The instinct to ignore tantrum behaviour — not give it attention, not reward it — is understandable and occasionally appropriate. But ignoring the underlying emotion while ignoring the behaviour creates a dynamic that reliably escalates rather than reduces the emotional expression.
Healthbooq provides evidence-based guidance on responding to children's emotional behaviour effectively.
The Communication Escalation Model
A child's emotional expression is, at its core, a communication: something in my internal state needs acknowledgement and response. When the communication fails to produce a response, the natural outcome — in any communicating being, at any age — is to amplify the signal.
A toddler whose mild fussing produces no response will cry. A toddler whose crying produces no response will escalate to full tantrum. A child whose emotional expressions are consistently dismissed or ignored will learn to express emotions at a higher intensity — because that is what it takes to produce any response.
This is not manipulative. It is the rational escalation of a failing communication attempt.
What Emotion Suppression Does Neurologically
Research on emotion suppression (deliberately not expressing an emotion one is feeling) consistently shows:
- Emotional suppression does not reduce the emotional state; the physiological arousal persists
- Suppression increases the cognitive load required to maintain the suppression
- Suppressed emotions tend to emerge in displaced or intensified form
For children who are asked (implicitly or explicitly) to suppress their emotional expression ("Don't cry," "Stop that," "Calm down"), the underlying physiological state remains activated while the expressive outlet is closed. The result is typically either increased behavioural expression (since the emotional communication channel is blocked, other channels are used) or emotional learning that feelings should not be expressed — which has long-term costs for emotional development.
The Distinction Between Ignoring Behaviour and Ignoring Emotion
There is an important and practical distinction between:
Ignoring a behaviour (not responding to tantrum screaming with the desired outcome; not giving the forbidden thing) — this can be appropriate and is the basis of managing operant behavioural escalation
Ignoring an emotion (treating the underlying emotional experience as irrelevant, invalid, or annoying) — this is what produces the escalation dynamic
The most effective approach combines:
- Acknowledging the emotion ("I can see you're really angry")
- Maintaining the limit or consequence
- Not providing the behavioural reinforcement
This is the structure of emotion coaching at its simplest: "I hear you. The answer is still no."
Long-Term Effects of Consistent Emotion Dismissal
Children whose emotional expressions are consistently dismissed or criticised tend to:
- Develop suppression-based coping strategies that are associated with higher anxiety, lower wellbeing, and poorer social relationships
- Have difficulty identifying and labelling their own emotional states
- Express emotions in behavioural dysregulation more often than verbally or socially
These are the costs of "emotion dismissal parenting" that Gottman's research documented.
Key Takeaways
Ignoring a child's emotional expression — attempting to suppress or dismiss it — reliably intensifies the behaviour through which it is expressed. The child without a responsive audience for their emotional communication escalates the signal until it is impossible to ignore. Understanding this dynamic transforms the instinct to ignore problematic emotional behaviour into the more effective response of acknowledgement followed by limit-holding.
