug.” Get them to calm down, right? Once they’re out of that complete and utter emotional state, they’ve caught their breath, they’ve stopped crying, they’ve stopped screaming; now would be the time that you can start talking logically about, “You know, I can really understand why you got upset, here’s some other or better ways to deal with it.

Now, we’ve been doing this in the Karate School, here, for several years, now. I get to thank my friend and mentor Melody Shuman because she introduced us to a great concept called The Whole Brain Child. This has some really great strategies talking about the emotional versus the logical state and what you can be doing as a parent. As a favor, basically, as a way to pass it on or play it forward, I wanna be able to do the same thing that Melody did for me. She introduced me to this book and it’s been a great resource that I use in the Karate School, all the time. Now, I wanna be able to share this resource, with you. I’ve got plenty of copies. I bought about a case full of the books, after I got done reading it, that’s how much I believed in it. I started handing it out to parents at my seminars. I wanna be able to give a copy to you.

Here’s what we’re gonna do … I’ve been shooting these videos everyday for about a week, now. what we wanna be able to do is get you a copy. What you need to do is number 1: need to comment on the video below saying, “Great advice,” and I would like you to tag one person that you think would enjoy all of these videos and getting the idea about discipline for their child; second thing is I want you to share the video, either on your timeline or in a group with parents that would also find this information useful. All right, don’t do it just to get the book. I’m also gonna want you to read the book, so we can talk about it and share some great things. We call it ‘wisdom of the crowd.’ One of my coaches taught me that phrase. It’s a really great thing that we basically share all kinds of information, so that everybody gets better.

I have one last thing for you. If you’re not a reader … If you don’t know much about me, I’m a great fan of Zig Ziglar. Zig Ziglar coined the term ‘Automobile University.’ I’ve got the audio book, so if you don’t wanna sit down and read at night, if you spend a lot of time in your car, I’ll get you the audio book, as well. One more time: comment below, first thing to do: tag a friend that you think that would find the information useful; share it on your timeline or in a group; then, let me know: do you want the paperback copy or the audiobook, and I’ll be happy to get that do you.

All right, have a great day. I’ve got some appointment coming in, so I’m getting school ready. Then, we’ve got tricking class tonight with our leadership team. I’m looking forward to having a great time, with them. Hopefully, you have a great night. I look forward to seeing the comments and getting and talking to you about your copy of The Whole Brain Child. Have a great day.