Little Kids Big Emotions with Jill Urbane - The Mentor Mom

This episode centers on understanding and managing big emotions in young children while highlighting the dynamics between parents and their kids. We discuss the importance of emotional regulation for both parents and children, the distinctions between tantrums and meltdowns, and effective strategies for fostering emotional resilience.

Youtube episode now available: https://youtu.be/vEauFIJe9mE?si=3Rkn9QX5-o8FZdwl

• Understanding big emotions in young children  
• Distinctions between tantrums and meltdowns  
• The impact of parental emotional regulation on children  
• Recognizing sensory needs and unique wiring  
• Importance of intentional connection in parenting  
• Benefits of early intervention and active parental involvement  
• The value of authoritative vs. gentle parenting styles

Connect with Jill

https://www.thementormomblog.com/

Learn more: https://www.thementormomblog.com/resources 

Chapters

• 0:00 Navigating Big Emotions in Young Children
• 14:50 Parenting Self-Esteem and Child Development
• 25:54 Understanding Children's Emotional Regulation
• 29:44 Understanding Tantrums vs. Meltdowns

Transcript

Cindy: 0:00

Hey, it's time to interrupt your daily flow and just listen to another episode of the podcast. Today we're back with Jill Urbane, aka the Mentor Mom. She's a parent educator and social worker who has been working with families in their homes for nearly 30 years. She is passionate about supporting families by providing them with the foundational knowledge, understanding and skills needed to help parents foster healthy growth, development and learning in their child while finding their parenting mojo. Now, this episode is definitely one that's going to hit close to home for me, as you know, with my baby boy, who's a toddler now. But I'm so excited to welcome Jill to the podcast and hear what she has to say to us moms around how to regulate big emotions. Now, jill, I'm going to hand it over to you and have you explain what you mean by big emotions.

Jill: 1:02

Well, I think that when we think big emotions in young children, what I most often hear from parents is we're talking about meltdowns, we're talking about tantrums, which are really, in my mind, two separate things.

Jill: 1:18

And then the subsequent behaviors that we see in this age group, which would be the physical aggression, like hitting and biting and kicking. And then in the preschoolers we can certainly still see all that kind of physical stuff, but then we get a lot more of the screaming and the yelling and the kind of obstinate kind of behaviors from the preschoolers where they're just kind of asserting themselves and saying no in different ways. So that's kind of what I think of when I hear big, big, big emotions. But I also, when I'm talking big emotions, include our emotions as parents in that, because we oftentimes are having big emotions when our little ones are having big emotions, and that just makes things worse, because we need for our kiddos, they need our calm in order for them to find their calm. So helping parents navigate the ups and downs of those big emotions is not just about the child's but it's also about the parents.

Cindy: 2:17

Thank you for pointing that out because I think, as some of our listeners know but to new listeners, I have a three-year-old and he is currently going through that time where we're learning boundaries and we're kind of playing into you know his interests and things like that. But it is getting difficult when there is, you know, a wall where he's feeling really overwhelmed or frustrated. And you know, the last time I was yelled and screamed at was, you know, when I was a child, and so it's very odd to kind of know how to respond. Um, it almost feels like Ratatouille sometime. I don't know if you saw the movie, oh yeah, but it just feels like it immediately throws me back into that moment of like when I was in trouble and it's just it feels a little traumatic to deal with. Do you have any like take on that, or have you heard that notion before?

Jill: 3:22

Absolutely, and I love that you even brought this up because this is why it's so important for us as the next generation. Right, I mean our moms and dads and their moms and dads. They all did the best they could with what they had and what they knew at the time. Were any of them perfect? No, was I a perfect mom? No, did I try to do better than previous generations? Yes, and so that's really a part of why I do what I do is I'm hoping to help every generation get better and better.

Jill: 3:52

But when we grow up with yelling, or if we grow up with not wanting to be seen or heard by our parents, you know the whole.

