17: How Small Learning Gaps Can Boil Over Into Tantrums & Trouble

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Ever wondered why a calm afternoon can explode into a full-blown tantrum? We pull back the curtain on what’s really driving those blowups and show how small, fixable issues—skipped steps, unclear words, and mismatched levels—can snowball into big emotions. Through Nicole’s journey, you’ll hear how moving a child up too quickly in swim class and limiting her to a tiny book selection at the YMCA quietly fueled daily frustration. Once we reset the level, expanded her reading choices, and cleared up a few deceptively simple words, the outbursts faded and motivation returned.

We walk through a practical, parent-first approach: identify “skipped gradients,” bring activities back to a zone of competence, and treat vocabulary as a core part of behavior support. That quick “collage vs. college” mix-up? It’s a perfect example of how language gaps erode confidence. We use a visual staircase to make learning tangible, then teach kids to notice confusion early and ask for help. Add short memory and focus drills that anchor wins, and you’ll see behavior shift because success becomes routine again.

This conversation is about turning chaos into traction without labels or blame. You’ll leave with simple questions to ask after school, ways to rebuild mastery one step at a time, and a sanity-saving rule of thumb: when behavior heats up, go earlier, make it easier, and make it fun. Parents are the first educators, and small moves—right level, right words, right wins—can change a child’s trajectory. If learning isn’t fun, something specific is off, and we show you how to find it and fix it fast.

We trace tantrums back to skipped steps and unclear words, then rebuild momentum with practical fixes that restore fun to learning. Nicole’s story shows how adjusting levels, clarifying language, and adding choice can turn meltdowns into motivation.

• Why “skipped gradients” create stress and blowups
• Adjusting levels in activities to rebuild mastery
• Expanding book choice to match a voracious reader
• Clearing misunderstood words to restore attention
• Teaching kids to spot confusion and ask for help
• Simple memory tools to shift focus toward wins
• Parents as first educators with practical steps
• The rule of thumb: when in doubt, go earlier
• The north star: learning should feel fun

Subscribe for more real-world tools, share this with a friend who needs a lifeline, and email us your questions at learn@thecompetenceinstitute.org. Your next calm evening might start with one step back.

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Transcript

Setting The Stage On Tantrums

SPEAKER_00 0:33

Hello and welcome to another episode of the Parenting Solutions for Teen and Pre-Ten Education and Behavior podcast. You're here today with Ryan and Mike, your co-hosts, and we're going to be talking about something that probably every parent has experienced at one time or another, and that we're often asked for solutions to or help with, and that is the subject of temper tantrums. So, Mike, I know you're just telling me uh a story about this a little while ago about how you helped um a young girl with this, I believe it was. So go ahead and kick us off and tell us about temper tantrums and some uh basic solutions for that.

SPEAKER_01 1:14

Absolutely. It's uh kind of one of my favorite stories. This is quite a while ago, but it's the it's the most fitting story that I could tell. And really what I was doing is helping out the parents. Of course, that they was they asked me to help their daughter. They knew that I was working in the field of education, and they asked if uh possibly there wasn't an educational approach to handling the situation. And I said, absolutely, just bring her on over to my office, and um, that's what we worked out. And this girl was very upset, there's no doubt. She was she was upset about being dropped off uh to talk to somebody she didn't know. Um she was upset, but she was upset at school, she was upset at the YMCA, she was upset at home, she was upset everywhere. And what what do kids do when they're upset? Well, they yell and scream and cry and pout and all the other things that any parent doesn't want to see their child doing, and that's where it began.

SPEAKER_00 2:15

Gotcha. And you mentioned that there was some very specific educational aspects that you addressed that helped helped her with this. What were they?

