Wondering how to deal with tantrums — especially the ones that explode in public? Discover the Tantrum SECRET — the basic human emotional needs or hungers behind your child’s meltdowns: Connection, Significance (feeling important), and Variety or joy.
The Tantrum TRUTH is that your child isn’t misbehaving; they’re signaling a deep emotional hunger they can’t put into words.
Discover the simple parenting shift that turns overwhelming moments into connection instead of chaos.
For Full Experience, click play to watch on YouTube.
5 Key Takeaways
1️⃣ Tantrums aren’t misbehavior — they’re emotional hunger. Children melt down when their nervous system feels overwhelmed, starved for connection, certainty, or significance.
2️⃣ Public meltdowns aren’t “performance tantrums.”
They’re primal survival signals—your child’s way of saying, “I can’t find you, and I need your calm.”
3️⃣ Negative attention still meets emotional hunger.
Even yelling gives a child eye contact, intensity, and certainty—reinforcing the tantrum cycle without meaning to.
4️⃣ The real parenting shift is connection over control.
When you pause, attune, and meet the need beneath the behavior, the storm settles faster and trust grows stronger.
5️⃣ Emotional needs are ancient and hardwired.
Every tantrum reflects a basic human truth: children thrive on connection, presence, and felt safety—not perfection.
🎧 Listen Here — your sanity will thank you! (A parenting hack that might just change your afternoons).
With you all the way,
Anya
When you yell Stop! during a tantrum
When you yell ‘Stop!’ during a tantrum, your child isn’t stopping because they’re scared — but because, in that moment, their emotional hunger was finally fed.
Your child isn’t stopping because fear works.
They’re stopping because connection finally did.
This is the part most parenting books never explain:
A child will take any form of attention — even the intense kind — if their emotional needs have been starving.
And when those needs aren’t met… the nervous system will do whatever it must to get them noticed.
Not because they’re manipulative.
Not because they’re “acting out.”
But because emotional hunger screams louder than logic.
And when we finally lock eyes with them — even in frustration —
their body feels that hit of presence.
That’s why the tantrum pauses.
Not out of fear.
But out of finally being seen.
If this reframed something for you…
If it made you breathe differently for a moment…wait until you hear the full breakdown of the Whole Foods Emotional Hunger Tantrum story and what it teaches us about co-regulation.
WHY yelling can actually STOP a tantrum!
Negative attention, as twisted as it sounds, still meets an emotional hunger!
Here’s what every parent deserves to know:
1. Tantrums aren’t misbehavior — they’re emotional hunger.
A child melts down when their nervous system is overwhelmed, starved for connection, certainty, or significance.
2. Public meltdowns aren’t “performance tantrums.”
They’re primal survival signals — your child’s way of saying, “I can’t find you, and I need your calm.”
3. Negative attention still meets emotional hunger.
Even yelling gives a child intensity, certainty, and connection — which is why the cycle repeats.
4. Kids escalate when emotional needs go unmet.
What looks like “acting out” is actually a little nervous system trying every strategy it knows.
5. The solution isn’t control — it’s connection.
The moment you shift from “How do I stop this?” to “What is this trying to tell me?” everything changes.
When a mom finally yells “STOP IT RIGHT NOW”… as twisted as it sounds, it works.
Not because the child is “being bad.”
Not because fear is effective.
But because, in that split second, their emotional hunger is finally being fed.
Eye contact.
Intensity.
Certainty.
Connection.
All the things their nervous system had been starving for… suddenly flood in at once.
And this is the heartbreaking truth no one ever told us: your child isn’t trying to make your life harder — they’re trying to find you.
“Your child isn’t giving you a hard time… your child is having a hard time.”
That meltdown in the grocery store?
That scream in the car seat?
That public tantrum that leaves you flushed with embarrassment?
It isn’t misbehavior.
It’s emotional overwhelm.
It’s emotional hunger.
Here’s what every parent deserves to know …
Click here to watch the Full Episode on YouTube.
RESEARCH & SOURCES MENTIONED
Robbins, T. (2001). Awaken the Giant Within. Free Press.
Edmeades, E. (2018). The Human Diet: The Foundation of WildFit. WildFit Publishing.
Neufeld, G., & Maté, G. (2006). Hold On to Your Kids: Why Parents Need to Matter More Than Peers. Ballantine Books.
Porges, S. W. (2011). The Polyvagal Theory: Neurophysiological Foundations of Emotions, Attachment, Communication, and Self-Regulation. W. W. Norton & Company.
Siegel, D. J. (2012). The Whole-Brain Child: 12 Revolutionary Strategies to Nurture Your Child’s Developing Mind. Random House.
Center on the Developing Child at Harvard University. (2011). Key Concepts: Serve and Return.