Jill: 4:01

Children should be seen but not heard thing. Even though that doesn't sound like it would be traumatic, it is for a young child, because what we all want as human beings, if we want our kids to grow up and have strong social emotional skills, my goal is to help parents raise kids that will never need therapy or medication. That's my goal, right, and that helped the way that we get there is we feel seen, we feel safe, we feel heard and we feel loved, and if we're being yelled at, we might not be feeling some of those things. If we're getting ignored and told to stop crying, we're not going to be feeling all of those things. So that's why it's so critical in those really early years for us as parents to try to figure out our past and how it shows up as parents, and then it's a constant process of having to work on that. I always tell parents that having children is the most expensive and most difficult and most rewarding self-improvement class you will ever take.

Cindy: 5:06

Such a good way of describing it. Emphasis on the expense, yeah. And then you know, right before we kind of move on to some strategies here, I think it feels like a trend to me. I don't know the data behind it, but with children who are neurodivergent, or maybe we just have more awareness in this generation of when these big emotions are shifting over into an abnormal, like what should parents really see as a red flag, as opposed to the you know, the meltdowns and the tantrums that you're talking about.

Jill: 5:56

Well, you know, and that's a really that's a great question, but also a very difficult one in the sense that there are just so many different factors that can be involved. You know, there's not one clear cut kind of way that kids react. They all react in different ways, based on different things. I will say that behavior is always communication. It is always some sort of communication and I think what I have learned in my many years of working with young children, young children with special needs and their parents, is to use a framework. When we're looking at that Right, Like, sometimes we look through the lens different lenses when we see our kids behavior and we end up taking things personally, you know, assuming like there's something really wrong. But if we look through the lens of a framework and the framework I like to use is number one we need to understand development, like understand what milestones and development and how that impacts our kids, how their brains work, because that drives a lot of these big behaviors. Some of the social emotional stages that young kids go through at this age drive a lot of these behaviors. They're not. They're testing us, yes, but they're not testing us because they want to push our buttons. They're testing us because they're trying to develop neural pathways in their brains and they have to test us in order to close these loops. So when you understand the development, when you see a behavior, then you can be like, okay, well, maybe the response is because of this. But then the second part of that framework is not just to understand general development but then to really understand our child's unique wiring. Right, and our child's unique wiring is made up of their temperament, right? Like some kids are very rigid and need very strict routines and get thrown off by that, other kids are really easygoing about things but get really overwhelmed by other things. So we have to understand their temperament.

Jill: 7:50

We also have to understand, like, their sensory preferences, especially with this age group. You know, they may be a sensory seeker, they may be a sensory avoider. I know a lot of times when we're talking about sensory things, parents really think about the movement piece. But we also have to understand that with all of our different sensory systems, we all have different things that we can tolerate at different levels. We are all very individual. In that way, there are going to be some kids where it can be a noisy room and it doesn't bother them at all and there are going to be other kids where they're in a noisy room and it's going to be so overwhelming to them that it's like having somebody beating a drum next to their head. Well, their behavior is going to show and going to communicate like this is too much for me. For some kids it might be visual. For some kids it could be smell right, or it could be a combination of all of it.

Jill: 8:39

So we have to understand their unique wiring when it comes to their sensory preferences as well as their communication preferences. We all have different communication preferences. Some of us like to just kind of watch and we'll speak when we feel like speaking, and other kids are like blah, they're out there right away. But when we put all of this together to truly understand our child's experience of the world on top of the development piece, then it's a lot easier to look at what's going on in that moment through the right lenses, which then makes it easier for us to figure out the right way to support them. I should add that in that understanding our unique our child's unique wiring, we also have to understand ours right. So we have to understand our parenting style and our communication style, and are they working for our kids or not? Because if we want our kids to change, we're going to have to be the change agent. We have to change what we're doing or our kids won't change yeah, it's uh well.

