Tantrums or Deep Awareness?

The Nervous System Speaks

Tantrums are not about willfulness.
They are the nervous system expressing overwhelm.

A child’s brain is still developing, and the part that regulates emotions — the prefrontal cortex — is one of the last to mature.
So when emotion rises, reason steps aside. The body takes over.
It’s pure survival.

In that moment, your child’s nervous system is flooded. Their body is trying to release energy that feels unsafe to keep inside.
This is not defiance. It’s communication — primal, instinctual, and profoundly honest.

When we can see this, something inside us softens.
The behavior no longer feels personal.
It becomes a message: “Please help me come back to safety.”

The Mirror of Our Own Nervous System

Here’s where it becomes sacred work:
Every time our child loses control, it touches something inside of us.
Something ancient.

The times we were told to be quiet.
The moments our own feelings were too big for our caregivers.
The times love felt conditional on our calmness, on our compliance.

So when our children express what we were once punished for, our bodies react.
We tense. We rush to fix. We feel shame or panic.
Not because we’re bad parents, but because the memory of disconnection is still living in our cells.

Tantrums awaken not only our patience, but our past.
And this is where the healing begins.

When we choose not to react from that old wound —
but instead breathe, soften, and stay present —
we begin to rewrite the story.

We show our body that it is safe to stay.
We show our child that they are safe to feel.

This is integration in action.

Co-Regulation: The Silent Language of Safety

Children learn emotional regulation not through our words, but through our nervous system.
Your calm is their compass.
Your breath is their permission to settle.

When you stay grounded, your energy field tells their energy field:

“We’re okay. You are not alone. We can hold this together.”

This is called co-regulation — the invisible dance between two nervous systems syncing back into balance.

It’s not about perfection.
You don’t need to always stay calm — only to notice when you lose your center, and to return gently.
That return is the teaching.

Every time you come back to yourself, your child learns how to come back too.

When We Stop Trying to Fix

When a child is in a tantrum, our first instinct is to make it stop.
But sometimes, what they need is not a solution — it’s presence.

When we stop trying to fix the feeling,
when we sit close, breathe deeply, and simply hold the space,
the storm starts to lose its charge.

The child feels seen, not managed.
Held, not corrected.
And something in them begins to regulate — not because we forced it, but because we stayed.

Every tantrum met with love teaches the body that it’s safe to express.
Every breath we take together becomes a memory of safety that stays in their nervous system for life.

The Parent’s Practice

The next time your child’s emotions rise like a wave, pause.
Take one conscious breath.
Feel your feet on the ground.
Notice your spine — the line that connects heaven and earth through you.

Whisper inwardly:

“We are both safe.”

Stay near.
Even if your child doesn’t want your touch, let your energy say: I’m here.

After the storm passes, you might gently say,

“That was a big feeling. I stayed with you, and I always will.”

This isn’t about teaching them a lesson.
It’s about showing them — through your presence — that love can hold anything.

Remember: The Wisdom Within the Storm

Tantrums aren’t failures.
They’re opportunities — invitations into deeper connection and understanding.

They are moments where the unseen becomes visible,
where the nervous system reveals exactly what still needs safety.

And often, our children are not showing us their brokenness…
They’re showing us where we still need to heal.

What if every tantrum was a whisper from life saying:

“Here’s where love wants to deepen.”

So the next time your child’s voice rises,
before you rush to stop it —
take a slow breath.

This isn’t chaos.
It’s communication.
It’s intelligence.
It’s love learning how to express itself.

Because when we grow in love,
our children grow in freedom.

If You Loved This Piece

You can dive deeper into this topic in my podcast Parenting in Integration,
Episode: Tantrums or Deep Awareness?

Or explore my 1:1 Integration Sessions and Soul Readings —
gentle, intuitive journeys to help parents release inherited trauma and return to ease, presence, and love.

Seeing the Intelligence Behind Our Children’s Emotional Storms

There are moments in parenting that shake us to our core.
The sudden storm of a child’s scream, the refusal to move, the collapse into tears.
It can feel like chaos — loud, irrational, overwhelming.
But what if a tantrum is not misbehavior?
What if it is the nervous system’s way of saying:
“This is too much for me to hold alone.”