Tantrums and meltdowns: Taking a deeper look into our children's behaviors, emotions and patterns

It's hard to talk about tantrums and meltdowns without talking about internalizing and externalizing behaviors.

 What are externalizing behaviors? 

Externalizing tends to show in kids that lean toward big reaction and emotional expression, letting their emotions be known and often behaving in ways that receive punishment and reactions from adults in their lives.

They are often displaying behaviors that demand attention from the environment, they are hitting, yelling, getting loud and making their emotions be seen.

They are having big body experiences and are making attempts to discharge that energy.

While hitting/biting/kicking aren't ideal behaviors, it gives us an outward behavior to work within guiding a child's emotional development. While the end goal definitely isn't hitting others, we want them to release emotions from the body in adaptive ways and figure out how to healthily manage the complex sensations along the way.

What about internalizing behaviors?  Internalizing tendencies may be kids society labels as "easygoing" and fly under the radar, often the kids labeled as achievers or perfectionists, maybe the ones who rarely seem to have or present a problem. When we are internalizing, individuals may hold it all in, detach from "non-preferred" or less accepted emotions and soldier on.

This tendency is to INTERNALIZE meltdown and tantrum behavior - instead of blaming others or acting out, we may blame ourselves and repress. Instead of getting angry at others, internal resentment builds. Those with internalizing tendencies may be more likely to hide or disregard their own interests or needs to honor others, keep the peace, or be easy to be around and feel quasi-accepted.

We may not think of this as a tantrum or meltdown, yet they're spiraling on the inside in similar dysregulated ways.

This inward expression can later show up as general feelings of disconnection from self and others, as resentment, repressed anger, addiction to thinking or fantasy, difficulty recognizing core body needs, many different presentations.

For these kids that tend toward “quieter”, more passive, "easy", it can be more challenging as they tend to internalize emotions and tuck it away where no one can see. Maybe it comes out intensely in some moments that appear disproportionate, or maybe they resort to less adaptive self-regulatory techniques (numbing, self blaming, isolating). The idea is that early on, kids need adults to organize and integrate emotion and behavior is rich communication in doing so - or to gain valuable feedback about boundaries and understand the world.

Important reminder

As always, no one fits cleanly into one of these categories - we are all a mix of the two, with one mode tending to dominate. An internalizer may at times show externalizing traits and vice versa. What we are looking for is trends. Does my child tend to externalize? Does my child tend to internalize their emotions?

For further information on guiding a child who externalizes For further information on guiding a child who internalizes