Cindy: 9:39

So it's funny, because the other day I had a little bit of that realization where I was, um, I was giving my son, um, it was a, it was a toy, and let's, we'll use a car exam because I don't want to get into what the toy was. But, um, let's say, I gave him the car and I was like room, room, play. And you know he would look at me like okay, room, room, and I'm like why aren't you? You know he would look at me like okay, room, room, and I'm like why aren't you, you know, moving the car back and forth. And then I realized how would he know to like?

Cindy: 10:13

Cars are such, I mean even day to day, for us, as in this example, car is a car, you know, car moves forward and moves back and can park and has, you know, back and can park and has, you know, make sounds. But if you've never seen a car before, um, or you know whatever situation, you've never been to a concert, you you don't know what to expect. And sometimes you have to take that extra step to kind of guide of like, you know model, like here's, here's how I behave in this situation, which also then you know for those frustrating times, especially like between dad and mom. When we get to a frustrating situation, I also remember like baby's watching, baby's watching, baby's watching. It can be really, really, really really overwhelming.

Jill: 11:05

it can be really overwhelming and there's a couple of things that you touched on there, like one thing, especially when it comes to the sensory piece for kids, that we need to understand is that, like as adults, our sensory systems are fully, you know, we've, we've, we've developed our sensory system. I can walk into a home visit and notice that there's a smell from the kitchen because they're cooking dinner and the fan is on and the TV is on in the background and that there's lots of stuff on the floor, but my sensory system can notice it and then go oh, you don't need to focus on that. You can focus on the conversation you're having with this parent. Our children have not developed that skill yet. Everything is coming in at 100%. So they're slowly, with repetition and time and practice and our support, learning how to be able to tune those different things out. So when they go into these new places, like the first time into a play group that's got a ton of different kids in there and there's smells and sounds and all of that stuff, they may have a meltdown. But it depends on their sensory preferences.

Jill: 12:09

And I like what you talked about with the example using the car, because I don't think parents really realize that, that, like, sometimes kids need to be. They don't not all kids pick up on what to do with a toy. Sometimes they need to be shown, we have to model it, and then they're like oh, you mean, oh, I do that, or I can make the cow and the horse talk to each other. So that just kind of brings me down to our whole role as a parent is to always be teaching, always be coaching, always be figuring out when they get stuck. How can I help them get unstuck in a way that's going to help them learn?

Cindy: 12:38

So I'll make it a little bit challenging here. So I'm one of our listeners and I'm a mom and I work 40 hours a week and maybe some extra hours on other weeks, and so the limited time that I have with my child, how can I maximize supporting my child during that time?

Jill: 13:06

supporting my child during that time. So, hey, and I was a working mom, two kids, so I totally get how hard that is, and if I could go back and change anything, I would have changed some of my priorities, right, like, the best way to help support our kids is always going to be through connection, intentional, purposeful connection. Right Like I remember coming home from work and the kids are like mom, mom, mom and I'm like hey, how's it going, how was your day? But I wanted to get to the dishes and I wanted to get dinner started and I wanted to throw a load in the in the washer. Right Inadvertently. By doing that, though, right, I was kind of sending a message like you're not as important as this stuff over here.

Jill: 13:40

If I could turn back the hands of time, I would have spent more of that very limited time that we do have from walking in the door at the end of the day before we put them to bed, which I mean, really, that can honestly be like three hours in some cases, sometimes two.

Jill: 13:54

Right, taking that time and really being intentional, because all of that other stuff can wait, it can all be done after the kids are in bed. You know, I know we want to be able to sit down at that time too, but we can do it more quickly after they're in bed, honestly, and probably more easily. But knowing and sometimes I think it's about our mindset, like shifting our mindset to me, coming home, this is the most important thing is to give my kids such a big hug and to sit down and to listen to them and hear what they have to say, or to take 15 minutes or 20 minutes and get down on the floor and just play with them to let them feel seen, let them feel heard and let them feel important. When we do that and are more intentional about that connection and recognizing what that's going to do for them long term, I mean it just makes such a big change. When we front load with connection we get less of those behaviors that challenge, because those behaviors are their communication of. I need connection with you.

