Why has the traditional temper tantrum advice, both historical and current, failed to allow parents to eliminate every temper tantrum of their children? There are three faulty concepts that traditional temper tantrum advice is based on: the first one being that infants under a year or six months old are unable to experience real anger or temper tantrums. Most child development experts have believed newborns less than emotionally functional-that is, not fully able to experience real emotions. Their angry-sounding expressions are apparently not real anger, we're told. Neither are they some other type of anger, fake anger, pre-anger, or simulated anger. We're led to believe their angry-sounding expressions are just instinctual crying responses to various discomforts.
What is it these experts believe happens when babies turn six months or a year old that allows them to finally be angry when they sound angry? One might guess it's something akin to babies gradually gaining fine-motor skills or language abilities. I realized decades ago that I didn't agree with this concept and I questioned how these experts could possibly perceive that infants are emotionally pre-functional. After all, we can't actually see whether or not a screaming baby is angry like we can see if it can or can't pick up tiny objects. By the very definition of it, an emotion is a state of mental being that is un-seeable, and we're only able to interpret what we perceive to be its expression.
If spouses appeared to be angry with one another, it wouldn't be guaranteed that they were. Conversely, if spouses appeared not to be angry with one another, it wouldn't be guaranteed that they weren't. It's easy to imagine grown ups experiencing different emotions from the ones they portray themselves feeling. Really, only the person experiencing the emotion can know for sure what is happening for them emotionally. And that concept logically applies to children and infants, as well.
I'm not sure how our current theorists arrived at such a scientifically unproven concept of emotional pre-functioning. I'm thinking, though, that they must have been taught these ideas at a university graduate level. That's where they studied the accumulated learning of the previous generation of child development experts. That generation, likewise, may have gleaned this belief from their own ancestral scholars who were behaviorism-based and generally viewed all subjective phenomena (such as emotions) as irrelevant-even for adults.
It seems to me that someone, somewhere, sometime simply made up this concept out of thin air and then most other theorists just went along with it. Even though we've had a lengthy social failure to understand babies and young children as fully functional emotional human beings, the newer understanding can help parents recognize their infants' real anger and temper tantrum behaviors.
What is it these experts believe happens when babies turn six months or a year old that allows them to finally be angry when they sound angry? One might guess it's something akin to babies gradually gaining fine-motor skills or language abilities. I realized decades ago that I didn't agree with this concept and I questioned how these experts could possibly perceive that infants are emotionally pre-functional. After all, we can't actually see whether or not a screaming baby is angry like we can see if it can or can't pick up tiny objects. By the very definition of it, an emotion is a state of mental being that is un-seeable, and we're only able to interpret what we perceive to be its expression.
If spouses appeared to be angry with one another, it wouldn't be guaranteed that they were. Conversely, if spouses appeared not to be angry with one another, it wouldn't be guaranteed that they weren't. It's easy to imagine grown ups experiencing different emotions from the ones they portray themselves feeling. Really, only the person experiencing the emotion can know for sure what is happening for them emotionally. And that concept logically applies to children and infants, as well.
I'm not sure how our current theorists arrived at such a scientifically unproven concept of emotional pre-functioning. I'm thinking, though, that they must have been taught these ideas at a university graduate level. That's where they studied the accumulated learning of the previous generation of child development experts. That generation, likewise, may have gleaned this belief from their own ancestral scholars who were behaviorism-based and generally viewed all subjective phenomena (such as emotions) as irrelevant-even for adults.
It seems to me that someone, somewhere, sometime simply made up this concept out of thin air and then most other theorists just went along with it. Even though we've had a lengthy social failure to understand babies and young children as fully functional emotional human beings, the newer understanding can help parents recognize their infants' real anger and temper tantrum behaviors.
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