July 2023

Navigating Hot Tempered Behavior: Tips from Rickelle Hicks, LMFT

Navigating moments of emotional intensity with a child can feel overwhelming, especially when tempers flare. Today, our behavioral health specialist, Rickelle Hicks, offers thoughtful strategies to help parents approach these challenging situations with confidence and care.

• Regulate, Relate, Reason, the "Three R's" can be a very helpful tool for children who are "hot tempered" or "strong willed."
• Usually the reason behind their behavior is a difficulty with regulating emotions that feel too big for them to process. If we can start with "regulating" we can help children get the "lid on their brain" and feel more in control of big emotions. We help them move from fight or flight to prefrontal cortex functioning where kids can access their logic and reasoning!
• Use walking, tapping, rocking, movement, or music to help with regulating. Relating is crucial to help center kids back into their secure attachments. Reminding them that they are not their bad behaviors. They may have made a negative choice, but they themselves are loved and delighted in. Kids need so much to be reminded (even daily) how adored they are by their caregivers. We are motivated by relationship.
• After these 2 "R's," we can then move to reasoning because the brain is back online! We can use appropriate consequences or talk through empathetic responses or work on behavior change because kids are now at a place to receive this.