Cindy: 14:52

For me personally, like the weekends. I know those were like my cleaning days and I ended up feeling guilty at the end of the day, cause I'm like, well, well, I was off today, but here he was watching tv for a little bit more than I wanted because I needed to get, like you know, the dishes done and exactly what you said. So I'll definitely be taking that tip for myself. Um, you know, I I have to admit like there are times, like you said, like I do lay down in bed and I'm like scrolling, where I could have used that time separate elsewhere.

Jill: 15:26

Just just know again that mindset shift. Just know that that time, even though we're exhausted and tired and we just want to sit down, we just want to sit down and relax because we worked all day. Know that that is going to do so much for your child's mental health. As they grow and they, they'll need less of you, right? If you front load 20 to 30 minutes with your child down on the floor and then you say mommy's got to go down and do some wash, do you want to come with me? Right, you want to help me? If they want to come help you, great, you're getting more, you're filling their buckets some more. Most kids are going to be like no, that's okay, I'm going to stay up here and play, okay, well, I'll be back in 10, 15.

Cindy: 16:03

Right, that's great. It's a great example, and we heard a little bit about how you support families and children, but more so, who? Who is the who is looking for your services? What should people start to do to even get support in that way?

Jill: 16:23

So as an early childhood interventionist, I've been working doing that for over 25 years for a local early intervention program run, a school-based program. So the early intervention that I do is with children that have some sort of developmental delay or they've been identified in some cases as having qualifying for, like special education under the age of three, and so these services are focused on, you know, doing the evaluation of the child and then going in the home and helping work on whatever goal areas the parent may have. I would say that probably 85% of the kids, maybe 90% of the children that I've worked with over the years, it's been a speech or communication delay. Sometimes it's a motor delay, you know, sometimes it's just kind of a global delay. So as an interventionist, my job is to go in and support the parent and it's all done through a coaching model. So I go in, we sit down, they share, they share you know what's going on and then we look at, come up with some ideas of some different strategies. Then I show the parent how to implement those strategies and coach them on how to do it with their child. So that's really what early intervention is is, and what I do as well in in my business is coaching because as a, as a therapist, I can get kids to do all sorts of things for me that the parent can't, because I don't have history right. I'm'm starting with a clean slate with a child, so they try things with me that they might try with their parent, and then the communication between the two of us. They're like, okay, well, I guess it doesn't work for her, so I'll try figuring things out with her in a new way. As a parent it's far harder, right? You know your child like.

Jill: 17:59

I always use the example of a child who's not using a lot of words, how they throw their cup at their parent and that's their way of saying go fill that up. And the parent's like, oh, you want more milk. And then they go and get it right. When the parent stops doing that, the little one's like I don't think so. No, that's how I do it and that's when we start to sometimes is to teach parents and coach them through how to work through those things and build new kinds of interactional patterns that will help move the child along in their development. So I always like to say the intervention happens between our visits. I'm just there to teach and coach.

Jill: 18:36

If the child makes any progress or achieves their goals, it's solely because of the parent and the work that they've done. Which I think is the wonderful thing about coaching is when parents are like, oh, I can't believe it, and I'm like no, you did that. I just told, I just gave you a couple of tools, you did the work of implementing them, and that builds what I call our parenting self-esteem, like maybe I can do this. Okay, I've got this.

Jill: 18:58

And it's so amazing to see parents bloom in that way, like I'll come in and I'll be like how worried about your child's development Are you? On a scale of one to 10, 10 being, I'm so worried, and one being I'm not worried at all, and they're all like 10. And then, after a couple of periods of intervention where they're feeling more relaxed, I'll say where are you at? And they'll be like, I don't know, I might be at like a three and I'm like well, my work here is almost done. Then, right, you're feeling good about what you're doing.

