When that tantrum’s in full steam, how do you help your child to wind down and get back to normal? Elizabeth Pantley, author of the No-Cry Discipline Solution, offers up these ten tips:

  1. Fix the real problem
  2. Offer more choices
  3. Get eye to eye
  4. Focus on what you want
  5. Make your child feel you understand
  6. Teach the Quiet Bunny
  7. Distract and involve
  8. Invoke imagination
  9. Have a plan in advance
  10. When it’s over, it’s over

And in case you’re wondering, what’s the Quiet Bunny?

Start each morning or end each day with a brief relaxation session. Have your child sit or lie comfortably with eyes closed. Tell a story that he’s a Quiet Bunny. Name body parts and have the child wiggle and then relax them. Call upon this process when the child is familiar with it, and when he or she becomes agitated. Make eye contact and talk it through.

Source: Canada.com