BackThe caveman approach to tantrums
How an Indian journalist-mother bridged cultural gaps in China and Europe, and found solace in Karpian toddler-ese
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Children in India, as in China, also routinely slept with parents, and many were spoon-fed for far later than their toddling counterparts in Europe. While a few of these practices, notably the sugar, were not the best long-term choices to be made, others did the kids little harm and probably brought them greater happiness..
The fact was that for most (middle-class) Indian families, nannies and grandparents were a taken-for-granted part of the childcare scene, which afforded parents, mothers in particular, the luxury of greater indulgence towards their little ones. The availability of more adult hands to help out with kids meant that there was less urgency in pushing children to be independent.
Babies often slept with grandmothers or ayahs, giving mothers the chance to sleep at night and therefore to eliminate the need for ‘sleep training’. Kids were commonly hand-fed by members of the extended family, or by hired help, until they naturally began to eat by themselves.
Westerners could be remarkably judgemental of some of these practices. In China, for example, it was standard for those who could afford it, to hire a yue-sao or doula to help new mothers with everything from breastfeeding to nutritious diets and baths.
At one of the childbirth classes I had attended in Beijing, a young Chinese woman, who was a month or so post-partum and an alumna of the group herself, dropped in to talk about her experience of giving birth at the hospital. Once she was done expounding on episiotomies and other vaginal niceties, the expectant mothers (all foreigners) began to press her about life with a baby. ‘Are you simply exhausted?’ asked one heavily pregnant French lady, her eyes round with excited sympathy.
‘Not really,’ the Chinese woman replied with a smile. ‘My yue-sao sleeps with the baby and gives her the night bottles, so I can get some rest.’
The room exploded in consternation. ‘You mean you don’t sleep with your baby?’ ‘You mean you don’t feed your baby yourself?’
In Europe, mothers rarely experience the privilege of hired help, or even the assistance of extended families. This places enormous burdens on mothers (while leaving them somewhat judgemental of those cultures where the job of child rearing is shared. But it also means that European kids are more self-sufficient. A child who does not sleep, eat or dress by herself/himself, is understandably unacceptable to a mother already overwhelmed by responsibilities at home and in the professional world.
Day care is another reason that children in Europe are less spoilt than in many other parts of the world. Upon finding themselves only one amongst scores of kids vying for the attention of a couple of beleaguered teachers, most children learn to look after their own basic needs quite early on.
I was determined that Ishaan would overcome his genetic heritage and be well behaved in true European style. The formula for this transcendence had seemed obvious: zero indulgence, clear boundary setting, strict policing of said borders, a refusal to ‘baby’ the child, and packing him off to crèche once this was feasible.
But trying to ensure that Ishaan fed himself, put on his own shoes, and tidied up his own toys turned out to be a physically painful experience. It took inhuman levels of self-control to stop myself from screaming when, despite hours of showing him how to eat yoghurt with a spoon, he still managed to smear it all over his freshly washed hair while simultaneously flinging a good-sized dollop at my laptop computer halfway across the room. Unfortunately, I was, as most mothers are, human. And so I did scream on occasion. Which only served to trigger a toddler tantrum. And in turn led to my suffering miserable bouts of guilt and self-recrimination.
Eventually, and inevitably, I took to Google to try and understand what was going on with Ishaan’s meltdowns. And as usual, I was left muddled and remorseful: the standard effect of so much parenting advice.
On the one hand, I came away convinced that my toddler was suffering from the sinister, but accurately descriptive, ‘oppositional defiant disorder’. The symptoms of this horrible condition fitted Ishaan to a T: ‘negativity, defiance, disobedience’.
But on the other hand I read articles entitled ‘The gift of the strong-willed child’ and the like, which stressed that ‘strongwilled’ children were gifts from God and would likely grow up to be confident, decisive leaders. I needed to learn to appreciate my child for who he was and not for what I wanted him to be.
