Stuff You Should Know - How Temper Tantrums Work

Episode Date: May 27, 2014

When your kid boils over in the grocery store, it can be tough to stay calm and ignore it, but that's precisely what experts prescribe parents do to deal with temper tantrums. Learn about the anatomy of a tantrum and the best way to deal in this episode. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Just a Skyline drive on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know from HowStuffWorks.com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, this is Charles Levy-Chuck Bryant, and again we have our guest producer, Noel. He's thrashing about on the ground, vomiting, and screaming.

Capillaries bursting in his cheeks, all because we wouldn't give him a third pork chop. Not true. Yeah, boy, temper tantrums are, I always feel so bad for the parents out in public, you know. Oh really? I always think like, you screwed up your kid already. See, you're so wrong. And we're about to dispel that.

Yeah, it's true. Although I did see a, we're about to talk a lot about why it's not the parents fault, but I did some extra research, and there are experts that say you can also be a bad parent, and that could lead to temper tantrums. Yeah. Like we don't want to blame parents, but you can definitely play a part. We as a society have said, from this age to this age, temper tantrums are normal, and then after that, then apparently it's like the bad parenting really shines through.

Yeah. And then they think like, yeah, there's some real problems this kid has, and it's largely because of bad parenting, or a bad home environment, or troubles during pregnancy, like abuse, things like that, that can all lead to temper tantrums that turn into something else after certain age. Yeah. And it makes me kind of uncomfortable, but just parenting advice period is so subjective and individual.

Yeah. It's always feel like people shouldn't tell other people how to parent, but also feel like there are probably some pretty good guidelines to parenting too. Yeah. And if you go back and look at the history of parenting, like it wasn't too long ago that it was, it kind of seems to go in a cycle, like in the 18th century, Rousseau, the great Enlightenment thinker basically was one of the first to say, you know what, maybe kids aren't just miniature adults.

Right. And like maybe childhood is like something special, it's a time of development. We should become less parent-centric and more child-centric as far as parenthood goes. Right. And that really kind of sparked this different idea of, you know, treating kids as kids rather than adults. Yeah. And then that was replaced later on by the whole like discipline and all that of the

late 19th, early 20th century. And then that was replaced by the idea that kids, their childhood should be indulged, you know. And then Rousseau said, boy, fetch me my feather, I need to throw up. Is that from Fletch? No. I just thought it'd be funny, you know. I need to throw up.

You know, the Binging and purging back in the day, you eat until you can't eat anymore, then you stick a feather on your throat and vomit it up. Supposedly the vomitorium thing is a myth. Have you heard that in Rome, ancient Rome, vomitoriums, they supposedly had like cases for that. Oh yeah. I haven't heard they were a myth though. Supposedly they're mythological.

And not like the minotaur, like a real myth. Right. Yeah. They want you to think it's a myth. Gotcha. Okay. So we're talking temper tantrums and we've already kind of said that during a certain period of your life, they're normal.

It's actually, you would be a weird kid if you didn't have a temper tantrum pretty frequently. Not weird, but you would be in the minority for sure. Okay. But it doesn't mean you're weird. Comparatively speaking, it means you're weird. Really from age one to age three-ish, they basically say, have you temper tantrums? It's normal. Yeah.

Between 50 and 80%, if you want a statistic, of two to three-year-old boys and girls have at least one tantrum per week and 20% have a tantrum every day. Yeah. Those kids are fun. Between those years. Yeah. And then there was another study from the University of Minnesota that found even higher rates. Go go first.

91% of children in this study between the ages of 30 months and three years had a tantrum on a weekly basis. Right. So it happens. If you had a kid, you've probably had it happen. If you don't have kids yet, it will happen to you. And if you have a kid that doesn't have tantrums, they're weird. No, you're just lucky.

Yeah. You are pretty lucky. I wasn't a tantrum thrower. I know. I'm sure I was, but I think I was a pretty good kid. Yeah. I'm not saying it never happened with me, but I was pretty chill. Yes.

