Daddy Has Tantrums Too

Daddy has tantrums, too. That's the whole episode. I could actually stop there. But let me tell you what it took for me to be able to say that sentence about myself, because it changed how I parent more than anything else. All right, and welcome back. I've been meaning to record this one for a while. I actually said it out loud on somebody else's podcast a few months ago, that I was going to make this episode, and then I didn't. But here it is. And I'll be honest with you, I'm making this one for me as much as for you. I've got a kid who's a little volatile. She's got huge feelings, Huge feelings. And it has been a process for me to learn how to honor those feelings and give her limits at the same time, because those two things don't naturally sit together. When she's got a big feeling, everything in me wants to either make it stop or make it okay. And neither one of those is actually good parenting. So here's a moment. We do these things called lovapaloozas, right? Which is basically where either my wife or I take our eldest daughter and we take her out for three hours. So it's just one on one time with one of her parents. And this is since our second child was born. And she and I go out, I think we go and see a movie. We have a great time. And there's a little restaurant we like to go to right near there. And I take her there, and they have this wall where kids can, like, draw and color and put art up. And the waitress comes over and she's like, hey, if you want to color this and if you put it up on the wall, you can get a free treat. And we're like, yeah, cool, great. And so we get the paper, we get the coloring markers, and she brings us the treat. Now here's where things started to go wrong. I can be a bit of a stickler and a hard ass. So we eat. My daughter starts coloring it, and then the thing she colors she likes so much much, she doesn't want to put it on the wall. And my body starts to go tight. I start to feel frustrated, I start to feel annoyed because there's this kind of agreement and deal, and she's just kind of melting down that she doesn't want to have to put it up there. And so I basically kind of start getting agitated, a little frustrated, sharp with her, and I'm kind of just like, fine, then let's go. And, you know, we Only got that dessert for free because you were supposed to put that up there. And her whole body just starts to kind of collapse in, and she gets really sad, and we're walking out to the car, and I can feel it, right? I can feel she's just kind of devastated by how I shamed her. Now, here's the key. I had been doing enough of this work. I saw what was happening. I got down on my knees, essentially, or not my knees, but I leaned down, got to eye level with her in the parking lot, and I looked her in the eye, and I said, hey, I'm sorry, Daddy just got a little frustrated, and I had a little tantrum there. It's totally okay that you want to keep the drawing, and I know you really like it, and you're really proud of it. You didn't do anything wrong. That's on Daddy. I had an expectation. It didn't go the way I wanted, and I had a little tantrum about it. And that's the thing. So, one to talk about this one, right? Not the kid, not my daughter. Because in that moment, like I said, what actually happened was I got triggered. I had all this heat in my chest. My shoulders and jaw were tight. My voice was kind of getting up and getting sharp. And I want to be really precise about what that is. We hear that word all the time now, you know, for years, I would have called it. You know, I was just tired, or I was being firm with her, trying to teach her a lesson, or maybe I was just having a hard day. But it wasn't any of those, right? I said it. I had a tantrum. The same thing my kid was having in her own way and has had many other times. My prefrontal cortex went offline, and I was just reacting. That's it. That's what it was until that moment I caught myself. And most of us, as parents, we have tantrums, too, but we don't label it. We label it as parenting. That's where a lot of this breaks down. So quick thing here. This is from Dan Siegel, an amazing teacher. Best picture of the brain I've gotten. Hold your hand up right if you're driving, just listen. You'll get it. Hands up, fingers straight. Your palm right here, is your brain stem. It's survival, fight or flight. Constantly scanning. Fold your thumb into your palm. That thumb, that's your emotional center. It's where your emotions are housed. Now fold your fingers down over it. That's your thinking brain sitting right on top. And it actually touches both Touches the fingers and the palm, and that's the part that regulates you. Okay? Now lift your finger straight up. Bing. Guess what that is. Siegel calls that flipping your lid. That's a tantrum. That's the thinking brain offline. Nothing is regulating anything anymore, and there's nobody home to reason with, which is the piece I wish somebody had shown me 10 years ago. You can say anything you want to a kid whose lid is up. It does not matter. There is no one there. Just like there was no one there for me when I got all tight and mad about the drawing. Now fold your fingers back down. That's it coming back online. Same hand, same flip. That's your kid, and that's also you. Us, as parents, right? And as humans, even if you don't have kids, kids brains keep building until about 25. So their lid flips a lot easier. That's supposed to happen. Ours, it's supposed to be finished, so we don't get that excuse, right? So now here's what I found. When I'm in that triggered tantrum state, when my lid is up, I'm basically just regressing. I'm becoming a kid, and in a lot of ways, I default back to how I was parented. That's it. That's all that's happening. Suddenly I'm my mom or my dad. It's about the tone, the volume, the exact words. And I often hear it come out of my mouth, and I know precisely where I learned it. And it's not been how I want to raise my kids, you know, because I lived through that, and it didn't work very well. But nobody really teaches this part. You think you're going to make a decision to parent differently, and you do make that decision, and you mean it. But then your lid flips and the decision is gone. Because the decision lives up here in your