I needed to have a positive attitude and relabel my child from ‘stubborn’ to ‘persistent’, and from ‘defiant’ to ‘spirited’. I needed to find ways to work with him, rather than in opposition to him.
I had to ‘tame’ myself, rather than trying to tame him. There were, however, some basic tenets emphasized in every school of thought: parents needed to set clear boundaries, be consistent in enforcing these and stay calm when dealing with tantrums. I failed on all three counts quite regularly.
Ishaan would beg to take a toy along with him for the ride to school. Believing that enlightened parenting lay in providing him the opportunity to find entertainment in his natural environment, rather than in a noisy, plastic toy, I would say no. He would cry and rage in response. Finally, after fifteen minutes of trying to block out the screeching while failing to stuff my son’s flailing body into a coat and shoes, I’d often cave in.
I comforted myself with the thought that I hadn’t allowed him to play with kitchen knives. Yet.
But much parenting advice also suggested ‘picking one’s battles’. The idea was to limit saying ‘no’ to the child to the minimum. ‘No’ to situations in which they would endanger themselves and ‘yes’ to all other non-critical desires. ...
... In desperation I turned to that time-tested miracle maker and colic banisher, Harvey Karp. An order on Amazon and few days’ wait later, it arrived in the post: The Happiest Toddler on the Block: How to Eliminate Tantrums and Raise a Patient, Respectful, and Cooperative One to Four-Year-Old. I read Karp’s book cover to cover in one sitting, filled with manic hope that an end to tantrums was nigh.
His toddler theory, in essence, is that young children are cavemen. Like their Neanderthal ancestors, toddlers are stubborn, opinionated and lacking in complex vocabulary. They bite, spit and grunt. They react physically when angry. They are sloppy eaters, hate to wait in line, and are negative, distractable and impatient.
An epiphany dawned. Ishaan was not an ‘Indian baby’, he was just an Australopithecus. According to Karp, toddlers actually find it upsetting when their demands, which to them feel like visceral needs, are met with calm and logic. They feel, he theorized, as though their feelings are not getting across.
What is required, therefore, is for the adult to mirror the little caveman’s desire in tone and content, so that the child understands that he is being understood, a process that helps diffuse tantrums in the offing.
What Karp advises is for parents to get down on their knees and loudly repeat the crux of what the tantrumming child is trying to communicate, back at them. So, for example, were Ishaan to begin to scream because he wanted my toothbrush, I needed to bring my face close to his and with exaggerated accompanying hand movements shout back: ‘You want? You want this? Ishaan wants Mama’s toothbrush? You want it now?’ At this point, according to Karp’s methodology, Ishaan would magically stop crying, which would be the precise moment to finally introduce firm logic in the way of a ‘I know you want it, but this is not yours. Here, have another toothbrush instead.’
I spent the next several months constantly shouting, ‘YOU WANT SNACK/RAT POISON/GARBAGE/SHAMPOO,’ etc., back at Ishaan, sometimes in public. Neighbours began avoiding me. But I didn’t care, because it worked. Every time I tried ‘toddler-ese’, as Karp called this staccato, overwrought form of communicating, Ishaan would startle into silence at the sight of his crazy cavewoman mom rotating her arms around like windmills, while screaming, ‘THIS IS MINE. THIS IS ISHAAN’S. NO GIVE YOU, MAMA.’
As with colic, Karp’s techniques proved to be useful coping mechanisms, although they did not ‘solve’ the problem. Ishaan continued to have meltdowns and although toddler-ese often helped nip one in the bud, there were other times that nothing worked. Except time. With children it almost always comes down to time.
Regardless of whether the issue is potty training, or sleep, or a tendency towards tantrums, eventually, with time, the most extreme aspects of these problems wane. The adage, ‘this too shall pass’, is a staple of parenting community websites. And with good reason. Unfortunately, the ‘passing’ often takes inordinately long.
Excerpted from Babies & Bylines, with permission from HarperCollins India
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