I'm at the gate. Yeah. My brother-in-law and sister-in-law lucked out a good kid who's more hard on herself than they are on her. That's the best. Self-regulating kids. Yeah. She's good.

And she's right in the age, too, and she's very good. So she's weird. Yeah. Yeah. Weird in all the best ways. In all the right ways. Yeah. In all the best ways, by the time they reach four or five, you should be seeing a large

drop-off or complete cessation of these tantrums. Yeah. And the reason why we say that there is an age for this to end is because we finally figured out that the mechanisms involved in temper tantrums. Yeah. It's a thing. It's not just my kid's pain in the butt or he's in a bad mood or he's spoiled. But there's brain activity that is causing this to happen.

Yeah. Specifically, in the prefrontal cortex, or we should say there's a lack of activity in the prefrontal cortex, which is the last part of the brain to evolve. Yeah. Like, up until your 18th birthday, your prefrontal cortex is still evolving. Right. Yes. And developing is, I think, what we mean.

Yes. Yes, we do. We both said evolve. But it's true. You know, the Victorians used to think that if you looked inside an egg, you would see the animal, that species, go through its full evolution, that that was its process of development. Oh, really?

And it kind of makes sense to an extent, especially if you think of the brain. Like, I'm sure the brainstem is the first part of the brain to be constructed in utero. And then it goes all the way, like, after birth, your brain's still developing. And it's probably the most sophisticated regions of the brain that take the longest to develop. That makes sense. Yeah. So the Victorians were right all along.

About throwing up. All right. Well, should we talk about what the tantrum that there was a doctor who clearly has some masochistic tendencies because he did a study in which he rigged toddlers with microphones? He's the temper tantrum specialist. He's like the guy. He's definitely a masochist. Yeah.

No, I'm saying God bless this guy because it is not fun work to record and analyze audio tapes of temper tantrums over and over and over. Yeah. But that's what he did. And he did find some patterns. First of all, they only last a few minutes. Parents, it might seem like an eternity there in Target while your kid is, like, buried in the clothes rack screaming, but it's only going to be a few minutes.

And then 10 minutes later, your kid has probably forgotten about it. Right. Even though you have not. Yes. He also found that based on the types of sounds that the kids made, they can basically be classified as sad sounds and angry sounds. And he found that his name is Michael Potagall and Potagall found that rather than one giving into the other, leading into the other, they're pretty much simultaneous.

And then once the anger, it's basically you have sadness all along and then it's overlaid with anger. And then once the anger subsides, all this left the sadness and now the healing can begin because when kids are sad, they want to be comforted. So they go to you, the parent, hopefully, yeah. And then the temper tantrum can subside. Yeah. And he broke it down into three phases, three stages.

You get your yelling and screaming. You've got your physical actions, which is what we talked about, like throwing yourself on the floor. And that's what you typically think of, like kicking and screaming. And then we're biting. And then you've got your whimpering and whining, which is the third and saddest stage to witness. Because the kid has just played out at this point and it is really sad. Yeah.

And Potagall also found that if the kid goes straight into the physical stage, the tantrum is even shorter lived, I think, because they tax themselves more quickly. Yeah. That makes sense. And these we talked earlier about Noel's tantrum before he came in and how his face is flush. That is something that can happen. If they are screaming loud enough, they can pop blood vessels in the face and capillaries

and they can induce vomiting. It can get like really serious and violent and disturbing. Inducing vomiting. Is that funny to you? Don't you just, why don't you just be like, you stupid kid, what is wrong with you? You just screamed until you threw up. Yeah. I think that's a good approach.