fingers, in your prefrontal cortex. And guess what? Your fingers are up in the air. They're not touching the rest of you. What's left is the oldest recording and habits your nervous system got. Here's the other thing. If I'm in that agitated state, actually annoyed, and I'm trying to teach and guide my kid, while that's happening, guess what? They're not going to hear it. They're going to feel my nervous system, and their nervous system is going to get reactive to that, and the whole thing flushes down the toilet fast. You're not delivering a lesson so much. You're delivering a state in these moments. That's what's transmitting, which means the most important parenting move is often not a technique at all. It's whether you can get your own fingers back down before you open your mouth. So I also want to name something I see a lot, and I've done it myself. When we have a tantrum and don't call it that, don't call it one, we take it to the kid. We process it at them, we explain, add volume, why they made us feel that way. And what that does is it reverses the direction of parenting in that moment, the kid is kind of now being asked to manage the adult. They can feel that your regulation has become their job. Kids are extremely good at picking that up, particularly you little nice guys, myself included. And they will take that job because they love you. You get to have the tantrum. You just don't get to have it at them. Take it to your partner with consent. Take it to your friends, definitely take it to your men. Take it anywhere. That is not the person who depends on you for their sense of safety. So what do you do with all this? Three things. One, just say it out loud in the room. Not the story, the state. Daddy's angry and frustrated right now. Feeling a lot of heat in my chest. I'm going to step outside and do some jumping jacks, and I'm going to come back. That's it. Right. I want to be clear about why that works, because it's not about being nice. A man who can look at his kid and name what's happening in his body is dramatically safer than. Than a man who has no idea and just starts escalating. Naming it is what starts to give you the choice. And your kid is watching you do the exact skill you want them to be able to do. Second thing, move it out of your body. I give guys this practice all the time. You've got a lot of anger in your body. Right? Go have a tantrum right now. Three minutes, no words. Just use your body. Stomp, shake, whine, push a wall. No talking. Because often talking is how we avoid it. We do this for three minutes and come back and go, holy crap, I feel so much better. That was insane. Yeah, because you have tantrums, too. There's still a little kid in there. And that energy is real, and it's in your tissues, and it's gonna come out somewhere. You get to pick where. So maybe do that one today. It's free and it takes three minutes. Number three, like we said, like I said earlier, have a place to bring it that isn't Just your family. This is the one that actually changed things for me the most. I have a place where I can come to my men and say, I'm really challenged right now. Here's what happens. My kid starts to do this and I start to do this, and I get a huge swell of anger or frustration because I want things to be different. And then I lose it. Flip my lid. Boom, tantrum. Flip the lid. And then they help me work that my men do right. And I get to learn the skills to discharge some of that tension. I get to have my own freak out somewhere so I'm not having to hold it all together for the family. I can rant, I can rave, I can be completely unskillful. I can stomp around, I can have the tantrum. And then next time I'm in that moment with my kid, it's not that I'm magically fixed. That's not what happens. What happens is I have a little more space, half a second, and I go, okay, this is what I was training for last week. Here we go. Get the lid back on. And then I get to go back and report on that with my men. That's the whole mechanism. My parenting improves over time. Not necessarily just because I read something, but because I have somewhere to put the charge. So look, we're all going to flip our lids. I still do. That is not a problem. Definitely not a character problem. And I'm not going to pretend I've solved it. Like I said, I've got now two kids with huge feelings and I'm in it right now, same as you. What I can tell you is that the sentence that made the difference is, daddy has tantrums too. It's not a technique. Because the second I could say that about myself, I stopped needing to be right so much in the moment and I could just go, oh, that was mine. Let me go put it somewhere it belongs and then come back and actually be with my kid. Your kids are going to learn how to handle their feelings by watching how you handle yours, not by hearing what you tell them about it. That's the deal. And you know, nobody really signed off on that deal, but that is the deal. So go have a tantrum somewhere they can't see it, then go back in there and be with them. If you want a place to take that stuff, a room of men where you can bring the ugly version of what you're feeling and work it. That is what a men's group is for. That's so much of what we can do. You can go to Evolutionary Men and find your way in. I got lots of different offerings and I can even point you to some that aren't mine if it's a good fit for you. So here's the other key. When you learn this distinction about tantrums and what they really are, is the lid coming off in that what we all need in that moment is something to co regulate to bring us down into ourselves. It changes how we experience people's emotions because instead of trying to get rid of them, instead we become present for people in them. And this isn't just important for your kids, this can profoundly shift your intimate relationship. When you realize all of us, no matter how wise and intelligent and adult we think we are, build up emotional charge that we simply need to discharge and that in the process of that we can put the lid back on our adult wise thinking self. Our prefrontal cortex can assemble itself back together with when we realize what's really happening down here and give it the proper container. All right, well, thanks for listening and until next time.