My Daughter is Like a Volcano!
Several years ago, I was on vacation in Costa Rica in a town called Arenal, which happens to be located at the base of an active volcano. One night, our guide pointed out a stream of lava flowing from the volcano. I asked about our safety and the guide explained that sudden and violent eruptions like at Mt. St. Helen’s or Mt. Vesuvius happen because a layer of rock covers the volcano and pressure builds up till it erupts. The Arenal volcano, on the other hand, is safe because it lets out just a little bit of lava at a time, and therefore pressure does not build up.
The volcano is a perfect metaphor for what happens with children as they attempt to manage difficult emotions. Many children, adolescents, and even adults tuck difficult feelings like anxiety, sadness, and loss away, choosing to avoid them rather than confront them head on.
This strategy does not work for long, as these difficult emotions don’t disappear but instead build up over time until they finally erupt in an outpouring of emotion most commonly referred to as a “meltdown” or “tantrum.” These eruptions can also take the form of panic attacks or physical symptoms like headaches or stomach aches.
The Arenal volcano provides the perfect solution. Allow a little out every day. No buildup. No eruption.
My daughter, who is now 6 years old, provides a good example of Mt. St. Helens in action.
Are You Sure You’ve Got the Right Kid?
As a four year old in preschool, my daughter received only positive behavior reports from her teachers. Problem was, my wife and I couldn’t figure out who exactly they were talking about. Certainly not our daughter. The little girl they were describing followed directions well, worked hard on her schoolwork, didn’t give up, never cried or complained, and was generally easy going.
At home, our daughter was quick to anger, often cried and complained, did not follow directions well and was generally a pain in the butt. I’m being a bit dramatic here, but you get the point. She was certainly affected by things that happened at school. She often told us about a classmate not allowing her to play on the dinosaur or the work in class being too hard. If the reports from her teachers were accurate, she did not allow herself to show or let out any negative emotions at school. Instead, she saved them all for the comfort and safety of home… Lucky us!
Let It Out!
Back then and now, my daughter would be best served by allowing some level of that frustration (emotional lava) out at school, just like the volcano at Arenal. This would mean working out playground disputes with her peers as they happen and telling her teacher that she is frustrated by the work that day.
However, she is young and at the beginning of her emotional life, and her current strategy in dealing with the myriad of difficult emotions at school is to just tuck them away. I think Freud had it right in some way when he hypothesized that our internal lives are driven by “psychic energy.” Like energy, the negative emotions my daughter experiences at school do not dissipate over the course of the day. They are tucked away, building pressure until she can get home and let them all out in the safety of her home.
Working with families in my practice, I often find that the parent or care-giver who is closest to the child receives the brunt of the volcanic explosions. As parents, it falls on us to handle the burden of our children’s emotions as they are unable to do so themselves. It is through this process that they will learn how to successfully manage and control how best to handle their feelings in the future.
Managing the Volcano
Often first attempts at managing the volcano deal with a focus on the tantrum and the host of behaviors that go with it such as hitting, spitting, teasing siblings, not following directions, screaming, bad language, and backtalk. Behavior charts, time-outs, or “1,2,3 Magic” are all strategies to address these symptoms. However, if we were to simply focus on the behavior as the problem, we miss a big part of what’s going on.
Not the tantrum, but the inability to deal with difficult emotions as they happen is the issue at heart. The solution is to get our kids to face issues that trouble them rather than tuck them away. Here’s how:
Expect Explosions: By accepting that emotional outbursts are an important part of growing up and learning to manage emotions, we as parents are better prepared for managing them when they inevitably come.
Remain Calm in the Face of Emotional Lava: When kids explode, they have reached a tipping point where they are no longer able to contain the difficult emotions that have been gathering for days. Bear in mind that all the difficult behavior and sharp words that accompany a melt down are our children’s attempts to give the overwhelming emotions to us. “I don’t want it; you can have it.”
Exploding ourselves gives these overwhelming emotions power and weight. Staying calm sends the message that they are manageable and gives our kids an opportunity to begin handling them on their own.
My wife and I are trying to follow these ideas, but we are nowhere near perfect… we sometimes get angry and erupt. There’s no need to be perfect, provided that you can repair the damage afterward. This means talking with our kids and explaining why we got angry and erupted. It is helpful to also address the reasons why we may have erupted that don’t pertain to our kids: “I’m not feeling so good today” Or: “I had a really stressful day at work.” Or: “I didn’t sleep well last night.”
Don’t Try to Make it All Better: Younger children are notoriously unreliable reporters and teens are notoriously tight lipped about what’s bothering them. Pushing for more information can often be the very reaction that tips the scales towards eruption; trying to figure out what’s wrong and fixing it may not lead anywhere in the moment. Giving kids space allows them the time to calm down and come to you when they’re ready to talk. This is always more effective than trying to force anything. They want to tell us and they want us to listen rather than tell them what to do.
Create a Narrative: Even if you don’t really know what happened, give a label to the feeling that is presented to you in the meltdown. Usually the way we feel in these moments is the same way our kids feel…out of control, frustrated, angry, etc. Along with the label, try to create a plausible story about what you think may have happened before or what may be going on at the moment. “You were really sad that your classmate didn’t let you climb on the dinosaur.” Or: “You are really angry and frustrated that I didn’t let you go to the mall alone.”
My wife and I have been trying to practice what I preach in my professional life and I’m happy to say that my daughter is starting to get it. While she still has difficult moments, she is also much more prone to using words to express her feelings rather than exploding. Knowing that we’re on the right track has also helped my wife and I to relax more during eruptions. What a relief that this stuff actually works!