Well, I mean, you don't say it, but you responded. Certainly think it. All right, so back to the prefrontal cortex. We said it develops very, I don't know about slowly, but it develops over the course of your life until you're about 18, but it doesn't even start to until you're four. Right. And they think the reason why, or not necessarily the reason why they think because of this, this malleability and plasticity in the prefrontal cortex, we are able to acquire language skills

as humans. So it's kind of a trade off because while we can acquire language skills while our PFC is developing, we don't have the emotional stability that we have later on in life with the fully developed PFC because the prefrontal cortex is in charge of regulating our emotional stability and basically saying like, whoa, it's the part of the, it's the joey part of the brain. Right. So your kid, your kid doesn't have the joey part of the brain yet and there is, since you

brought up language, there is a, there's a conflict between what the kid can understand and then relay back to you at that age. Like they may be able to understand what you're saying, but they can't speak the words yet. So you've got a really frustrated kid because it can't get out what it wants to say. Right. And then you've got the prefrontal cortex not doing anything yet. Right. It's not putting the brakes on.

Yeah. So that is a tantrum. I mean, that's a recipe for a tantrum. Why don't you stew on that for a minute while we take a message break? Cause that was some heavy stuff. Attention bachelor nation. He's back. The man who hosted some of America's most dramatic TV moments returns with a brand new

tell all podcast, the most dramatic podcast ever with Chris Harrison. It's going to be difficult at times. It'll be funny. We'll push the envelope, but I promise you this. We have a lot to talk about. For two decades, Chris Harrison saw it all. And now he's sharing the things he can't unsee. I'm looking forward to getting this off my shoulders and repairing this, moving forward

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On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're going to use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s. We lived it and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. It's a podcast packed with interviews, co-stars, friends, and non-stop references to the best decade ever. Do you remember going to Blockbuster?

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on it and popping it back in as we take you back to the 90s. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Okay, so we're back. We just talked about the prefrontal cortex and you, Chuck, just explained what a temper tantrum is. Yeah. We all have moments of frustration.

We all have times when we act out a little bit like, you know, this light bulb is supposed to work. Right. You know, that kind of thing. Or road rage. That's an adult temper tantrum. Exactly. But we have prefrontal cortexes.

We've been socialized to feel embarrassed for acting out. If you took that away and shrunk us down by several feet, you would have what's a normal temper tantrum in kids. Yeah. And we also should point out that the fight or flight kicks into a big shot of cortisol happens. Right. And so everything is just messed up.

Like it's a wonder your kid doesn't have more of these when you think about that. So that frustration does trigger cortisol. It triggers norepinephrine. Your fight or flight syndrome or responses kicked into high gear. And again, you have nothing to put the brakes on all of this. What's interesting is some of the physical signs that the fight or flight responses kicked in are also signs that your kid's about to have like a major meltdown. Yeah.

Things like your breathing, fresh skin. Sweating. Sweating. Pupils dilated. Drilling and spitting. Yeah. Yeah. All of these things where if like you see your kid starting to do that, you just be like,

follow the exorcists. Going to blow. Yes. And the reason they stop or at least taper off by the ages of four or five is because the joey part of your brain starts to work and the kid can now talk to you and all of these things kind of undo and the kid's like, that was the problem because they can now tell you that. Right.

I couldn't talk. Yeah. It smelled like chili dogs all the time. And I just couldn't tell you that. Yeah. And my PFC wasn't working. So what am I to do? Just go berserk.

Exactly. The thing is, is like, yes, your kid is going to likely age out of this. If your kid doesn't age out of it, then perhaps it's time to consult a specialist, say around five, six years of age, usually six, I think. But along the way, you can help your kid have fewer temper tantrums, have less severe temper tantrums and basically just be a better human being in general by how you as the parent address the temper tantrums. By telling them they're dumb for just throwing up.

No, you think that in your head, you don't say it out loud or else you're a terrible parent. If you think that you're fine. Okay. No, the number one thing you want to do prior to temper tantrums is giving the kid a schedule. Yeah. Because apparently a lot of the temper tantrums come from a fear that something's that they're not going to get food or they're not going to get held or attention or whatever.

