Other than empathizing with a young child’s physicality (smaller, weaker, easily ignored/overlooked), remember that very young children (one and two year olds) are also working with limited language and cognition/cognitive complexity.
So imagine you are trying to stick a round peg into a square hole and it’s not working. As you try, you feel a surge of strong emotions going through your body and it doesn’t feel pleasant.
If you were an adult your language and reasoning kicks in and you’d talk yourself through it:
“this isn’t working, I’m getting frustrated. OK… let me think this through… let me look at this shape, let me look at that hole, does this make sense, is there a way to twist this shape to get it through… all right let me take a deep breath…”
A one year old feels that surge of frustration but none of the capacity or ability to transform that energy into language and to organize a solution. This means every single solution and approach you use must take into consideration the cognitive capacity of the child.
Here are 3 suggestions:
Put words to the emotions and reasonably match the intensity of the emotion. This means catching the frustration while it is still frustration — not a tantrum (although you can match the emotion without the screaming when it gets to tantrum level). The “volume to volume” match is based on the work of Dr. Harvey Karp MD who wrote “Happiest Baby on the Block” and “Happiest Toddler on the Block” (I have both DVDs and have used these techniques with relative good success).
Let’s say 1 year’s frustration (grunts, words) is volume level 5 and close to shouting. You tune your volume to level 5 and say “This is frustrating! Round hole won’t go into square peg! It won’t go through! Oh no! I feel sad! Sad!”
You are verbalizing the frustration your child feels and you are matching or mirroring the emotional level. This helps the child learn that there are words to the emotions, which may encourage her to begin verbalizing (thus transforming emotional energy into cognitive energy and words).
Role modeling. You attempt the same activity and mimic running into the same frustration, only you model how you would solve the problem. Of course this requires the problem to be solvable at the 1 year old level, based on their gross motor and fine motor skills.
You also want to make sure she can see you as you appear lost in your effort to solve this problem. You are hoping that she will then mimic you and solve the problem as well. You can add language to this (for example using the previous sample script, only you use “I feel frustrated….”) and model for her this process of you verbalizing the frustration, then solving the problem… and see if she watches you and follows/mimics you.
“Pattern Interrupt” then Distract. When a young child gets frustrated, you have to help her break away from that emotion with an interruption. If she is still paying attention to you and she’s beginning to shout, you can whisper, which may catch her attention if she wants to try to hear you. You can also start singing a song and if that catches her attention for a moment, put movement to that song and lead her away from the source of the frustration. Sometimes turning off/dimming the lights in the room helps calm down a child (I’ve seen teachers in special ed classes do this for young children who appear inconsolable).
I’d prefer to use distraction as a last resort because it removes the original source of frustration without giving the child a way to approach the frustration when exposed to the source again, which means the same tantrum may be lurking around the corner.
