Durrant – understanding child development

So we’re really helping parents to refrain their negative perceptions of children’s behaviour. So as opposed to kind of surviving it, looking at it as a thrilling development, and what a tantrum symbolizes for example in terms of the child’s development. A tantrum might be something that a parent feels completely overwhelmed by, and many parents feel afraid that if they don’t control that, the child’s going to end up in jail when they’re 16 or something. If they can understand that tantrum is the sign of their developing emotional awareness, then they can look at it entirely differently. It doesn’t mean they hope their child has tantrums all day long, no.  And what we want to do is use those opportunities to help the child learn more about their emotional development, to acquire a little more emotional regulation each time. But instead of seeing it as brattiness, or stubbornness, or defiance, or non-compliance, help parents see it in terms of the developmental task.