If they're on a schedule, they'll know that it's coming. And if they sort of freak out, you can say, of course your goldfish are coming. It's almost 2 p.m. Right. Settle down. You little goldfish junkie. Yeah. And I know they stress scheduling a lot with kids with like Asperger's and autism, but

it's a big deal period. You should get your kids on a schedule. Kids like no one what to expect. They don't like short balls. If you have to make your own bowl of cereal at age like two, the parent needs to take some time and figure out what's going wrong here. With water. Yeah.

Remember that? What's that Fridays? Yeah. When they didn't have milk. Yeah, that's funny that you said that because I just remembered yesterday what a good movie Friday is. Oh yeah. It was really funny.

It's wonderful. Okay. So get your kids on a schedule. This is preventing temper tantrums. And that's regular sleep, regular feeding, regular interaction. Any kind of thing they can rely on is going to help like chill your kid out and get them stable. And remember one of the things, one of the bases of temper tantrums is frustration.

Yeah. And one way around that is to give your kid, make them feel empowered. Yeah. I like this bit of advice. I thought that was spot on. Well, like in this article, I think Congress says if your kid hates putting shoes on, basically distract them by saying, hey, big boy, do you want to wear your duck boots or cowboy boots?

Yeah. You choose. Yeah. Up to you. Yeah. Sort of like heading them off at the pass. Simpleton. You still have to wear shoes, but you get to choose which ones.

Yeah. I've heard that's a pretty common thing because a lot of kids don't want to get dressed when they should or put on their shoes when they should and a lot of parents now are like letting their kids dress themselves. Yeah. You can tell. Yeah. But you look around.

I know and I think it's great and fun to see little kids walking around in these crazy outfits that they clearly picked out. It's like many mental asylums all let out. It's like the Reagan era all over again, but for kids, I think it's awesome. Okay. So, empowering choices. Great advice. Okay.

You've taken these steps to avoid it. It's still not going to, do your kids still going to have a temper tantrum? It's just, you can expect it. It's inevitable. So when a temper tantrum happens, here's the hard part. You have to stay calm and apparently the advice du jour from parenting experts, psychologists is ignore it. Yeah.

This is not us talking. No. It's not us. And they say to try and ignore it. They say that that is the quickest way to put an end to that particular tantrum. If they're not getting the attention, then they will quit sooner. Yeah. And that's what they say.

So long as they're not hurting themselves or other people or destroying property. Yeah. If they're just screaming and being a brat basically is what it amounts to, then ignoring it is the best course of action. Yeah. And that's why is if you say you are like, oh, I know you feel so bad and you pick them up and you hug them and everything, you're giving your kid positive reinforcement. You're saying, hey, scream your head off and I'll pick you up and rub your back and comfort

you. You don't want to do that. You want to remain neutral and basically not associate this thing with anything during it. Yeah. That's what I would do. Especially in public. It just be like, man, who's kid is that?

Right. I'm gonna go over here and eat a box of neutral green bars by myself while this little kid finishes up. And I'll just pay for it at the register with an empty box and it's all good. Yeah. In the sense of shame. The other reason, and we're joking around here, this is if someone like, I have friends who have had big trouble with this and it's not a laughing matter.

It's really a lot of stress on a family. Oh, I can't imagine. Yeah. We joke because it's just what we always do. I'm the guy in the grocery store. He gets to go, see you later. Good luck. Another reason not to, like they say to muffle that is because there could be other underlying

causes like hearing problem or vision impairment that you won't notice if you're not just like, you know, if you've got the kid buried in your chest. Yeah. It's weird. It's like you want to ignore it. Let it run its natural course. Watch it. Out of like the side of your eye.

