Tantrums Case Study

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A) Introduction:
This study was conducted to observe how parents react to their children’s tantrums. Every Participant is a family unit consisting of the caregiver and the child. Children participating in this study were between ages 2 to 4 with a history of throwing tantrums. Once the family registered in the study, parents were asked to record their child’s 4 next tantrums in a public place and the next 4 tantrums at home. The parents’ approach to addressing the tantrums was noted through a brief questionnaire. The options for addressing the tantrums were then coded for as doing “nothing”, putting the child on “time-out”, or “hold”, where the parent holds the child and comforts and calms them down. The main purpose of this study was to examine the difference in the parents’ approach to dealing to the children’s temper tantrums at home. Using an independent sample t-test, it is hypothesized that parents who hold their children and calm them down instead of doing nothing, or putting them in time out, will have shorter durations of temper tantrums.
B) Correlations:
Table 1: Correlational Analysis between Location of Tantrums and Age Home Public …show more content…

There was a significant difference in the scores for tantrums at home (M = 24.38, SD = 9.54) and tantrums in public (M = 22.39, SD = 8.84); t (69) =2.04, p = 0.04. Children had longer tantrums at home as opposed to in public. Location difference, home versus public, elicited a mean increase of 2.00 minutes, 95% CI [0.05, 3.93] for tantrums done at home. Therefore, tantrums at home were significantly longer in time than tantrums in public. I hypothesize that parents did not respond as eagerly at home as they would in public in front of people. When a child throws a tantrum in public, the parent might be embarrassed so they might quickly and eagerly respond compared to if the tantrum was at

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