Why Do they Happen?

• According to a study done by Linda Levine (1995), preschool aged children and younger do not label emotions consistently.  When given stories, they will often say that the main character is sad, when an older child or an adult would label him mad or frustrated.   Tantrums are the result of their inability to label the emotions.
  
• Your child "wants to be independent and  may to try to do more than her skills will allow. She wants to make her own choices and often may not cope well with not getting her way" (http://www.medem.com, 2001, ¶. 2)
  
• Children in this age range are struggling to accept limits set by adults, while they are also learning and dealing with their own developmental limitations (Dombro, Colker, & Dodge, 1999).  For example, they may be frustrated because they are not "big enough" to do one thing, yet too old to "act like a baby".
  
• "Older children have the language to communicate their needs.  Preschoolers haven't yet learned that words really can lead to satisfaction.  For little children, words are demands, not tools for negotiation.  If words don't yield immediate results, then a tantrum certainly will!" (Eastman & Rozen, 1994, p. 58)
  
• Stress in young children can be caused by such things as not being prepared for daily changes and adult expectations that are too high for their development. These stresses can become overwhelming, leading to anger that ends up being expressed as a temper tantrum (Kalish, 2001).