The Real Reason Kids Meltdown Over Nothing How to Stop It

Ever wondered why some days the biscuit breaks and your toddler couldn't care less, but other days it ends up in a complete meltdown? It's because the meltdown isn't caused by the broken biscuit at all, and the same goes for any meltdown that seems to come out of nowhere over the tiniest thing. There's an underlying reason for these meltdowns that you've probably never even thought about, and once you know what this cause is, you can take steps to prevent it. That means far fewer meltdowns and a much more predictable toddler. To understand the real cause of these meltdowns, think of it like this. Your child wakes up every morning wearing an invisible backpack. At the start of the day it's empty, they're happy and they're coping fine. But as the hours go by, life starts dropping rocks into that bag. A rough night's sleep, that's a rock. A rushed breakfast, another rock. None of these things cause a meltdown on their own. They just sit in the bag. But by late afternoon, that backpack is heavy. And that biscuit breaking was just the last pebble that made that backpack too heavy to bear any longer. Now the good news is, some of the heaviest rocks are completely in your control. Which means if you keep them out, your child will have the space to handle the ones you don't have control of. And that means way fewer meltdowns. So let's start with the one that catches most parents out. Think about how you feel when you've gone too long without eating. Often it makes us feel cranky and leaves us very short on patience. Your toddler experiences the exact same thing. But they tend to end up feeling this way way more often than we do as adults because we underestimate how fast their little bodies burn through food. They need to eat far more regularly than we do. To keep them happy and regulated, toddlers need to eat roughly every two to three hours. When you map that out, that's about five meals a day. So that's breakfast, a morning snack, lunch, an afternoon snack and dinner. Now I know that sounds like you're constantly feeding them, but keep in mind your child's stomach is only about the size of their own little clenched fist. Which means it can't hold a lot at once. So we aren't talking about five massive plates of food here. It's just about giving them small regular top-ups to keep them going. And if you can stay ahead of that two to three hour window, you're going to keep a really heavy rock out of their back. Now something else that fills up that backpack fast is transition. So that's anytime your toddler has to move from one activity to the next. Like leaving the playground to get in the car or turning off the TV to come to dinner. For every transition, your toddler has to stop what they're doing, deal with that frustration of having to stop, especially if it's something they're enjoying, and then switch their attention to the next task. And this is where it gets really hard for them, because stopping something they're enjoying is frustrating. And that frustration sets off an alarm in their brain. It's a part called the amygdala and it's basically their internal alarm system. The moment they feel frustrated or disappointed or stressed, it goes off. Now we've got that same alarm. The difference is we've also got a part of the brain that acts like a set of brakes, calming that alarm back down. The bit that lets us go, oh, well, this isn't ideal, but I can handle it. That's the prefrontal cortex. And in your child, their prefrontal cortex is still very much under construction. In fact, it won't be fully built until they're in their mid-twenties. So when you ask them to turn off the TV and come to dinner, they can't do what we do and just talk themselves down. The alarm blares and another rock drops into their bag. And every one of those rocks brings them one step closer to a meltdown. Now, unfortunately, you can't just eliminate transitions from your child's day because they have to do them all day long. But what you can do is help them prepare for the transition before it happens. For example, instead of suddenly turning off the TV, which feels like a total ambush, all you need to do to make this smoother for them is give them a heads up. So you might crouch down to their eye level, make sure you've actually got their attention and say, when this episode finishes, we're going to turn off the TV and have dinner. It sounds so simple, but when you do this, you're giving their brain the time it needs to prepare for the change before you force them to stop. So when that moment actually arrives, although they might still feel a little frustrated, the shock is gone, which means the rock that gets added to their bag is much more than it could have been otherwise. And you can do this with absolutely everything. After this book, it's time to get dressed, or three more goes down the slide, and then it's time to get in the car. Now, just to clarify, this isn't about asking your child for permission. You are simply telling them when the change is going to occur so their brain has time to adjust. The other thing that helps keep those transition rocks small is having a predictable routine. Now, when I say predictable, I don't want you picturing yourself watching the clock all day, getting stressed because your toddler isn't doing the exact same thing at the exact same time. Because your toddler doesn't actually care about time at all. They haven't really got the concept of it yet. But what they do care about is the order that things happen in. So let's say their morning always goes something like this. They wake up, have breakfast, get dressed, brush their teeth, pop their shoes on, and then get in the car. When that order stays the same, their little brain starts to learn that sequence, and it knows what's going to come next. So every single one of those transitions stop being a surprise. And the rock that gets added to their bag is just a little pebble instead of a great big boulder. Now, some days your child's routine is going to go completely out the window. Maybe you've got visitors popping over, or the whole day just looks a little different from normal. When those days happen, the best thing that you can do is just flag it early. So you might say something like, today instead of going to the playground, we're going to go to grandma's house. When you do this, you're taking the surprise out of that transition, and because they know what's coming, they'll handle the change so much better than if you just sprung it on them. Now, everything we've talked about so far kind of makes sense. But this next one tends to catch parents off guard because it doesn't really feel like it should be a problem at all. You take your toddler to the playground, they have an amazing morning, then you pop to the shops on the way home, and the second you walk through your front door, they have a complete meltdown. And you're left standing there thinking, we had such a great morning, what on earth went wrong? The thing is, it wasn't any one particular thing. That quick stop at the shops was just the final pebble that made their backpack too heavy to bear any longer. Because for your toddler's brain, stimulation is stimulation. It doesn't matter whether it's fun or not. The playground was loud and