“Tantrum…and uncontrolled outburst of anger and frustration, typically in a young child.”
Webster’s Dictionary

Earlier in the week I was at a meeting at church. The church building also houses a day care center. Wafting up the stairway and down the hall into the room where I was, was the sound of a child having a tantrum. And it was a doozy! While I couldn’t see the child, I could imagine their face, pulsing red with tears streaming down their face. From someplace in my memory, I could see the contorted little body fighting against some inward emotion that was filling them with raw emotion and finding form in the world. The sound was like a wave…rising and falling with renewed energy and force that subsided for a moment but rebuilt with some push that came from somewhere deep inside them. No words were understandable except one…’home.’ Having dropped two toddlers off at preschool and seeing the meltdown that could sometimes happen, I heard the overwhelming desire of this little one. Home.

As I thought back about that experience I began to think that it seems to me that our country is engaged in a kind of tantrum right now. There is a rollercoaster of outbursts that keep us all on edge.  As we watch the fallout of what happens when revenge drives action, when bullies are given more power than is wise, there is a trigger response that wants to click. The potential to engage in tantrum behavior is tempting. Yet, any parent or teacher who has ever tried to counteract a tantrum with their own ‘uncontrolled anger and frustration’ knows that this never ends well. 

Instead, the adult who is witness to a child’s tantrum knows the best thing to do is remain calm. Most of the time the tantrum is caused by hunger, being tired, feeling ignored, wanting something that is not possible at the moment, frustrated to be without language for their deep feelings. In these cases, a snack, a place to rest, a patient, caring presence, a quiet, metered explanation can go a long way. It is not easy. it is often not pretty. But no tantrum lasts forever. 

The distraught child I heard kept saying, ‘home’. Clearly they wanted to be someplace that was not where they were. Home. In Meg Wheatley’s book So Far from Home she writes:

“As we let our hearts be tenderized by this sorrow-filled world, we discover that joy and sadness are one, that we can’t always distinguish between the two. Perhaps you have had this experience, of feeling tender and overwhelmed, heart wide-open, vulnerable, overcome by tears of joy that also felt like sadness. In these moments of deep emotion, it doesn’t matter that we can’t define the feeling in simple words. We are inside the heart of a profound human experience very different from every day emotions…opening to the world as it is, not flinching from what we see, keeping our eyes and hearts open-this is true warrior’s work. And what we see will always break our heart.”

The child I heard, for whatever reason, had a broken heart at that moment. Their response was a tantrum and a cry for home. This broken-heartedness is an experience many are sharing right now yet pitting tantrum against tantrum is never the best path. Perhaps we would be wise to practice what any mature caregiver knows to do. Take time for a snack, rest often, find a quiet place, listen deeply to those around, be patient, be caring, show compassion. In this we may just help someone find ‘home’ and we might find it ourselves. As the teacher Ram Dass has said: “We’re all just walking each other home.”