Jill: 19:24

And I find that, as parents, that's really the key is, when our kids are little, we don't have very many tools in our parenting toolbox because we've never been a parent before or the kid that we had before. This one needed different tools and we only needed two for them because they were the easy kid. Now we got the hard kid. When we put more tools in our toolbox and practice them, our confidence goes up that we can handle what the kids are dishing out in a way that feels good to us and also helps us to see growth and learning in our kids yeah, I love it and it's been so helpful.

Cindy: 19:56

We had us, we put our child through a school program he's currently in it as well and, um, we had a speech therapist come and it was very similar. You know, it was always hard because it was like okay, here's how you do that. It was almost like from us and it was unexpected because I thought she was. I don't know why, but I thought she was going to come and they were going to like sound words out and then he was going to magically speak and she was like no, you, here's your duties, yeah, you're doing it, and then you know, so it's it. But it's it wasn't. You know, I took my undergrad is in psychology and it still wasn't intuitive. So now it's. You know, if you're a parent and you didn't get that hands-on training, you wouldn't know. So I think it's really great to have the option to look into services like that and I have.

Jill: 20:55

I have to ask you so at the end of that, because you said he's three, right, yeah, so probably transitioned into more of a classroom type of thing. So at the end of that work with the person in the home or in the early intervention location, at the end of it, how are you feeling?

Cindy: 21:12

confidence, wise Less afraid of him being on his own. Um, one of the biggest things that me and his dad did was have dad be at home. Um, so we didn't put him in you know daycare or anything just because we were overbearing. But as he started to develop the language, um, delay and some of these other other you know things that he has that he's very particular about, it made me really nervous. It made me really, you know, I still feel nervous about him being in another space.

Cindy: 21:48

But after having those sessions and you know her saying like you need to let him explore, you need to let him know that there's options, because if he doesn't know that he has to like, if mommy gives everything, because mommy knows best, he doesn't learn how to make decisions right and so it makes it difficult when there's a. The example she said was when there's a bad decision and a good decision in the playground. He's not going to have that already like instinctual, not that like practice, with thinking about oh, there's an option. He's just going to go with what feels like. What's the first feeling. Often that is an aggressive feeling or like it's my toy or things like that.

Cindy: 22:33

So I did feel more confident with him going into the school program and it was. I almost cried that day. We were in the they do that evaluation at school and they were like he is so sweet and he had. You know, he was saying his ABCs and all these things that you know. It was empowering for me as a mom. There's still a lot of work to do, you know. That was like we got to step one and now we're at step two out of a thousand, but we're moving. So you know, that's really how I felt.

Jill: 23:11

Oh, that's great to hear. Yeah, it's that when you start to feel like, okay, I've got some tools right, Like I've got some things that I know I can do when these things happen it, it really does make a big shift in how we're feeling about our parenting.

Cindy: 23:25

Yeah, and then I think, especially with the um, the social media aspect of this cause, it's that's an entire different conversation. But you know, I get on TikTok and it's like here's how you, gentle parent, this is not how you, gentle parent, this is what's affected. So it's like so confusing of you know what is the socially accepted way to guide your kids, let alone discipline or, like you know, have boundaries. Maybe discipline is the wrong word. Now I don't know. Like you know, have boundaries. Maybe discipline is the wrong word.

Jill: 23:58

Now I don't know anymore, but you know it's just, it's a lot, there's so much out there and I'm going to tell you that, as a social worker that I am, I hate the term gentle parenting only because I and I know people are like, hey, wait a minute, no, no, no, no, wait, hear me out. And I know people are like, hey, wait a minute, no, no, no, no, wait, hear me out. I hate the term gentle parenting just because I think it's so confusing for people and that a lot of times it gets mixed up with being permissive and really I know that what they're meaning by gentle parenting is to be what we know from the research, from decades of research, be what we know from the research, from decades of research. It comes down to a parenting style and that is the authoritative parenting style or, as I like, love and Logic. They call it the consultant.

