Forget everything you’ve heard about tantrums, meltdowns, and “challenging” toddlers. In this article, Odette Parfitt explores how her son’s big emotions aren’t a problem—they’re a window into emotional growth, communication, and raising a child who can truly understand and express their feelings.
A couple of weeks ago, my son finally discovered the tantrum. We passed the two-year mark with zero drama four months ago, but there he was, face down on the floor, kicking and screaming. And it made me weirdly proud.
Countless friends, colleagues, relatives and acquaintances will lament the so-called “terrible twos”. The consensus is that this age is something you just have to bear and get through. This never sat well with me.
The thing is, my son has not yet learned the words to describe – or even label – any of his feelings. Can you imagine how frustrating that must be? To feel so many things for the first time and be overwhelmed by it, but to be unable to explain it to anyone around you?
On the other side of the coin: think for a minute – as an adult who has learned to communicate and self-regulate – what it would be like if you could scream and cry and roll around when you were disappointed or frustrated or angry. Sounds pretty therapeutic, doesn’t it? Healthy, even. Who wouldn’t want to vent all at once and emphatically, and then move on two minutes later?
I was a child with big feelings. (I am probably an adult with big feelings too.) In the 90s when nobody knew what a panic attack looked like, most adults were dismissive of how intensely I felt everything – anxiety yes, but also joy and excitement. I want that for my son, and I am proud to see glimpses of this intensity in him, in his affectionate, excitable, curious nature.
So I’m done with the stigma of the terrible twos; I am rebranding the whole concept. My child has big feelings and it is perfectly acceptable. Instead of rolling my eyes and putting my head in my hands (which I still do, I’m not the patron saint of patience), I’m focusing on giving him a safe space to process his feelings, and teaching him the vocabulary to understand and express them.
Who knows, maybe I even have a shot at raising an emotionally intelligent man one day (the world definitely needs more of that).
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