There are few worse experiences as a parent than experiencing the frustration of a child whose reaction to the frustration is a temper tantrum. Temper tantrums are a relatively normal part of development. They are often manifested in children because of an inability to deal with emotions in a mature manner. Often, children who throw tantrums do so because they have little ability to verbalize their feelings or vent their frustrations in more appropriate ways. Tantrums can erupt for any number of reasons, from a child being hungry and tired to a mother refusing to buy the kind of cereal or a toy the child wants. While tantrums are more common in young children, they are exhibited by older children and even adults, “The prime tantrum age is toddlerhood—from 14 months to age 3—although tantrums can show up earlier and continue into the preschool years or beyond. Tantrums can be a reaction to a change within a family, such as a move or a divorce; they can be related to illness, or, with an older child, they can become a technique for getting what the child wants” (Christman, 1994, 1).
There are many strategies and theories for coping with tantrums but we will focus on the use of classical conditioning, specifically the concept of extinction. Classical conditioning was pioneered by psychologist Ivan Pavlov. Pavlov was doing work on the digestive system of dogs and noticed they began to salivate when they would see the person who fed them enter the room. Pavlov theorized that “if a stimulus which did not usually produce a response was paired with a stimulus which would usually produce a response for a certain number of trials, the presentation of the first stimulus by itself would produce a response” (Classical 1). To demonstrate his theory, Pavlov used a bell (conditioned stimulus) which rang before food (unconditioned stimulus) was given to dogs. In the beginning the dogs only salivated when they saw the food, bu...