Jill: 24:48

Right, when you're consultant parenting, you have boundaries with your children, but the boundaries that you have, they can be firm, but they're loving. They're also flexible and communication is a priority for those parents. But they also know when to communicate, especially with young kids, because we're communicating too much when they're up here with their emotions and we shouldn't but also being very, very flexible and focusing on that relationship and using a lot of natural consequences, as opposed to the permissive parent or the helicopter parent, right the drill sergeant or the drill sergeant parent. Those two parenting styles we know from the research have not got great outcomes for kids down the road, because they both inherently are sending a message to kids that you can't think on your own. Consultant parent is going to allow their child to make some mistakes while the price tag is small, knowing that they're going to learn more that way, and then be there to help them figure out how to maybe do that next time in a way where they don't have that outcome.

Cindy: 25:54

Yeah, the explanation makes it so, so much better than than you know. I think it's, all in all, in the PR of things too. Um, I, it's um. Sometimes it's odd when older family members or you know other people in in my community who grew up maybe in a different country, completely different, like the way my grandmother grew up you know it was very authoritarian yes, you, you know it was that like, oh, you're crying, I'll give you a reason to cry about it, it just didn't make sense.

Cindy: 26:34

And then they see you asking your child like what you know, how can I help you? It's very, very contrasted. So I do really appreciate how you describe that. For us Now, I think the last thing I want to ask you and you might have you may have said this already and if you want to just re restate it, that's fine, but we want to do a walk away point or a final gem. If somebody's listening to this podcast, what is something that you know they should really just take away, like if it's just one one liner type of thing of you know, what do we, what do you want parents to know about, um, their children or the, or anything?

Jill: 27:24

and from this conversation, I think probably, um, the biggest thing for me is that, well, it's two things. One is that, uh, development is one of your greatest tools to have in your parenting toolkit to understand development. And the second one would be to particular to this younger age group, to understand that their emotional regulation is going to be dependent on yours, and it's a process that you are involved in. You have to teach them how to emotionally regulate. They don't just figure it out on their own. It can take up to the age of five to seven, depending on the child, for them to truly get to the point where they can learn how to emotionally regulate.

Cindy: 28:03

I love that. And moms out there, it's not you, it's them. No, this has been great. Thank you so, um, for the conversation and all of the great information. Um, and then separately, I'll ask you what is the difference between the tantrum and a meltdown?

Jill: 28:28

because now that just came back to me, I'm wondering so um in in my book, having worked with so many little ones and seeing tantrums and meltdowns so often. To me a tantrum is usually a result of a limit, like you can't touch the TV, or can I have a cookie and know we're going to eat dinner, right? So those are the big emotions that they have as a result of usually a limit or some sort of consequence where they didn't get something they wanted, which is totally normal for this age group to have. And meltdowns are normal too. But I see meltdowns as more of like just an overload, and that overload could come or start as a tantrum, right, but then it turns into a meltdown. This is where the emotions get super big.

Jill: 29:16

The reactions are like holy cow. Why are we screaming this much over the fact that I gave you the blue cup instead of the green cup? Well, it could be. I'm hungry, I'm not feeling good, the TV is on and I didn't get enough movement today, so they're just on sensory overload. When they go into that meltdown, the response to both, you know we need to still focus on helping them to calm first. I always like the strategy calm, connect, correct. But that's how I see them. Differently, the meltdown may start as a tantrum and turn into a meltdown, but sometimes it's just a tantrum where I didn't get what I want. I get a little bit upset and then I just kind of move on and find something else to do.

Cindy: 29:55

Thank you so much for explaining that and for being part of this conversation today. I'm going to include the information for your website or any other resources, down in the description box. I think it's the notes for those listening on their preferred podcast host. If not, on YouTube, you'll see the description box. Thank you so much. Thank you, thank you for having me.