Tantrums are Entitlement Leaving the Body
Why I'm no longer avoiding disappointing my kids
My 9 year old still throws tantrums, and yes, it’s very embarrassing (and exhausting, for everyone). Part of her emotional regulation issues are due to neurodivergence, but a big part of her tantrums are because of how I parented when she was younger.
I’d never been around kids before I had them. I was the youngest kid in my family, had no cousins, and my only exposure to kids once I was no longer a kid was a few glimpses here and there at restaurants.
I had no clue whatsoever how to handle tantrums. I didn’t know they could be so intense, and I was taken aback by how in distress my poor little baby was in when things were frustrating or difficult. I was also so embarrassed of her being upset because in public it seemed like everyone really looked down upon parents who couldn’t control their kids, and I was supposed to be controlling my kid so no one had to deal with crying in public.
So, I did everything possible to build her a life where she avoided frustration or disappointment. I hid the frustrating games and puzzles. When she made totally unreasonable demands like not throwing away food that she had left on the table hours later, I shrugged and was like, ok sure? Once a tantrum started, I didn’t give into her demands, but I did everything I could to avoid them. I remember my mom taking me aside and pointing to a bowl of mostly-eaten strawberries on the counter and whispering “do you think I can throw that away?” clearly terrified if she did and my daughter wasn’t done with them, my daughter would explode. Everyone was walking on eggshells.
I thought I needed to follow my kid’s lead to create an environment where she could grow and learn to handle her emotions peacefully. I thought avoiding tantrums would help keep her nervous system regulated, which was important for her development.
I was wrong.
Life is Full of Disappointment, and THAT’S OK.
Now years later, my daughter really struggles handling disappointment or difficulty. By trying to avoid tantrums when she was younger, I’ve created a child that has now thrown more tantrums in her life than I can even remember. She is emotionally dysregulated on pretty much a daily basis, and has very little resilience when things get hard
Last night I told her she had to do the dishes before bed and she agreed. She said she loves doing the dishes. Of course, once it came time to actually do them, she literally dropped to the floor, kicking and screaming that it was the worst thing ever and she just wanted to do them tomorrow.
Again - we are talking about a 9YEAR OLD. Insanity.
The root of this, as I’m learning now, is not necessarily just that she hasn’t had enough practice experiencing discomfort.
It’s entitlement.
It’s that she know expects for life to be easy and frustration free. She expects people to be unfailingly kind and she expects kids to play what she wants to play. She hates sharing. She expects people to patiently watch her perform whatever it is she wants to show them; she expects people to put aside their needs for whatever her needs are.
Because that is what I did for her, for years.
If I needed to do the dishes and she wanted me to do Magnatiles with her, I stopped the dishes and did Magnatiles. I swallowed my own discomfort and exhaustion so that I would be a perfect, happy, and accommodating mom because I thought that’s what a good mom did. I never read books or pursued any of my own interests, because I was playing with her, taking her places, trying to avoid her experiencing boredom or disappointment or discomfort in any form.
How I wish I could do it all over again.
Life is disappointing. I’ve had days where I’ve been reprimanded at work, came out to my car and found the tire flat, then come home to a huge mess in the house where no one bothered to pick up anything, and a child who screamed at me that she hated me and I was the worst.
I admit I have let these kinds of days overwhelm me. In addressing my child’s entitlement, I have had to confront my own entitlement. My mom being afraid to throw away the old strawberries was how she parented me as well.
The message I was sent as a kid was that was sensitive. Fragile. My mom intervened often when things were hard. She didn’t want to see her kids suffer. Which is, of course, a very natural impulse. But I carried that sense of fragility into adulthood, and then passed it down to my daughter.
We tend to think of ‘entitlement’ as some kind of things that only spoiled, privileged kids exhibit. Like the behavior of rich heirs to expect the world to cater to them, or Dudley Dursley expecting one more present because he didn’t have as many as last year. But it also shows up as too high of expectations generally, not just with regard to material things or money.
I’m not entitled to carefree days. I’m not entitled to a life of ease. I’m not entitled to other people’s kindness or care. That doesn’t mean I can’t work toward those things - I can identify and communicate my needs and boundaries, I can work toward not taking on too much so I don’t get in trouble at work, I can declutter and establish and maintain routines so the house doesn’t become a disaster zone.
But I can’t mope and say “woe is me” and expect the world to take care of me without taking any action myself. Because I’m not entitled to a world that reads my mind and predicts my needs, and neither is my daughter.
The world is hard and unfair, and that’s totally OK. Because I’m strong enough to handle it, and I’m not entitled to anything - even fairness.
What makes us tantrum makes us stronger
I know it’s not popular at the moment to be too “toughen up buttercup” when it comes to parenting (or really any interpersonal relationships). We’re in an age of embracing vulnerabilities, validating emotions, and being OK not being OK.
Statements like “pain is weakness leaving the body” is peak cringe ok, boomer. And I do think in the past many of those concepts did steamroll over people’s emotions too much and prevent healthy handling of emotions. Bottling up emotions is not good for you and I can point to a lot of addictions in my family’s history that were due to this. This is not saying “children should be seen and not heard” or “stop crying or I’ll give you something to cry about.”
But you can learn to handle difficult emotions without bottling them up, and also without taking out your emotional difficulty on other people in the name of being vulnerable or authentic. You can learn to let difficult situations roll off like water off a duck’s back.
And kids can do this too.
While my daughter rolled on the floor crying that doing the dishes was just too hard, I thought, “tantrums are entitlement leaving the body”. While of course I am not enjoying the fact that she’s having a tantrum, I also recognize that holding firm on the expectation that she do this one chore is not unreasonable, and that she can handle it.
She’s not fragile. And she’s not entitled to go relax in her bed instead of doing her ONE chore she was assigned this entire week.
I didn’t engage with her while she was screaming on the floor (I’ve learned long ago that is counter-productive, when she’s in fight or flight) but I did just say “you’re fine, you can handle this” and went off to put her brother to bed.
Years before I would have been like, yeah fine, just do them tomorrow. But no more. I’m expecting her to be strong enough to meet reasonable expectations.
She did the dishes. And she lived. And she’s stronger for it. She learned in one more way that she handle hard stuff, she can handle discomfort, she can handle frustration.
And I can handle her tantrums too, because it’s how I’m going to raise a kid who isn’t entitled.