You know? Yeah. You really don't want them to think you're paying any attention to them at all. And apparently when that's done, it just runs its course and it's over with and like we said earlier, the kid forgets even what was bothering him or her, you know, a few minutes afterward. Yeah. What you really don't want to do is punish the kid or reprimand the kid in the middle

of a tantrum or right after a tantrum because it's a natural thing. It's going to happen. That is not a healthy approach to getting your child to not do something because they're two and three years old and to be punished for something that they don't understand is just, that's not going to help anything. So what you do want to do is after a meltdown has taken place and things are calm again, you want to take some time to explain to the kid basically what went wrong or what they didn't do.

Let's say it's over the shoes again. Right. They've just told you we need to talk about shoes again. Now that things are calm, we have to talk about shoes because I just had a meltdown about it. So now that they're calm, you have to say you need to wear shoes because they protect your feet from all of the terrible stuff that you can step on. That's why you have to wear shoes and put them on when I tell you to and it's time to

leave. So you're explaining it to them. It's understanding the value of shoes. Right, in a very understandable two-year-old way. Sure. Apparently you don't want to moralize it and say you better not, you better not pitch a fit when I tell you to put your shoes on. Yeah, this happens every morning.

Right, that doesn't help. It doesn't help. And if your kid the next day says, well, I want to pick out my shoes today, mom, because they protect my feet. Then you get a toy. Yeah, you get a toy. You get a big Playmobil box set. Well, depending on how much money you have, you could at least give them positive reinforcement

and a cookie or a pat on the head. You could also get a knockoff, a Playmobil box set. That's fine. The kid doesn't know. He's too. We got so many knockoff toys growing up. Have you seen that gallery of knockoff toys that I made? It's great.

If you have not seen it, go check it out instead of your show.com. I think I had a few of those. Did you really? Yeah, I mean, my parents were teachers. They weren't like poor, but we didn't, you know, there were three kids. We didn't all get everything we wanted now. I wanted the BMX Mongoose and I got the Sears Goose. You know, I wanted Pong, again, Sears.

I got the Sears. What's Ping? Yeah, basically. Yeah. Nice to the round table. Pretty much. Yeah. You remember that?

Yeah, but I did a polo. Look at me. Yeah, I never had brand name clothes unless they had, you know, like a button missing or the collar was misshapen or something. Again, I don't think I can stress enough how awesome that gallery of beloved knockoff, knockoffs of beloved toys that we made that's on our site is, it's great. Yeah, we'll repost it, but you can, you should definitely look under gallery. There's some real misses.

Yeah. And I have to say, I remember going to plenty of stores as a kid and being told I could pick out a toy, but it was like something liquidators. Yeah. Yeah. Like what is this thing? Did you have any rich kid friends? Um, yeah, they weren't like rich kids, but yeah, there were some parents were like lawyers

and stuff like that. Yeah. It's like, I had one particular that I was always just so like, his house was so cool. It was like a modern house. And back then I'd never seen a modern house and he had, you know, the green machine and in television and horses and a trampoline and a cool horses go cart and a motorcycle dude. Everything.

Yeah. Yeah. And look at him now. He's super successful and wealthy. Yeah. Look at him. His parents raised him right. They did.

Okay. So we're going to hit what you touched on earlier of when you might have a problem that's a little deeper than your average temper tantrum. And they say three or more tantrums per day that last more than 15 minutes could qualify as what is now called in the new DSM five disruptive mood dysregulation disorder. That depends. That is, um, that depends on the age too. So there's a big hubbub over this, right?

Yeah. Cause it was just added to the new DSM in 2013. Yeah. A new disorder. Yes. And basically it turns temper tantrums into a mental illness like pure and simple. If you were over age six, yeah, between six and 10, yeah, and you have that number. What was it three, three per day that last 15 minutes or more?

Yeah. Or it says here three or more for one year. So I think there's a couple of criteria. Yes. Then anyway, then you are eligible for antipsychotic medications and all other manner of prescription drugs, even though you're six. Yeah. And critics are saying there's not enough data on this to create a new diagnosis, right?

