For years my instinct after a meltdown was to jump straight to the consequence – what happened, what the response would be, done. It wasn’t wrong exactly, but it skipped a step that mattered. Now, once everyone’s calm, I ask two questions before anything else: what were you feeling, and what do you need right now.
Why I Wait Until Calm to Ask
Asking either question in the middle of the meltdown itself never works – nobody can answer a reflective question while they’re still mid-storm. I wait until things have settled, even if that’s ten minutes later, because the answer is only useful once someone can actually give it.
What the Questions Actually Do
They separate the feeling from the behavior. A kid can be told that throwing a block bin has a consequence – the bin goes away for a while – while also being asked what was going on underneath it. Both things are true at once, and treating them separately keeps the consequence from feeling like the whole conversation.
It’s Not a Fix-All
Some meltdowns still end with both of us just tired and not particularly articulate. The questions don’t make every conversation productive. They just give us somewhere to start instead of nowhere.
I wrote out exactly how I use these two questions, along with the language for the moment right before them, in The Positive Discipline Quick-Start Guide.
More on getting through the hard moments calmly at our Parenting hub.
