Managing Melt-Downs and Big Emotions with Compassionate Counseling St. Louis Senior Therapist Molly Shaffer, LPC
Molly Shaffer, LPC
Big emotions can feel overwhelming for kids and for the adults who love them. Whether it’s a full-blown meltdown in the grocery store, loud no’s getting ready for school in the morning, or a quiet shutdown at home, these moments often leave parents and caregivers feeling helpless, frustrated, or unsure of how to respond.
At Compassionate Counseling St. Louis, senior St. Louis therapist Molly Shaffer, LPC, provides a calm and collaborative insight-driven approach to understanding what’s happening beneath emotional outbursts and how children can learn to navigate big feelings in healthier ways. With over a decade of experience supporting children, teens, and their parents and caregivers, Molly helps caregivers make sense of the why behind intense emotions and guides them toward connection-based strategies that build emotional regulation, confidence, and resilience without escalating conflict or power struggles.
At Compassionate Counseling St. Louis, Molly works with kids as young as 3 years old. Molly is also a parent coach at Compassionate Counseling St. Louis and provides both in-person counseling and online therapy Missouri -wide.
When a child is having frequent melt-downs, how do you determine whether anxiety is a driving factor?
I look at patterns of behavior from the parents descriptions - is it from separation, in anticipation of event like school/sport, is it from a change in routine? I want to know if the meltdowns increase with uncertainty. Anxiety driven meltdowns often occur in anticipation of a feared event or stimuli, and they often subside once that fear provoking event is completed or avoided.
A child's language can also indicate anxiety driven meltdowns. If there is fearful, predictive language, it can sound like, "what if....", "something bad is going to happen", "I do not want to mess up".
We also want to at the function of the behaviors - is it to gain safety, or to gain control and reduce uncertainty, it is to avoid or escape an unwanted or fearful thing?
How do you assess anxiety in kids who don’t have the language to explain what they’re feeling?
For many of the young kiddos that I work with, I observe different themes in their play that might indicate some underlying anxiety. Examples of this include: Control based play, safety/rescue play, hypervigilant play, or powerlessness in play.
These patterns reflect their internal need to feel secure, empowered, and prepared - especially in a world that feels unpredictable or overwhelming.
How do you typically work with kids whose anxiety shows up as frequent meltdowns or tantrums, and what strategies do you use to help them recognize early signs of anxiety before it escalates into anger?
I do a lot of body and emotions awareness initially - providing psychoeducation on fight-flight-freeze and understanding body cues from elevated emotions. This helps the kiddos that I work with understand why these reactions happen and normalize it for them.
I use body mapping with body sensations to help them understand body cues that a feeling is increasing. Once that recognition is there, we identify and practice a variety of calming tools that target the different physical reactions we experience during heightened emotions. We then use these strategies to help regulate those feelings before they escalate into a big reaction.
What does progress usually look like for families dealing with frequent melt-downs?
I always ask parents to look at progress in 3 different categories: frequency, duration and severity. Breaking it down helps you see the progression of improvement and not expect things to just abruptly become better/stop.
For example: if tantrums occurred everyday, multiple times a day for an hour or longer and hitting/kicking/biting was involved you might see progress in these ways:
Duration: Tantrums might still happen everyday, and multiple times, but the child can calm with 30 minutes or less rather than an hour.
Frequency: Tantrums begin to happen once a day (still everyday, but only once is an improvement) or they go from everyday to happening 2-3 times a week.
Severity: Tantrums still occur everyday but the child is no longer hitting or biting.
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Want to Work with Molly?
If you’re feeling stuck, overwhelmed, or unsure how to support your child through big emotions, you don’t have to figure it out alone. Schedule your free 15-minute consultation call to help you decide if Compassionate Counseling St. Louis is the right next step for you and your family.
Curious to learn more about parent coaching and therapy for child anxiety and anxiety-driven anger? Reach out to us at hello@compassionatecounselingstl.com. As child anxiety experts, we love working with kids, teens, college students and parents to help manage their anxiety, stress, and anger. Compassionate Counseling St. Louis is located in Clayton, MO and works with families by offering both in-person counseling and online therapy throughout St. Louis, Creve Couer, Ballwin, Town and Country, Brentwood, and Ladue. We also provide online therapy Missouri -wide to teens and college students. You can set up your free consult, on our consultation page.