Some critics are saying you shouldn't have done this at all. Proponents are saying no, this will actually help because kids are being diagnosed as bipolar at six and this will prevent that. So it's a little awkward right now. But it's funny that they bring up bipolar because when they, when they expanded and basically created children's bipolar disorder, pediatric bipolar disorder is what it's called. When they expanded that, there was a 40-fold spike in diagnoses and as a result, the antipsychotic prescriptions for kids aged two to five doubled between 2000 and 2007.

Attention, Bachelor Nation, he's back, the man who hosted some of America's most dramatic TV moments returns with a brand new tell-all podcast, the most dramatic podcast ever with Chris Harrison. It's going to be difficult at times. It'll be funny. We'll push the envelope. But I promise you this, we have a lot to talk about. For two decades, Chris Harrison saw it all and now he's sharing the things he can't

unsee. I'm looking forward to getting this off my shoulders and repairing this, moving forward and letting everybody hear from me. What does Chris Harrison have to say now? You're going to want to find out. I have not spoken publicly for two years about this and I have a lot of thoughts. I think about this every day, truly every day of my life. I think about this and what I want to say.

Listen to the most dramatic podcast ever with Chris Harrison on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. On the podcast, HeyDude the 90s called David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show HeyDude bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're going to use HeyDude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s. We lived it and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. It's a podcast packed with interviews, co-stars, friends and non-stop references to the best

decade ever. Do you remember going to Blockbuster? Do you remember Nintendo 64? Do you remember getting frosted tips? Is that a cereal? No, it was hair. Do you remember AOL instant messenger and the dial-up sound like poltergeist? So leave a code on your best friend's beeper because you'll want to be there when the nostalgia

starts flowing. Each episode will rival the feeling of taking out the cartridge from your Game Boy, blowing on it and popping it back in as we take you back to the 90s. Listen to HeyDude the 90s called on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. So there's a definite trend of any time a new disorder is identified or described in the DSM. Everyone's like, I've got that.

My kid has that. My kid has that. He won't shut up. Can you give him some antipsychotics, please? Yeah. And the psychiatrist is sure because he has this because he fits this criteria. Yeah. It's definitely been a controversial addition to the DSM as are many additions to the DSM.

But that's not to say that there isn't a larger issue at work because some of the times there is. So they want to teach you as parents to monitor. Maybe don't like go put them on psychotropic drugs, but maybe monitor them after the age of four and see how violent they are and how long they last and are they trying to injure themselves or others? Are they holding their breath and feigning? How severe is it?

Which is the thing, breath holding spells. Oh yeah. And apparently the understanding of that now though is that kids don't necessarily hold them their breaths on purpose. Like it just kind of happens to them. They forget to breathe. They get so worked up that they forget. Wow.

And faint. And apparently when your kid does that, it forereaks parents out. Oh sure. And then kids learn that if they hold their breath or even threaten to hold their breath, they'll get what they want. But apparently if your kid holds his or her breath or it's held for them, when they faint, their normal breathing will take over again. And as a parent, you can kick start the whole process by blowing air into their mouth.

It almost like tickles their breathing mechanism to take back over normally again, even though they fainted. And the advice is that I read that if your kid is feigning from holding his or her breath during a tantrum, you can't let that alter your parenting skills. Like how you react to it? Yeah. You can't be held hostage by it. Man, that's so challenging.

I can't imagine. Yeah. Because your kid fainted. Sure. It's bad news. Yeah. I mean hats off. That's like going back to the shark again.

Good luck remembering to punch the shark in the nose while you're being attacked. But that is a criteria. If your kid is doing this now and it's new and they're like after age four and their tantrums are increasing rather than decreasing, these are all red flags for, okay, this may be abnormal and let's see what's going on. The first step isn't necessarily taking your kid to a psychiatrist for drugs. You can also do a self-survey of your house. Is there a new step parent?

Do we move recently? Am I an alcoholic and do we always fight? Yeah. You know? It happens where parents and college kids, they don't understand what's going on. We keep the fighting away from them. But they understand and they pick up on body language and emotional cues that you don't think are there.

