I Asked ChatGPT How To Deal With A Toddler Meltdown And This Is How It Went

If robots are so smart, let's see how well they deal with a rageful small person who is not open to reason.

Photo by Arwan Sutanto on Unsplash

Oh tantrums, what a laugh. One moment your precious little pal is all sunshine and rainbows, and the next something unleashes a level of fury that simply cannot be vanquished, or a sadness that seems to reach right down into the depths of their soul. 

Quite often, depending on your toddler’s level of communication, working out what has prompted such a response is a large part of the challenge — although ‘nothing’ is almost always the answer in my experience. Or, in the event that it is actually something, ‘I wanted to do something and you said no’ seems to be a common trigger. 

Anyway, I think we can all agree that tantrums are pretty hard to navigate for most parents, particularly first timers. To start with, if you’ve never guided a kid through a meltdown before then how on earth would you know what to do? This is made a thousand times more complicated for those of us who have overconsumed content on Instagram with advice that at times veer into suggesting that there is a right or wrong way to approach big feelings with little people. In this case, worrying about ‘getting it wrong’ can feel a little destabilising. Second, for many parents, they can trigger deep feelings around our own sense of control (or lack of it) that can prompt emotional responses we may not be expecting, but have to deal with simultaneously anyway. Because of this, many of us find ourselves parroting language and replicating commands or behaviours that our parents used with us. This isn’t a problem in itself, but if your parenting style is different and you’d like to change the script, it can feel a little disorientating. 

Added to this, most toddlers aren’t big fans of timing when it comes to choosing their moments to let rip because they’re not emotionally stifled like the rest of us and actually express their emotions in public. Good for them. But as anyone who has ever experienced a category 3 tantrum among other — often tutting or judgemental — members of the public, any stress you might be experiencing trying to tend to your child can become supercharged very quickly.

Of course, as with everything parenting related it’s worth saying: you are the expert in your child! And you should absolutely trust your gut and block out any external noise if you are able to. 

But given all the hype around ChatGPT and the fact that apparently we will all be guided by robots in a few decades (if we aren’t already?), we thought it might be fun to test its level of empathy and ask the ultimate parenting question: what’s the best way to deal with a toddler meltdown? After all, with so much info out there to choose from, maybe the robots can help us whittle down the fundamentals. Let’s see…

Dealing with toddler meltdowns can be challenging but here are some steps you can take to handle them effectively

1. Stay calm: it's important to remain calm and composed during a toddler meltdown. Your reaction sets the tone for how the situation will unfold.

2. Validate feelings: let your toddler know that you understand their feelings. Use phrases like "I see you're feeling upset" or "I understand that you're frustrated."

3. Provide comfort: offer physical comfort such as a hug or gentle touch. Sometimes physical contact can help to calm them down.

4. Redirect attention: try to redirect their attention to something else. Offer a favourite toy or suggest a different activity to help to distract them from what triggered the meltdown.

5. Use simple language: keep your communication simple and clear. Toddlers may not fully understand complex explanations, so use short sentences to convey your message.

6. Set limits: if the meltdown is triggered by something they can't have or do, gently but firmly set limits. Use phrases like "I understand you want that, but it's not safe" or "we can't do that right now."

7. Give choices: offer them other options within reason. For example, instead of saying, "put your shoes on," you can say, "would you like to wear the red shoes or the blue shoes?"

8. Stay consistent: consistency is key in dealing with toddler meltdowns. Stick to your strategies and remain firm in your approach.

9. Take a break: if the situation becomes overwhelming for either you or your toddler, it's okay to take a short break. Step away from the situation for a few minutes to calm down, and then return to address it.

10. Reflect afterwards: after the meltdown has subsided, reflect on what triggered it and how you handled it. This can help you better understand your toddler's behaviour and find more effective ways to manage future meltdowns.

NGL lads, I was quite impressed with this. But I suppose the real question you’re all wondering is….did it work?

And I guess the answer is…yes! Because my son had a tantrum and both of us survived it with minimal physical or mental scarring.

I suppose, to a degree, the reason I was so impressed with ChatGPT’s response is because it’s very much the same as what we do already, with a couple of helpful reminders that usually get left out—like remembering to reflect at the end. We are lucky, to a degree, that our son is (so far) fairly easy to bring back from the edge. But there have definitely been times when head banging or other scary behaviours have fast-tracked one or both of us to the HOW DO WE MAKE IT STOP? stage. It can be hard to watch big emotions play out, without trying to intervene or distract them too much. This is especially true if you, like most of us, were taught to repress yours and have been paying for it in your adult life. (BTW, this was the only piece of advice that ChatGPT gave that I’m not sure I would use myself, because overall I think it’s better not to learn that we need to be redirected from negative feelings.) It’s also kinda cool to give your kid the freedom to explore their emotions, good and bad, in the safety of your presence. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t a little jealous and am trying, where possible, to let emotions out more in my adult life. 

But I was also impressed because, tbh, we don’t really expect machines to be able to advise us on emotional matters that require empathy and experience to understand. And in this case, I think if ChatGPT was the only resource that you had access to on the subject of toddler meltdowns, it’s not bad advice at all, really!

So there you have it, according to my very scientific experiment, it turns out that the robots can raise our kids. In response to this, I am now preparing to outsource all of my emotional management to AI and move to the mountains to focus on my poetry.

Good luck to the rest of you!