My eldest daughter is about to turn thirty and is expecting her first child this summer. I told the following story at her high school graduation. I’ll probably tell it again at her baby shower. Remind her what she’s probably in for.
When Isabel was about six years old, her mother and I had been dealing with her temper tantrums for what felt like decades. We got the full production: screaming, thrashing, the works. Didn’t seem like garden-variety meltdowns, but what did we know – she was our first kid…
We’d tried everything friends and family suggested. Nothing seems to make a difference. Things were not getting better. In fact, they felt worse with each incident. So we sought the advice of a child psychiatrist, Dr. John M. Shanken-Kaye — well-regarded, calm, the kind of guy who’d clearly seen everything.
We met with him over several sessions. Initially, just parents, then with Isabel along.
After these intake sessions, he told us:
“I have good news and bad news.”
We asked for the good news first.
“Isabel is significantly advanced intellectually for her age — but right on track emotionally. Those two things are fighting with each other.”
Okay. What’s the bad news?
“The problem isn’t her.”
We laughed a little. Nervously.
“But here’s more good news,” he said. “It’s actually pretty straightforward to address. *You* just have to change your behavior.”
He gave us a formula. Stop trying to reason with her — her intellect will run circles around her emotional brain. Don’t threaten, don’t cajole. Set some clear boundaries and give her simple binary choices. Use consistent language, no negotiation, and a repeatable, predictable escalation process.
It went like this: “Isabel, you’re having a tantrum. You can choose to calm yourself down, or you can choose a timeout.” No negotiation. No elaboration. Just a choice: A or B.
We didn’t have to wait long to try it.
She wanted something she couldn’t have. The meltdown came on fast. I took a breath.
Isabel. You have a choice. You can get yourself under control, or you can choose a 5-minute timeout.
“I AM under control. I’m not having a tantrum. I’m FINE.” she screamed between sobs.
Ok, you’ve chosen a timeout. You can choose to go to your room by yourself, or choose to have me carry you there.
“I’m NOT going to my room. You CAN’T make me.”
You’ve chosen to have me carry you.
Up the stairs we went, Isabel squirming the whole way. Into her room.
She chose to take her timeout with the door open. Another A/B option.
I went downstairs, and she came out of her room within thirty seconds. Top of the steps, peering down.
I see you’ve chosen to have the door closed.
I held it from the outside while she banged on it and screamed about the injustice. 4 minutes later: silence. I opened the door. She came out calm.
At the next check-in session, the psychiatrist nodded. “Good work, ma and pa. So… she came out of the room before she had settled down?”
We said yes, we had to hold the door shut.
“Ah, now that’s easy to solve. Take her to the hardware store. Buy a hook-and-eye latch. Have Isabel install it on the outside of her door. Then she gets to make one more choice.”
So off we went to the Home Depot. And I’m still not sure if what happened next was spontaneous or premeditated.
Isabel looked up at me in the aisle in front of her options for hooks, and said, very sweetly: “Dad, thanks for carrying me upstairs all the time. You must be getting tired. Why don’t we get two sets — and put one on the laundry room door downstairs? That way you won’t have to carry me.”
She was six.
I said that sounded like a great idea.
Next timeout, she chose the laundry room. Script, choices, carried, door closed, door locked from the outside. My wife and I sat around the corner, out of sight from the little window in the door. We could hear her — screaming, banging, announcing that she was absolutely NOT upset, nor out of control and this was completely unfair, she probably threw in a few “I HATE you’s”
Then, about three minutes in: silence.
I looked at my wife. This is actually working. I was ready to high-five her.
And then, the back door opened, and in walked Isabel. Beaming. Maybe even doing a little victory dance.
I opened the laundry room door. She had climbed up on the counter, opened the window, popped the screen out, and dropped to the ground outside. Then she came around the yard and back into the house.
When I stepped out of the laundry room, apparently something on my face gave me away — because my wife looked at me and said, before I could say a single word:
“Don’t you dare reward that. Or you get a timeout.”
—
Isabel is due this June… is it too soon to go shopping for hooks?
Epilogue
For the coaches in the room
What the doctor prescribed wasn’t really a discipline strategy. It was a system design.
He understood that Isabel’s behavior wasn’t a character flaw — it was a capability mismatch. Her intellect was running years ahead of her emotional regulation. Treating it as a willpower problem or a defiance problem was never going to work. The environment needed to change, not the child.
Sound familiar?
I’ve seen asynchronous development on teams so many times. Technical capability that’s outpaced the team’s capacity for self-organization. Leadership sophistication that’s ahead of the organizational structures meant to support it. Or the reverse — process maturity in an org that still treats its people like they need to be managed rather than led.
In every case, the temptation is to reason harder, push harder, or clamp down. And in every case, that’s the wrong move.
What actually works: clear constraints, genuine choices, consistent follow-through, and enough calm in the system for the person — or the team — to find their own regulation.
The constraints aren’t the opposite of autonomy. They’re the container that makes real autonomy possible.
And sometimes, within those constraints, the team is going to climb out the window and come in through the back door.
When that happens — before you react — take a breath and ask yourself: did they solve the problem?
For the parents in the room
The approach the wonderful Dr. John M. Shanken-Kaye recommended draws on several well-established frameworks in child development. If any of this resonated — or if you’re in the thick of it right now — these are worth exploring:
- Asynchronous Development — Leta Hollingworth’s foundational work on gifted children whose intellectual and emotional growth run on separate tracks. Still the best lens for understanding the “advanced but explosive” child.
- Self-Determination Theory — Deci & Ryan’s research on autonomy, competence, and relatedness as core human needs. Binary choices work because they preserve agency even within firm limits.
- The Explosive Child — Ross Greene (1998). Practical, compassionate, and the closest thing to a field manual for what we were living through. Highly recommended.
- Operant Conditioning — Skinner’s behavior shaping principles underpin the script itself: consistent, predictable, emotionally neutral responses that make tantrums functionally useless.
- Co-Regulation Theory — The calm adult becomes the external nervous system the child borrows while building their own. The flat tone of the script wasn’t coldness. It was modeling.
