Marvin – circle of repair

Having a toddler can be a real challenge, and I think maybe the one that strikes me as being the biggest challenge for the largest number of parents, is what you might call a “toddler meltdown”, or a temper tantrum, or, but meltdown is a better, I think a better term. And so often when, when a child has a meltdown, the kinds of advice that parents get from their pediatrician, from the child’s preschool teacher or day care provider, from lots of different places, lots of professionals, the advice that parents get is, “Well, you need to manage that. You need to get him to stop that. And the way to do it is time him out.”  

A time-out is based on the idea of making the child go off by himself and sit there until he can calm himself down and then he can come back and rejoin the family, or rejoin the activity. Now if the child is doing this thing absolutely on purpose, then that’s certainly appropriate. But we estimate that toddlers are doing this on purpose maybe only one time out of, one or two times out of 10. Maybe only 10 or 15 or 20% of the time. The vast majority of the time, the toddler is not doing this meltdown on purpose but rather there’s something else that happens. What we realize is that meltdowns, most of the time, happen because a child, a toddler wants to do something, or he wants something, and he’s being frustrated, maybe it’s because he can’t climb up that slide. Or maybe it’s that he wants to play with his sister’s toy, or play with something dangerous and the parents says, “No, no, you need to share”, or “No, no, you’re going to get hurt with that, you can’t play with it.” And so the child has a meltdown.  

And what we know now, is that what’s really going on there is again, this child is not very wise yet–he’s only a little toddler—when he’s frustrated, he has the same kind of feeling that all of us have. This feeling that kind of wells up in us and it’s like “Awww” kind of feeling. Well as adults, we’ve learned how to manage that feeling. We’ve learned how to cope with that situation. The problem is, for the toddler, he’s still a little, little kid and he hasn’t developed a strategy yet for doing that. 

And we have another graphic that we use that we call the “Circle of Repair”. And on that circle of repair is the same circle with the hands represented by the parents, and in addition to that, over on the right hand side, there’s this little kid with his arms up. And he’s saying, “Mom, when I get difficult, when I get frustrated, demanding, upset, out of control, what’s really going on, what’s really going on is not that I’m trying to hurt you, or that I’m trying to be bad, or anything like that. What’s really going on is, I’m having this feeling that is really uncomfortable for me, that I hate, that, that I don’t know what to do with and that’s the most important part. I’m having this feeling and I don’t know what to do with it. And I need you.”      

And there are a number of steps that sort of become the parent’s job in this situation and these steps need to be taken in this order. First of all, to understand, that your toddler’s behaviour, this out of control, meltdown behaviour, actually means that he needs you to do a number of things and he needs you to do them in this order.    

First of all, he needs you to take charge. He’s out of control and when little kids are out of control, they need their parents to take charge. “Be bigger than me. Be stronger and wiser than me. Mom or dad, you need to take control first of all and get things under control.”  Second thing is, don’t take it personally. “Please don’t take it personally mom. I’m not, this signal that I’m sending, is not a signal that says to you, ‘I don’t like you, I don’t need you, I don’t want you, I hate you’. Even if I say ‘I hate you’, I don’t.”  

The third thing is try and help, “you need to try and figure out, mom, what’s wrong here. What do I need as the toddler? What do I need and what do you need to do? What’s going on with me? I’m too young to be able to figure it out.” So that’s your job. Is to figure out “What’s going on with my child?” And the rule here is, we often tend to, to make an inference. We often tend to think, “Oh, this is what my kid is doing”. And it’s usually what we call a negative inference. “My kid is doing this to bug me. My kid is doing this because he’s angry with me. He hates me. Some negative thing about me.” 

And the rule here is, be kind in the inference you make, be kind in the inference you make. Don’t make a negative inference. For these 80% of the time, sometimes negative inference is going to be appropriate but probably only 20% of the time. “Eighty percent of the time you need to make a kind inference about what’s going on about me.” Once you’ve made that inference and figured out, then the job is, “Soothe me. Try to calm me down. In a kind way. Understanding I don’t know what to do, I’m out of control and I need you to take me in and contain me and help me feel better and soothe me.”  

And then, the next thing is, “Stay with me until we both understand what’s too much for me to understand all alone here. Stay with me with this.” Now, if I’m three, four, five-years-old, then I’m already at the point where you can talk to me about it and we can have a conversation about this. Most of the time with toddlers though, language hasn’t developed enough and so it’s really a matter of, “Staying with me and holding me and giving me the message, ‘It’s okay, it’s going to be okay, I’m working on figuring out what’s going on inside you honey’”. 

And then finally when you’ve got that figured out, mom, then help me to do what I was trying to do, but do it differently. And help me learn how to contain myself, and help me learn how to manage those awful feelings that I’ve been having. And just by being with me and holding me, or holding my hand, or sitting next to me or something like that is going to help me learn how to contain them.”  

 Now this comes back again, all the way back, to this notion of time-out. What this approach is is more like a “time-in”. It’s not really a time-out. It’s more like a time-in. “My child is out of control, he’s hurting. He’s having a feeling that’s really uncomfortable and he doesn’t know how to deal with it. So my reaction should be, “Come here honey, let me help you”. That’s the first thing. And soothe him down. Calm him down, and then help him.  So if you’re going to tell your child what he should have done instead, wait until he’s calm because he’s not going to be able to learn if he’s all upset and still on the meltdown. He’s not going to hear what you’re saying. So calm him down, help soothe him, then help him figure out what to do next time that will be more successful.