And they're little sponges and that could be a reason. Did you mention maybe if you've moved? Yeah. Yeah, that's a big one. I think I said moved. Yeah. Did his best friend get a better bike than him recently? Right.

You need to go get that bike then too. But the point is to not be freaked out by isolated incidences past the age of four because they happen and it's not atypical. You just need, and if your kid has a problem with this, his parents, you probably have a plan in place like you're not just reacting to each incident. Like you get together and you huddle and be like, all right, we have an issue because little Timmy is a nightmare. And so how are we going to deal with this?

Yeah. And then let's stick to it. And if little Timmy also is breaking your Hummel figurines all the time now? Then good because those are awful. Well, that's actually, it can be a sign, but it's not necessarily a sign. For example, there was a study that had a pretty decent population size from 2007. It researched temper tantrums among 279 preschoolers, almost 280 preschoolers. And they found that kids who were considered healthy were less likely to become violent,

self-injurious, destructive, or verbally combative like during their temper tantrums. But it's also been found that around 20% of, quote, mentally stable preschoolers will still become one of these unhealthy things during a temper tantrum from time to time. It's not like, there goes a Hummel figurine, they have to go to the psychiatrist now. Or if your kid rips the head off their Barbie in a violent way, that might be disturbing to you. But that is about as normal American behavior as has ever been generated by a child. Yeah.

If your kid is being mean to animals, that's a different story. Because that is, you know, it's not a good sign. And it's certainly, you want to stop any kind of violent aggression toward humans or animals. Like that's not like, oh, let's just see how I'll put this place out. You want to get in there, take care of business in the right way. So you raise your kid, you get them out of the terrible twos, age four comes along and all of a sudden they're like talking to you and making sense and expressing themselves. They're able to settle themselves down.

They they they're just human beings. You made it out of the woods until the teenage years ago. Yep. And then it starts all over again. Yes. It starts all over again for the same reason, the prefrontal cortex undergoes a new round of development during puberty from age about 11 to 18. And as a result, the emotional breaks that are provided by that region of the brain are

lost again for several years. Yeah. And it's also similar in that teenagers might not feel like they can express themselves even though like as a toddler, you literally can't talk, but as a teen, you know, parents just don't understand. That's the old adage. Right. And you've got the hormones and you've got new things happening to your body and you've

got new things happening in your heart for, you know, the little girls and little boys. You start feeling those feelings and it's confusing and it's just it's it's all happening all over again. All these things you don't understand and can't express. And then you've got your prefrontal cortex not helping you out. And that's why you're going to see the same but similar behaviors of these. It's basically temper tantrums to sequel. Yeah.

And it may not manifest itself the same way. They may not be on the floor like kicking and screaming and vomiting, but they may rampage through your house and slam the doors and scream and yell and they'll grow out of that though. And again, if they don't then psychiatry is there to back you up with some diagnoses and pills. There's oppositional defiant disorder. Yeah.

And basically it sounds like temper tantrums that it sounds like temper tantrums basically the same thing. Yeah. This study from University of San Diego was pretty interesting. I thought they studied kids between the ages of 10 and 22. It's not a kid by the way. And between 11 and 18 years old during that window, the speed that they identified emotions indicated by facial expressions dropped by 20%.

So between 10 and 18, if you're like your kid can't even look at your face and read your emotional cues, like that's how out of it they are. You know? Yeah. Teenagers. Like I couldn't even tell dad was mad at me because the wires aren't connecting upstairs. Yeah. And apparently the prefrontal cortex.

Prefrontal cortex is also involved in regulating behavior which explains why teenagers are prone to like risk taking. Well yeah, because if the prefrontal cortex isn't doing the job then I think the amygdala takes over and the amygdala is not a good thing to be running your emotions. Running the show? No. Not emotionally. So you got anything else you want to talk about that girl from Militiaville?

