Tantrums, Frustration, and What Is Really Happening Underneath

A tantrum can look like defiance. Like manipulation. Like a child trying to win.

But from the perspective of Gordon Neufeld and Gabor Maté, a tantrum is usually something else first: an overwhelmed nervous system meeting frustration it cannot yet process well. Neufeld describes frustration as one of the primary emotions and sees aggression as one of its common “offspring.” In his words, anger, aggression, and violence often get the attention, while the deeper story of frustration is missed. (Neufeld Institute)

This changes how we understand children.

Instead of asking, How do I stop this behavior? we begin asking, What is not working for this child right now? What wall have they hit? What feeling are they unable to carry?

The frustration cycle

A child wants something.

Something does not work.

A limit appears.

A need is blocked.

A sibling takes the toy.

A parent says no.

The world refuses to cooperate.

Frustration rises.

If the child has enough support, enough language, enough maturity, and enough emotional safety, that frustration can gradually move toward adaptation. The child feels the disappointment, finds tears, lets go, and adjusts. Neufeld’s model is that sadness and tears help a child adapt to what cannot be changed; frustration may need to be expressed first, but sadness is where adaptation happens. (Neufeld Institute)

But if the child cannot move from mad to sad, the frustration often stays hot. Then it spills out through yelling, hitting, collapsing, screaming, throwing, or rigid opposition. That is the tantrum.

Seen this way, a tantrum is not simply “bad behavior.” It is often stuck frustration.

Why punishment often makes it worse

This is where Gabor Maté is especially clear. He writes that rage displays and tantrums are symptoms of frustration the child cannot identify or explain in words, and that sending an upset child away can intensify the problem because the child feels rejected in the moment they most need help. He argues that using separation and punishment to force compliance can create a vicious cycle: frustration rises, hostility rises, and the relationship suffers. (Dr. Gabor Maté)

Neufeld says something similar in a different language: children need opportunities to release tension, express emotion, and go through the noisy and painful process of adaptation. When adults focus only on stopping the surface behavior, they can miss the deeper emotional work trying to happen underneath. (Neufeld Institute)

This does not mean permissiveness. It means understanding that connection must come before correction.

What the child needs in the moment

From a Neufeld-Maté lens, the adult’s task is not to argue a child out of a tantrum, but to help carry what the child cannot yet carry alone.

That may look like:

• staying close without escalating

• holding the limit without shaming

• naming the frustration

• reducing stimulation

• lending calm to an overwhelmed nervous system

• helping the child move, eventually, toward tears and release

Neufeld’s practical language is often to acknowledge the “mad” so the child can get to the “sad.” “So much is not working.” “You really wanted that.” “This is so hard.” These responses do not reward the outburst; they help metabolize the feeling underneath it. (Neufeld Institute)

Research broadly supports this direction. Emotion coaching and parent co-regulation are associated with stronger child self-regulation, while poor emotion regulation is linked with more aggression and adjustment difficulties. (PMC)

The deeper question: what happens to frustration that cannot move?

This is where Gabor Maté’s work becomes especially relevant for parents as well as children.

He has written extensively that emotions, especially when repeatedly suppressed, do not simply disappear. He connects chronic emotional repression with stress physiology and long-term harm, and warns in particular about the cost of repressing healthy anger and authentic emotional responses. (Dr. Gabor Maté)

So when a child repeatedly has to swallow frustration without help, a few things can happen: the frustration may erupt outward as aggression, or it may go underground as tension, resentment, shutdown, anxiety, compulsive compliance, or disconnection from feelings. Maté notes that children exposed to rage or to chronic emotional suppression may become fearful of anger, cut off from their own assertiveness, or overly preoccupied with managing others’ emotions. (Dr. Gabor Maté)

In other words: a tantrum is not the only problem. Blocked frustration is the bigger problem.

Frustration needs to be expressed without repercussion to allow futility to be felt and turn into adaptation

What this means for us as adults

Tantrums do not only tell us something about children. They tell us something about us.

Many of us were not allowed frustration either. We were rushed past it, punished for it, shamed for it, or left alone with it. So when our child tantrums, it may activate our own unfinished frustration cycle. Their “too much” collides with our own old “too much.”

That is often why parenting feels so triggering.

And that is also why emotional maturation matters. Because the more room we have for our own frustration, grief, anger, and limits, the more able we are to stay present with a child’s without collapsing into control, shame, or helplessness.

A different way to see tantrums

What if a tantrum is not a sign that a child is failing?

What if it is a sign that the child has hit the limits of their current capacity?

What if the question is not, How do I stop this?but, How do I help this child through what is too much right now?

That shift changes everything.

It softens blame.It increases compassion.It protects relationship.And over time, it helps children develop what they do not yet fully have: the capacity to feel frustration without being consumed by it.

If this speaks to you

This is one of the themes we explore in my Emotional Maturation workshops: how emotions live in the body, how reactivity builds, how stored frustration can spill into relationships, and how we can create more room for feelings to be felt, understood, and expressed safely.

If you would like to explore this work with me, you can find my workshops here:[Emotional maturation workshop series]

You can also join me here:[Events page]

Because when frustration is given space, it does not have to turn into damage. And when emotions are met with presence, something new becomes possible.