More seriously... in our house, I expect LF to be able to tell me how he's feeling and precisely why (mostly because if more adults could do this they wouldn't be so screwed up), and I'll tolerate him needing a break from whatever is frustrating him, or a certain amount of pouting... I won't tolerate screaming, yelling, stomping, growling, muttering rude things, harm to self/others, banging, throwing things...

If you teach him screaming is okay now, you'd better be sure -- he'll still be doing it when he's 10 and when he's a teenager.

Oh that doesn't sound good :( Screaming and yelling are currently fun things to do, he doesn't do them when he's upset.

Here's how I accomplished it:

1) Recognize that there's a difference between rational frustration (I thought we were going to the park but a storm hit so we can't go, my favorite toy just broke, etc.) and typical little-kid not getting one's own way. Part of raising an emotionally mature human being is teaching your child to tell when they are being rational and when they aren't.

If it's irrational (I don't WANT to have a bed-time), I am extremely curt. I explain why the thing is the way it is ("You need to get good sleep or you will be too tired to go out tomorrow"), once, and go on about my business. Either he'll misbehave and get punished, or he'll learn to go about his business. There's a middle ground where he's trying to do what he's supposed to but pouting or dragging his feet. I'll gently hurry him up or make a joke to try to lighten the mood

"Don't bother with that boo-boo lip, you know mommies are immune."

ha :)

@HedgeMage I really really appreciate you taking the time to walk me through this, but I have to pick up my non-robot from the babysitter. I'll try to be back an hour and will read whatever you have put down, or if you want to pick this up again, I would love to learn more about how you handle this.

If it's rational, I'll spend more time/energy on helping him feel better.

@SteveJackson np... I'll finish at least the first part so I don't lose my train of thought and we can catch up whenever

Thank you. Be back soon.

If we can't go to the park, we'll make something else fun to do (bake cookies? build a fort?). If a toy broke, we'll try to fix it or figure out who can (my dad is phenomenally good at rescuing toys I thought absolutely done-for), plan to replace it (if we intend to) or find something else to play with... you get the idea. Teach him that there are ways to make it better, you just have to find them.

(I still don't tolerate bad behavior of course.)

And, I always hit him with "I can't help fix it if I don't know what's wrong" -- teaching this young, while the things that frustrate them are still very concrete, makes it much easier for kids to learn how to identify WHY they feel what they feel.

It's one of those "use your words" moments.

If it's rational, but not anything I can fix (no, we can't do $fun_thing because we need to go grocery shopping) I'll look for a compromise that makes it more palatable IF he uses words to tell me how he feels and why. (If you are extra-good and help me get done quickly, we should have time for one video game after shopping.)

I guess in general I feel that expressing emotion is fine, but I'd rather teach my child to dismiss irrational feelings, and directly deal with rational ones.

It works -- he's now 8 and generally deals with frustration by trying to solve the underlying thing "I'm upset that it's too rainy for the park, but I'm thinking of what else we can do"

there's stuff that's not solvable, but even a grown-up has a pity party now and again ;)

2) So the second thing is that sometimes before he can get to dismissing or dealing with the feelings of frustration, he needs some sort of release so he can think. If he does something naughty, he gets time-out per normal, but after time-out we talk about what he can do that is okay -- and anything I suggest is something I'm fine with him doing all the way up to adulthood. How we react to stress is a hard pattern to break, so I'd rather spare him having to break a bad habit.

In our house, that's drawing/writing, diverting attention to something less stressful for a while, or finding an acceptable target for wrath and retribution (when he was small, LF had huge problems with reading homework -- if it made him really mad he could "get back at it" by doing it in purple, it was his own little rebellion and it made him feel better that he got the best of it), or exercising.