Yeah, go ahead. I didn't actually read that part. There is a girl who in 2012 at the age of six was arrested and taken to the police station from her kindergarten class because the temper tantrum she threw was so bad. She was wrecking her kindergarten class. She was taken to jail for a temper tantrum. Like knocking over bookcases onto the principal? Yeah.

And injuring the principal. Yeah. And she apparently was just on a rampage and the cops took her to jail. Didn't book her process or anything but I'm sure she scared the daylights out of this little girl. Yeah. And the school said she can't come back the rest of this year. Yeah, she's just invited.

Yeah. Luckily it was in April so I imagine there was only a couple months left of school still. Yeah, so we hope she's doing better. Sure. We won't say her name. We didn't say her name, did we? No. The article does which I thought was slightly irresponsible.

Oh, she was a news item. Yeah. That's right. Yeah. Hey, you don't want to be in the news, little girl. Right. Don't turn over other lessons to you. That's it.

All right. If you want to learn more about temper tantrums, you can procreate and have a kid and then see it firsthand. That's right. You can also, before you do that, if you want to find out if you're interested in that kind of thing, type in temper tantrums in the search bar at HouseSelfWorks.com and it will bring up this article and I said search bar, which means it's time for listener mail. I'm going to call this positive amnesia.

Hey, guys, nearly five years ago in Portland, Oregon, I was in a near fatal motorcycle wreck that not only knocked my brain around in my full face helmet, but also shattered my pelvis, broke two ribs, two vertebrae, left wrist, right thumb, left collar bone. You guys just showing off? I know. Evil, come evil. I was in the hospital for two weeks, but I only remember bits and pieces of the last few days of my stay, though I was mostly awake the whole time.

The doctors told me that nearly, I had a nearly two week gap in my memory and it was a combination of shock and medically induced amnesia. I learned a lot about the different kinds of amnesia from your show in ways that my team of doctor never took the time to explain me. But you're like, yeah, that always happens. But I didn't hear you mention any positive effects of memory loss. Through my memory loss, though my memory loss did not prevent severe PTSD after the incident, I think it has ultimately helped me be less afraid of red light running land rovers.

I think we did mention that it was, that was one positive effect of it. I thought. Did we? I think so. Maybe not. Well, if we're not, then we're glad that Adrian wrote in. He said, also, I don't have the additional trauma of remembering the numerous surgeries and operations.

Your podcast made amnesia sound confusing and scary, which it is, but I'm living proof that sometimes it's best if you don't remember. Well, thanks a lot, Adrian. We're glad you are doing okay. Yeah, be careful, man. Watch out for those land rovers. Yeah, red light running land rovers. Hope they, hope they do get in trouble.

Yeah. Yeah. I got nothing else. If you, if you want to let us know about, well, if you want to fill in the gaps on our memories, something we left out of an episode, we always want to hear that kind of thing. You can tweet to us at syskpodcast and join us on facebook.com at facebook.com slash stuff you should know. You can send us an email to stuffpodcast at discovery.com.

And as always, check out our home on the web, stuffyoushouldknow.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit howstuffworks.com. I'm Munga Shatikular, and it turns out astrology is way more widespread than any of us want to believe. You can find it in Major League Baseball, international banks, K-pop groups, even the White House. But just when I thought I had a handle on this subject, something completely unbelievable happened to me.

And my whole view on astrology changed. Whether you're a skeptic or a believer, give me a few minutes, because I think your ideas are about to change too. Listen to Skyline Drive on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey guys, it's Chikis from Chikis and Chill Podcast, and I want to tell you about a really exciting episode. We're going to be talking to Nancy Rodriguez from Netflix's Love is Blind Season 3.

Looking back at your experience, were there any red flags that you think you missed? What I saw as a weakness of his, I wanted to embrace. The way I thought of it was, whatever love I have from you is extra for me. Like I already love myself enough. Do I need you to validate me as a partner? Yes. Is it required for me to feel good about myself? No.

Listen to Chikis and Chill on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts.