6 Steps To Shepherd an Upset Child Through a Meltdown in Class

Imagine that during an activity at church, a preschooler has a meltdown—a huge eruption of emotion over something small and unexpected. The leaders have to decide what to do.

Now imagine that one of the leaders is you.

Recall in your mind the last time you saw one of these tantrum-style incidents. See, I know that you can, because they are such a common occurrence!

Meltdowns make us uncomfortable

When kids let loose with an uninhibited negative reaction to something, it can be disturbing and uncomfortable for us adults, who (hopefully) are better at regulating our responses. Especially as believers in Christ, we can struggle to know what to say young children about these strong emotions, other than to ask them to control them, and usually that doesn’t work very well.

Meltdowns aren’t intentional

What we do need to understand when we work with young children is that they are still developing the ability to manage their emotions, and are even still somewhat unaware of the motivation to do so. Is the thing that they are expressing rooted in a sinful bent? Sometimes, but it can just as easily be that the issues are developmental and not a result of intention on the part of the child.

In fact, the type of response that children have that we would label a “meltdown” is actually the result of the complex way that their brain is responding to a whole bunch of things at once, and once a child is in that state, there is very little that they are able to remember to “control” themselves without some coaching.

Helpful coaching you can provide

When a child in your class is having a meltdown, there are some tried and true ways to help without neglecting the needs of your class or overstepping boundaries.

Step 1: Stay Calm. Your emotional state needs to stay calm in the middle of this difficult moment. If you expect these kind of meltdowns to happen, you will be less uncomfortable when they do. The child’s emotional display likely has nothing to do with you, or the fun class environment that you have provided. Accept the moment as it is, and that God has allowed you to be part of this unique discipleship opportunity.

Step 2: Provide Space and Time (but not too much of either). A child who is upset will often take a while to recover, and they need a place to do that. Being mindful of how you are never to be alone with a child, set a space up in a corner of the classroom, or in the hallway if it works for your context. If possible, station an adult or helper to be present for the melting down child, when they are ready for help. Ask the child every little while if they are ready for help, and possibly pat their shoulder to let them know you are there and care about them. You are modeling for them that church is an okay and loving place to have a hard moment!

Step 3: Affirm and give words to their emotions. If you know what the child is upset about, say it out loud. For example, “I see you started to cry when you got the purple scissors instead of the blue ones. Did that make you sad?” If the child doesn’t respond that is ok. If they do, try to verbalize as much of what has happened so they can feel you understand. For example, “So, you are sad because you wanted the blue scissors. That is hard.”

Step 4: Involve parents (but not too much). These previous steps should all be fairly quick to start underway. At that point, if not before, you may choose to contact parents if your context is one where the parents are available to come help. If your circumstances do not allow for this, be sure to tell parents about what happened and how it was resolved. Sometimes children will be fine to recover on their own from a meltdown and other times they will not. As a ministry we never want to keep kids in our care longer than the parents would wish for them to be there, so find out as much as you can, ideally ahead of time, about what your particular church’s rules are for contacting parents if a child is upset.

Step 5: Give a way out. Once you have allowed the child to calm down, giving what help you can, and involving parents if necessary, provide the child with a next step to take when ready. For example, “I know you were really upset about those scissors. Would you like to see if the blue scissors are free for you to use now?”

Step 6: Model grace. As you give them a way to move forward, you show them that they are welcome to join back into the fun and loving community they are part of. If the child has experienced shaming in other places for some of these behaviors, this chance to be lovingly affirmed in the middle of challenging behaviors may speak volumes to them about God’s love for them. Consider this a silver lining to the challenges of a meltdown!

Go forth in grace.

As we disciple young children within our ministry settings, we can know that sometimes they display the roots of some stuff that they don’t really know how to handle yet. Our role is to use grace and patience to come alongside them, and help them work through these strong emotions within a loving church community, and point them to Jesus who loves them and made them, and has saved all of us from our sins.

We are privileged to get to show God’s grace to these little ones!