Of course your two-year-old loses her mind at the dinner table when presented with the blue spoon, not the red one: she’s preserving order in her society. But the flight or fight response is much stronger in children who have neither the maturity nor the developmental ability to cope with such triggers. Resources: protecting those things which belong to youįor most adults in everyday circumstances, these situations can be managed through evaluation, analysis, and rationalization of events.Order in Society: protecting order and peace.Environment: protecting your personal space.Family: protecting those who are closest to you.Insult: protecting yourself from calumny.
Life-or-death: protecting yourself from a perceived threat.Through his research on human aggression and response to outward stimuli, Fields has identified nine distinct triggers which set in motion the fight or flight response: It’s part of the brain’s threat detection mechanism,” he says. “Neuroscience has shown there are circuits that are activated for anger and aggression in response to different triggers. Douglas Fields, a senior investigator for the National Institutes of Health, our brains are wired to respond a certain way to perceived threats. It’s also given me a much sharper insight into what I was dealing with at each moment: one meltdown, one tantrum, and two very different kids.Īccording to R. Time has healed the trauma of those moments, and fortunately, I can look back and laugh. The shopper accused me of child abuse I left the store in tears. The second one involved her sister, and I call it “20 Minutes of Walmart Hell.” A fellow shopper followed me through the store while my two-year-old screamed for a sparkly pink, dog-shaped purse. We call it “The Brownie Incident,” and the kiddo raged for 45 minutes until she passed out cold. The first one took place on a road trip through the mountains of North Carolina. In the annals of our children’s DEFCON 5 episodes, two, in particular, stand out.
Here’s how to understand, navigate, and work through both. Even the saints and their children had tantrums. The truth is, they have nothing to do with your skills as a parent. Examples could be running, whining, hiding, avoiding eye contact, crying, hitting, pushing, punching, biting, spitting, or shutting down (not talking or moving).Tantrums and meltdowns are part of parenting, and they can make you feel like you’re the worst parent in the world. Meltdowns may look different for each child, it will also differ depending if the response to a trigger is a fight, flight or freeze response.
A sensory meltdown is a fight, flight or freeze response to sensory overload. Sensory meltdowns are a reaction to something around them that is beyond the child’s control.
Multiple directions given to them at once or looking at a closet full of clothes, deciding what to wear. For other kids, it can be a reaction to having too many things to think about. The loud lunchroom or a busy place like a shopping mall. For some kids, a sensory meltdown can happen when there’s too much sensory information to process.