exciting, the shops were busy and full of new things to look at, and every single bit of that was input their brain had to process. So it all went straight into the backpack. This is why your child can have the best morning imaginable and still fall apart the moment you walk through the front door. Now, I'm not saying that you shouldn't do fun things with your child. Of course you should. But it really helps to understand that a big, busy, exciting morning is going to fill that backpack right up. So if you've had one of those mornings, it's worth building in a bit of quiet time once you get home. And this can be something as simple as letting your child play with their toys or sitting down and reading a few books together. This quiet time gives your child's brain a chance to process everything that happened that morning and pull some of those heavy stimulation rocks back out of the bag. And when you get that backpack down to a more manageable level, their ability to cope with the little frustrations and disappointments that crop up later in the day is so much higher, which means those late afternoon meltdowns become far less likely. Now, you probably had days where nothing appeared to go wrong. Their routine was predictable, they weren't hungry or tired, and yet they still fell apart. On those days, think back to how many times you said no to them that morning. They wanted your phone and you said no. They reached for the pot plant and again, no. Then they tried to pull everything out of the kitchen cupboard and you said no. Now, each one of those no's felt like nothing in the moment, but every single no is another little rock dropping into that backpack. And if your child is hearing no 15 times before lunch, well, that's 15 small rocks that have been quietly adding up over the morning. Now, you can't get rid of no completely, and you really shouldn't because boundaries are important. But what you can do is stop a lot of those unnecessary no's from ever happening in the first place. And the simplest way to do this is to move things that you don't want them touching completely out of sight and set up what I call a yes space. This is just an area in your home where everything at your child's eye level is safe for them to touch, explore and play with. This might be their bedroom or even just the corner of the living room where their toys are laid out and they can play without you having to jump in and say no every couple of minutes. On top of that, another really simple way to cut down on those rocks is just changing how you say no to your child. So instead of telling them what not to do, you flip it around and tell them exactly what to do instead. So no running becomes walk inside. No don't throw your toys becomes you can drive your car along the ground. And no hitting becomes gentle hands. Flipping it like this cuts down on your toddler's frustration because you're making it so much easier for their brain to cooperate. Think about it. When you tell your child what not to do, first they have to process what it is you want them to stop doing, then manage that little flash of frustration, then work out what you actually want them to do instead and only then can they finally do it. And that's an awful lot of heavy lifting for a developing brain. But when you tell them exactly what to do, you skip all those exhausting steps and you just give them a clear alternative and it makes it so much easier for them to follow through and that instantly takes a lot of the sting out of that frustration. This strategy is actually one of seven practical strategies I break down in my free toddler cooperation toolkit. In it, I walk you through the exact simple shifts that you can start using today to get your child to actually listen without you having to yell or bribe or get locked in another exhausting power struggle. And the link to that's in the description if you'd like to grab a copy. So, so far we've talked about what happens during your toddler's day. But sometimes that backpack is already heavy before the day's even started. We all know what it's like to have a bad night's sleep. Things that normally wouldn't bother you in the slightest suddenly become really irritating and you find yourself wanting to snap at everyone. Your child feels the exact same way after a bad night except it's about a hundred times harder for them because unlike us, they haven't yet developed the emotional tools to recognize that they're tired and cranky, let alone do anything about it. In fact, researchers at Emory University looked at what was actually going on in a child's brain when they didn't get as much sleep as they needed. And what they found is that the amygdala, that alarm system we talked about, becomes much more sensitive and reactive. And at the same time, the connection between the prefrontal cortex, that logical part of the brain and the amygdala doesn't work as well as it should. Which means those breaks we talked about, the ones that calm everything back down become a lot less effective. And that's exactly why a tired toddler is so much more likely to melt down. Now, the fix here is to make sure that your little one is getting the sleep that they need. The American Academy of Sleep Medicine recommends that across a full 24 hours, which includes naps, one to two year olds need roughly 11 to 14 hours of sleep. And by the time they're around three to five, it drops a little to around 10 to 13 hours. Now, if you've just heard those numbers and realize that your child is nowhere near them, please don't panic because those figures are only part of the picture. It is completely normal and absolutely fine for children to land up to two hours either side of those guidelines. To truly find your child's sweet spot, it's also important to look at how they wake up in the morning. If they usually wake up on their own and they're happy, content and ready to go, then that's generally a sign that their body is getting exactly what it needs. But if you're having to wake them most mornings or they wake up really grumpy, irritable and tired, then that can be a sign that they actually need a little bit more sleep than they're currently getting. And often all it takes is shifting their bedtime a little earlier. Sometimes that one small change is all it takes to keep that tiredness rock out of their backpack for good and stop a fair few of those tantrums before they even start. But here's the thing, no matter how good you are at keeping these rocks out of the backpack, there are still going to be days when it overflows anyway and your toddler tips right into a full-blown tantrum. And when that happens, everything we've talked about today kind of goes out the window because you can't really prevent a tantrum that's already in full swing. At that point, the only thing that's going to help is knowing how to calm them back down again. And that's exactly what I cover in this video right here. Because what actually calms a tantrum down fast is something that feels really counterintuitive at first. It's actually about talking to them less but doing it in a very specific way so that you meet your child right where their brain is at that moment. So if you want to know exactly how to handle your little one's next tantrum, make sure you click here and watch that video next.