A: Here's some stuff I do and did with Jayn now 6. The foundation of it is not to take her anger personally, while still acknowledging whatever my part might have been in creating it.

The first part is not to place Jayn into a position where she is likely to meltdown if that is remotely possible - also not to continue to thwart her to the point that she feels that frustrated, but to begin the process of finding an alternative fulfillment at the beginning. For example if your child always has a hard time in large, loud, echoey places - start shopping at a small local grocery instead. (That is partly how of we solved her "store running" problem btw)

When Jayn is having any kind of meltdown, she responds best to physicality with me, ahead of verbal reassurances or empathizing. The core of it is to ask myself "What loving action, as is showing my love to Jayn, can I take right now?" That is the magic question, regardless of how obnoxious she is being

From a recent discussion on Always Unschooled:

What I came to realize is that the priority, in all cases of negative behavior, must be to *show* her my continued love and acceptance of her as a person *first*, and then if necessary express my desires or give the helpful information that she seems to be lacking. Often just the loving action changes her emotional state and she stops the problem actions. This ties in with assuming she is doing the best she can, and expressing empathy, which is best done with Jayn by a loving physical action. I know not all children want this physical response in times of intensity.

The additional bonus for me is that choosing these loving actions helps my anger (at whatever level) to melt away also. The immediate result is a mother who is thinking clearly and logically, and so able to make better decisions.

Sometimes that is holding out my arms to her, sometimes it is blowing a raspberry on her belly, sometimes it is giving her my hands to push against, sometimes it is restraining her for the purpose of letting her push against my body. These are all strategies that help her become emotionally organized again.

Or perhaps we are in a situation of immediate conflicting needs as we were this "morning" while getting our breakfast (everyone else's dinner) at Home Town Buffet. Jayn was finished and wanted to leave at once. Dh and I said that we wanted to finish our desserts first. Jayn started to say "No, I want to go NOW" and getting louder and teary. Huge crowd in the place, btw. I made a conscious decision, despite a certain amount of internal rising stress, to show her some love and acceptance *first*, despite what conventional parenting might label "whining" or "rewarding of negative behavior". I drew her on to my lap, gave her a slow hug and a kiss, and then told her that I knew she wanted to go and being patient is hard, but we needed a few minutes to finish our desserts. I felt her physically relax. Then she sniffled a bit, but sat quietly and gently on her chair and waited for the few minutes, conversing about other things.

In the past when something like this has occurred, we have tried just the verbal empathy and reasoning, Jayn continued to loudly complain, and then dh, with some grumpiness, has taken Jayn to the car to wait rather than disturb other diners. This is usually somewhat OK because he generally has already finished fast and also dislikes waiting, and I am the slow eater (often because I have spent time assisting Jayn with the buffet instead of eating). For some reason today we were both still munching. The thing is that what I did today felt so much better, so right, *and* worked - by which I mean Jayn willingly chose Patience.

Here's something I wrote fairly recently that is kinda related. It has to do with focusing on discovering the unexpressed need, rather than necessarily wanting to stop the meltdown or negative behavior such as hitting me:

I have found from my experience that the parent(me) thinking, "I have to *correct* this bad action with information" (or even "I need her to know how I am feeling") is a distancing thought. It is not that I never enacted that kind of reaction to Jayn. But I found that it was a path that led to frustration for both of us - and tended to backfire with Jayn so that I couldn't even get to the next step. In re-examining my past uses of the "that hurts me" phrases, I believe I was speaking in a way I had been told I "should" do, and that there was a didactic paradigm, or a controlling paradigm behind it.

However I found a better-for-us procedure. Instead of focusing first on the negative, I try consciously choosing to think the phrase "What does she need?", or more recently what I have found far and away the most helpful thought "What loving action can I take towards Jayn *right now*?". This has produced the results that I would hope for—Jayn becoming calmer, more able to verbalize, more empathetic to me and, incidentally, likely to apologize for hurting me.

Finally here is Tree Goddess's fabulous list of helpful (active and physical) strategies for restoring calm and serenity:

note from Sandra in 2020:
The group this came from is gone, and I can't properly credit Tree Goddess; sorry.

In a later discussion, Robyn wrote: Luckily for me Jayn continues to be both forgiving and a great teacher (heh, heh). The other day she told me that she "couldn't listen to her heart and my voice at the same time so I shouldn't tell her what to do when she was going wild." It was very profound to me. She suggested that I write it down and keep it where I could see it. Jayn setting a Barbie stage