Spoil the Tantrum

Jamie was seven years old and he ran everything.

Not because his parents were weak. They were smart, caring people who had read the books, attended the trainings, and done everything right. His mom was patient. His dad was consistent. And still — Jamie ran everything.

The school called at least once a week. Come pick him up. He's at it again.

What does "at it again" look like? Meltdowns. Power struggles. Public tantrums at the worst possible moments. Refusing cooperation. Spoiling family events. Getting even. Demanding what he wanted and making everyone around him pay when he didn't get it.

This is what the research calls a difficult temperament child.

You know the easy temperament child. That's the kid who wants to please. Gets their sense of self-worth by bringing joy to the faces of the people they love. Makes the parents look good in public. Teachers love them. Neighbors comment on how well-behaved they are.

The difficult temperament child is the opposite on every dimension.

This is the kid who wants to give orders, not take them. Gets even instead of getting along. Throws the tantrum in the grocery store, in the restaurant, at the birthday party. Refuses to cooperate just to prove they can refuse. The engine is always running hot.

Traditional intervention? Limit setting. Consequences. Coercive measures if necessary. The goal — stated or unstated — is to break the will and produce submission to authority.

I stopped one day and thought about what that actually means.

We are trying to turn a natural leader into a follower.

One afternoon a tantrum situation was developing in real time. I arranged to be on the call so I could direct the mother through what was about to happen.

I told her we were going to do something that was going to look like the opposite of everything she believed was right.

Instead of punishment — we were going to spoil him.

I can hear you already. This guy's nuts.

Stay with me.

First, we starved the tantrum. No attention to the behavior. We stepped back and let the noise run out — no lectures, no negotiations, no announcements. It was just noise. Remove the audience. Wait for the storm to pass. Nobody touched his things. Nobody touched him.

Then we found the need.

Underneath the blow-up was a toy that had arrived broken. Jamie had just gotten it. He was furious. And nobody had stopped to ask — what happened? What's wrong with it?

While he was cooling down, I asked his mother to fix it up. Make it look good. Put it back together. Then we went to him and said:

"Here's your game. We fixed it. It's good as new. I cannot believe they sent it to you like that."

No lecture. No next time, calm down and let us help you before you lose it. Nothing. Just — we see what happened, we fixed it, here you go.

He didn't know what to do with that.

A few minutes later a second problem was surfacing. A part of the game hadn't arrived. There was a snowstorm. Deliveries were backed up. It could be a week or two.

This was the moment.

I asked him: Do you want to work with me on an alternative to getting mad?

Here's the deal. Look through this list of games. Take your time. Pick something you'd want if this one doesn't arrive on time. If it comes late, you've got a backup plan already in motion.

I looked at him. Agreed?

He looked at me with that begrudging seven-year-old expression — the one that says I don't fully trust this but I'm listening. He thought about it. Have a tantrum, suffer through the wait with nothing. Or get active, get into the search, have something in the works.

"Alright," he said. A little slow. A little sideways. But he said it.

His parents got him his favorite treats. His favorite dinner. They expanded his privileges. And they left him searching for something he wanted.

He passed the time.

The package arrived one to two weeks late.

There was no tantrum.

Twenty-four hours later we were still working on it together.

The package still hadn't arrived. We were talking about how to compensate him for the wait — for the broken heart of an anticipated day that didn't go the way he'd imagined. He had waited a long time for this. When the day finally came, it came wrong.

I made an offer. A generous one — deliberately. I wanted to see what he'd do with it. He was used to pushing for maximum. Always more, never enough. So I put an excessive number on the table and looked at him.

"That's too much, isn't it?"

He went still. Nobody had ever done that before. He looked at the number. He looked at me.

"That's an insane amount," he said.

I stopped. What do you think is right?

He thought about it. He named a number. Reasonable. Honest. Exactly what the loss was worth.

This was the same kid who had been picked up from school once a week. The same kid who threw tantrums in the most inopportune places. Now he was sitting across from an adult, negotiating with more integrity than most grown-ups I know.

He put the whole thing behind him. He was waiting. He had a plan. He was okay.

Days later he was having a calm, positive conversation with me about better control.

That is human growth. Right there. In real time.

Every tantrum had a reason. Every single one. He wasn't a broken child. He was a child with no dignified outlet for a very powerful engine.

Let me tell you what actually happened in this story.

We didn't break Jamie's will. We gave it somewhere useful to go.

That's the whole move. That's the thing the traditional system never figures out — the difficult temperament child isn't broken. The difficult temperament child is a natural leader who has not yet been given a worthy problem to solve.

You don't manage that. You recruit it.

Find the need underneath the behavior. Give the need a dignified answer. Offer a real choice — not a fake choice where both options are punishments with different names. A real choice, with a real outcome, and real respect for the decision.

Then step back.

Not because you're giving up. Because you're giving over.

The difference between those two things is everything.

Until he fully outgrows this, the protocol stays. Spoil the tantrum. Find the need. Meet it with dignity. His parents will have to follow this every time the situation arises — and get good at it. The tantrums will still come, but easier to handle, less frequent. Because now his parents know how to meet the need before he escalates. Or starve the tantrum and then go find the need. Over and over, until one day they look up and realize he's doing it himself.

Sometimes that doesn't take as long as you'd think.

Want to go deeper on the 4 LAWS approach to difficult behavior? Start here: Find the Need. Or explore the full framework at 4lawsacademy.com/learn.

Eduardo M. Bustamante, Ph.D. is a Licensed Clinical Psychologist (MA PSY3644) with 35+ years of experience specializing in disruptive disorders, ADHD, and oppositional defiant disorder. He is the creator of the 4 LAWS of Trust and Talent and founder of 4 LAWS Academy. Learn more at 4lawsacademy.com.