Transforming Toddler Tantrums: A Guide to Happy Parenting

Are you the mom of a toddler? And completely stressed out with the amount of whining and power struggles that seem to go on from morning all the way till night? Well, I want to share with you why that's happening and what you can do instead.

I'm Bonnie Liotta. My husband and I work with families all over the world, helping them transform the most defiant and disruptive child behavior into healthy, happy, cooperative kids. And it starts at the age of two.

So why is this? Well, we're taught to teach our children what no means. We're taught to bribe, offer rewards, lecture them. We're taught that our children don't have what it takes for personal emotional regulation. Like a two-year-old is some sort of emotional vibration running around the earth that has no thoughts or ideas.

The truth is, a toddler two-year-old is just a mini you. They have a fully developed brain. They're missing the life skills on how to navigate the world, and they're counting on you to show them how the world works.

They don't understand what no means other than you're telling them that it's not okay for them to be them. And when they're not validated or heard, then they're going to feel like they're being shoved into a box of who you think they should be or who you want them to be, instead of actually validating that they have goals, needs, wants, and desires, just like you do.

So as you are their trusted advisor, you're way better off showing them what they can do. Always speak in double positives when you pick up your toys. Then we can watch television rather than telling them, no, they can't watch television because they didn't pick up their toys. They have no concept of abstract thinking of what that means.

We had a client whose two-year-old started to freak out the minute the dad tried to put the shirt on. And so we instructed dad to take the toddler to the closet and point at all the shirts. Do you want to wear this shirt? This shirt? No. This shirt? No. This shirt? No. This shirt? No. This shirt? Yeah. And what. What was really going on is he wanted to be like Spiderman, just like his older brother.

If you want them to put their shoes on and head out the door on time, you might want to grab three pairs of socks and say, hey, little Timmy, do you want to wear these socks? These socks or these socks? Before we put your shoes on to head out the door, they'll run up, grab their pair of socks, and put it on their feet. You know why? They want to feel like they have some sort of sense of control over their own lives. No human spirit wants to be controlled by another one. That is a complete illusion.

So all of this parenting advice we should use timeouts and takeaways and redirects and boundaries and rules, is completely off the mark. That is setting you and your toddler up for a lifetime of parenting hell. Because the temper tantrums aren't going to stop at terrible twos, which we call terrific twos. They're going to continue to happen at age five, age seven, age eight.

In which case, if it is happening, then you're going to be sold a bull crap idea that there's something wrong with your kids when there never was anything wrong with your kids. It's not the children who need to change, it's the parenting strategy that needs to change.

Take the exact same child who's throwing temper tantrums all day and you move them into an environment where they're being asked questions, where they're being heard and validated, when their actions are being guided with conscious life skills training, and you'll have a completely different child.