How to help your child when they’re kicking and screaming, with tips from an expert

A child psychologist shares tips on dealing with your 4-year-old who doesn't take no for an answer. Discusses co-regulation and how to teach problem solving.

Tania Johnson, co-founder of the Institute of Child Psychology, joined CTV Morning Live’s Kent Morrison to answer parenting questions.

This transcript has been edited for length and clarity.

Kent Morrison: Here on CTV Morning Live, we try to make life easier for you at home, and that includes dealing with your family. We’ve been taking questions from the text line from parents looking for help and taking them to our experts. Wanda writes, “How do you deal with a four-year-old who will not accept no for an answer? They throw themselves on the floor, kicking and screaming, and there is no talking to them.”

Tania Johnson: I think every parent’s been there, and if we know a four-year-old, or we have a four-year-old in our house, we get Wanda, we totally get those questions. A four-year-old’s job is to test the limits. That’s what they’re supposed to do. They’re trying to become these independent, little human beings. Our job as parents is to set those limits in a warm, consistent, kind way. I think the biggest tip that I have for Wanda is that we want to focus on co-regulation here. Co-regulation is our ability to lend our child our calm nervous system. It doesn’t work once. We have to do it again and again and again. It’s a slow, messy, long process where they learn, “How do I calm my body, even when I’m stressed?” We’re not going to teach this to them through anything that we have to say. It’s all in our body and it’s who we are in those moments with our kiddo.

Kent: This is tricky because this can often happen when you’re at the door trying to get outside, or it’s meal time, or you’re outside in public, and it’s stressful for you as a parent as well, but it’s important to just calm down.

Tania: Exactly. I’ll give you a couple of tips on how we actually do this. The first thing is, we want to get down to their level, because when we stand above them, cortisol increases. So, we get down to their level, and we want to stop talking. Because in these moments, it’s stressful, so we start doing all these different things. We start trying to distract, we might threaten a punishment, we might try to give them a reward, try and get them moving. Like we’re in the middle of Michaels, and we’re like, “Please get up off the floor, right now.” We’re going to stop talking, because the more we talk, the further it pushes them into that stress response. That’s why he keeps crying, because you’re talking and talking to him. We’re just going to say a few words. We might say, “Mommy’s here. I love you. You’re safe. It’s OK.” Just a few little words. We’re going to calm our body, calm our breath, calm our face, and sometimes, we might need to just scoop them up. For example, if we have to get to daycare, sometimes we might need to scoop them up, but we stay calm with them. Same calm voice, calm tone, put them in the car, buckle them up. We stay calm. What we often forget is the goal, even with our four-year-olds, is what happens later. Later on, we come back that evening, after daycare or work, everybody is calm hopefully, and we say, “It’s really tricky in the morning when we want to play Lego right before we’re about to leave. How can we make that a little easier for you?” Even at three or four, they can start problem solving, and this is how we teach them executive functioning. Their ideas might be crazy to begin with, but this is the seed of it. This is where it starts, and that’s what we often forget about with our kids. It’s slow, it’s long, it’s messy, but this is where the teaching happens.

Kent: So, some people might be worried about bringing it back up, because it was such a stressful thing to go through, but that’s where you really make the impact?

Tania: Absolutely. We can say to them, “It’s so frustrating for you when mom says no to your Lego right before going to daycare. I get it. What are some of your thoughts on this?” Then, we can offer some of our ideas, and that’s how we build those skills with them. It’s not through punishments, not through timeouts, and it’s not through reward systems. It’s through problem solving. It’s through being human beings together.

Send your questions for Tania and Tammy via text message to 10-400.