{"id":64810,"date":"2012-08-29T13:04:58","date_gmt":"2012-08-29T17:04:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/?p=64810"},"modified":"2012-08-30T09:02:01","modified_gmt":"2012-08-30T13:02:01","slug":"when-to-worry-about-kids-temper-tantrums","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/2012\/08\/when-to-worry-about-kids-temper-tantrums\/","title":{"rendered":"When to Worry About Kids\u2019 Temper Tantrums"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Most young children lose their temper sometimes, but daily tantrums or tantrums with severe behaviors are unusual and could signal a larger problem, according to a National Institute of Mental Health-funded <a href=\"http:\/\/today.uchc.edu\/pdfs\/jcpp_2595.pdf\">study published August 29 in <em>The Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry.<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Researchers at the University of Connecticut Health Center and Northwestern University have designed a new tool to help parents, pediatricians and others who work with young children to distinguish \u201cnormal\u201d misbehaviors of early childhood from clinically worrisome problems.<\/p>\n<p>The Multidimensional Assessment of Preschool Disruptive Behavior (MAP-DB) is an easy-to-administer questionnaire that assesses the frequency, quality, and severity of behaviors related to temper tantrums and the extent of a child\u2019s anger management skills over the past month.<\/p>\n<p>Developmental psychologist <a href=\"http:\/\/psychiatry.uchc.edu\/faculty\/index.php-fac_id=40.html\">Margaret Briggs-Gowan<\/a> of the UConn Health Center and Lauren Wakschlag of Northwestern University and their colleagues conducted a study involving parents of almost 1,500 preschoolers, ages 3 to 5 years. They examined temper loss among the preschoolers as a spectrum of behaviors ranging from mild or normal to \u201cproblem indicators\u201d that may be signs of a greater, underlying mental health issue.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Results of the Study<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>The researchers found that more than 80 percent of preschoolers had one or more tantrums in the past month. However, a key finding showed that less than 10 percent had tantrums every day. That finding is similar for girls and boys, poor and non-poor children and Hispanic, white and African-American children. Also, normal temper loss behaviors showed similar patterns and could be reliably distinguished from problem indicators.<\/p>\n<p>The researchers say their goal was to provide a standard method that would take the guesswork out of when to worry about young children\u2019s behavior and to provide a more developmentally sensitive way of characterizing the emergence of mental health problems.<\/p>\n<p>Their findings provide early evidence that studying behaviors as a dimensional continuum may provide new insights into how mental disorders develop and better target early diagnosis, prevention and treatment.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/today.uchc.edu\/pdfs\/jcpp_2595.pdf\">View the entire journal article &gt;<\/a><\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p><em>Follow\u00a0the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.uchc.edu\">UConn Health Center<\/a> on\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.facebook.com\/uconnhealthcenter\">Facebook<\/a>,\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/uconnhealth\">Twitter<\/a> and\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/uconnhealth\">YouTube<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>New research helps distinguish between typical misbehavior and early signs of mental health problems.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":27,"featured_media":64816,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_crdt_document":"","wds_primary_category":0,"wds_primary_series":0,"wds_primary_attribution":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[179,1],"tags":[],"magazine-issues":[],"coauthors":[45],"class_list":["post-64810","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uconn-health","category-uncategorized"],"pp_statuses_selecting_workflow":false,"pp_workflow_action":"current","pp_status_selection":"publish","acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-08 19:23:39","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64810","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/users\/27"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=64810"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64810\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":64848,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64810\/revisions\/64848"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media\/64816"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=64810"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=64810"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=64810"},{"taxonomy":"magazine-issue","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/magazine-issues?post=64810"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=64810"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}