When a tantrum hits, your child’s brain isn’t yet wired to handle what’s overwhelming them alone: the first big meltdowns erupt around age two or three, born of frustration at bumping into their own limits. In the moment, without shouting or shaming, you can weather the storm together.
Why do tantrums erupt at this age?
You don't need to be the perfect mother for your child to feel loved: you just need to come back to them.
Your little one’s tantrum isn’t a whim: it’s often a need that went unanswered with comfort, growing until it becomes a full-blown crisis. Suzanne Vallières notes that when a child’s emotions go unacknowledged, they tend to exaggerate how they express them, through tantrums or sulking. Before scolding, try hearing it as a signal, not a provocation.
Add to that a brain that’s still under construction. An article in Cerveau & Psycho points out that who we become as adults owes much to early childhood and brain development, a field research is still exploring. Your child’s brain simply isn’t yet equipped to handle what overwhelms them on its own.
What can (and can’t) an immature brain do?
The first big tantrums erupt around age two or three, often sparked by a child’s frustration at hitting their own limits. It’s not a calculated whim: it’s a brain discovering, in real time, that it can’t have everything. Between two and four is precisely when most of the learning about limits happens, according to Lee Lozowick, who calls it the single most important window for this kind of teaching.
One golden rule remains, and it changes everything day to day: the consequence has to follow the act immediately. Wait, and you lose the child along the way. A week later, the episode that left such a mark on you no longer exists in their world. Better to say it there and then, even exhausted, even in the middle of the supermarket.
How do you get through a meltdown without shaming or shouting?
Faced with a screaming child, certain words wound without meaning to. Telling them they’re tired, for instance, is experienced as a humiliation that only fuels their rage, Filliozat observes. Another trap: the threat you know, deep down, you’ll never follow through on. Suzanne Vallières reminds us that a child quickly senses it won’t happen, and it stops impressing them altogether. It also, in passing, wrecks the credibility of the parent who makes it.
What's left is the slower path, the one Brigitte Racine describes: start from the child's real needs (love, security, competence, freedom, pleasure) and repeat the rule, patiently, again and again. Raising a child without shouting doesn't mean giving up on limits; it means choosing to set them with consistency. It's less dramatic than an outburst, but it's what builds trust, day after day.
And what if you shouted anyway?
No parent gets through a tantrum without ever raising their voice, and that's not a failure. Isabelle Filliozat reminds us that it's natural for a child's emotions to take precedence, at times, over their parents'; our role recedes gradually as the child grows up. A shout that slips out doesn't erase that process: it just delays it for a moment.
The temptation, often, is to chase the image of the perfect parent: acting out of duty or to reassure yourself, without answering the child's real need. That quest for perfection wears you down, and can even turn your frustration against the child who's keeping you from reaching it. Better to let it go, come back to the child once calm returns, and repair the bond rather than judge yourself.
And if, despite everything, a shout slipped out? It will happen again, and it’s not proof that you’ve failed: it’s a sign that you’re tired, human, caught between a small fidgeting hand and a day that won’t end. What matters comes after: going back to your child, telling them what happened, simply staying there. The patience you find again the day after a meltdown builds just as much as the patience you keep during the storm. You don’t need to be the perfect mother for your child to feel loved: you just need to come back to them.
More to read on La Sultane
Raising kids without shouting: 5 keys to a calmer relationship with your child
Anton Makarenko’s 10 rules for raising your child
Handling the teenage crisis: a guide for parents and teens
Raising your child by example: a practical guide for parents