The Skipped Gradient Problem

Fixing Swim Levels And Books

Collage Not College: Clearing Words

SPEAKER_01 2:26

Well, that's true. Um I just take a real methodical approach and dig into uh what's going on at home, at school, uh at the YMCA. And I worked with her for about her name is Nicole, and I worked with her for about an hour every day for a couple of weeks. And it took it took some days to gain momentum, you know, to peel back the curtain of what was really going on. Um, and if I've if I've lost a few of the details, you know, she'll forgive me if she ever hears this podcast or hears the story or whatever. But uh the I remember one particular aspect was the the YMCA. Um and I don't know if I have these categories of swimming activities quite accurate, but as I recall it, it was like she had moved from the guppies right group uh of swimming students to the minnows. This was an upgrade from the guppies to the minnows. And I'm probably it came with like, you know, she's graduated the guppies and she's moving on to the minnows. But it came up that that, as she said, she goes, it's just too hard, right? And it's like you might think this is minor, but this is just a point of stress for her. And um, you know, you have to know the language of education to be able to really identify that this is like a real thing. This is not just uh her she she's you say, well, why was she upset? Well, it's called it's called a skipped gradient. What's a gradient? A gradient is a step-by-step approach to learning things. Um you know, you have to start out with training wheels on the bicycle before you take off the training wheels, right? Um and uh this jump from whatever they were doing in the guppies thing was uh, you know, she jumped from the guppies to the minnows, and either there was missing steps in between, or she hadn't fully mastered what they were teaching her in the guppies thing. And so this was one point of upset. And so um, as part of uh Make Nicole's life better program that we wrote well together as a group, it was me and Nicole and her mom, and it's like we're writing this stuff out. This is after, like I said, about a couple weeks. We uncovered all this stuff, and we just wrote out this program, we're gonna do all these things, and uh, let's get her back in the guppies program. Nicole, she piped up, you know, she sat up straight and put a smile on her face. She was very happy about that, right? And that was just a sliver, right? So uh I guess the only other thing that I remember about that particular thing was that uh uh Nicole was an avid reader. Avid reader, loved reading. And it came up that when she was dropped off at the YMCA, in addition to the swimming thing, there was apparently a reading period or whatever, or she had access to some books. But they only had like, oh, I don't know if I have the number accurate, but it just seemed like they had like five books or ten books. And at home, Nicole had she had like hundreds of books, or does certainly dozens and dozens of dozens, but I just remember the disparity, you know, uh, was she was so upset that there was only these few books. She's read them over and over and over, and she just hated it. She's like being tortured. So, you know, what why is she so upset about going to the YMC? Well, she's basically being tortured, right? She's being made to read the same books over and over again, and the stuff that they're trying to teach her in the swimming pool was was way too hard. Okay, so so that was two aspects of the how to make Nicole's Life Better program, right? That we wrote. Um, what let's see, what else was there? There was um, oh, uh this this came up. So I actually was going over the word gradient with Nicole. And she was in elementary school, right? Um but I uh I had asked her if her parents had ever talked about this word um uh with her, and she she says no. Um but but they had gone over the idea of learning things step by step. Well, okay, they've got this fancy word gradient, and a gradient is like a grade, and I drew it all out on a piece of paper, like a little set of stairs, staircase, you know, and I I said, Okay, you're you're in elementary school, grades one through six and so forth, and I labeled seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve, and up above that I put college, you know. And uh I asked her, I said, I okay, so you're in elementary school, right? And she nodded her head. Um and I says, Well did did any do you know what elementary means? No, she shakes her head. No, she doesn't know what elementary means. Okay, so you're now sending you're now sending your child or dropping your child off at elementary school. They don't know what that is, right? So they're already confused, right? Um, elementary school. Well, I wrote out a few words. It's like elementary means basics, and um the basics are the simple things that you learn, and it's related to the word base, and I got her to understand that like the basement and her house is like the bottom. That's the that's the base, and you build on the base. And we kind of went over base and basement and stuff like that, and the basics and what you learn in elementary school. You learn how to read, you learn how to add and subtract, and she's nodding her head and stuff. And I I just kind of jumped up to middle school and I said, Now, in middle school, they do math with numbers and letters, and she's like, They do? Like, yeah, so it gets very comp there's more stuff, you know, you learn all this different stuff, and then like in high school, you'll see kids learning, um, they're reading bigger books and they're learning how to fix bicycles and even work on cars and work on houses and different things. And then some people go to college, and I circled the stuff up top, and I says, in college, they learn they they they can learn about things like airplanes and rockets and stuff. And uh and she she she put her fists on her hip and she says, We were doing college work last week and it was easy. And I was like, What? What what what were you doing? She says, We were cutting up pieces of paper and we were gluing them together and we were doing this and that and stuff, and I was like, whoa! I go, hang on a second. I grabbed this little children's dictionary book and I showed her this word. I said, It looks and it sounds a lot like college, but it's actually collage. And I got her to understand, she's she's they were making collages, and and she's like, my teacher must have said we're gonna do collage work. And I thought she was talking about college work, and I was like, you know, sometimes teachers say things and they don't know that you didn't understand what they said, and she goes, They do? That's like a total revelation to her, right? Yes, that does happen. So you actually have to learn how to recognize when your attention has gone off the rails and learn how to raise your hand or ask questions or find out afterwards how where you got confused. You can actually take control of your learning. And this is a huge step forward for her. And um, you know, long story short, I I I'm pretty sure that that girl went on to get a master's degree in aeronautical engineering. So she she did go to college, she did learn about airplanes and rockets and stuff, and she's you know, she's successful in her career. And this is just one one part of uh putting people on the road to uh succeeding in whatever it is that they want to do.

SPEAKER_00 10:43

Wow, that is so cool. I love that. Good fun. Well, let me bring us back to uh Nicole came in with temper tantrums and being upset about everything. How did making her understand, helping her understand those uh areas and going over and changing the gradients affect her her state of mind and her temperature?

Tools For Memory And Focus

SPEAKER_01 11:07

Well, it it all smoothed out very nicely, you know. Uh we got we got mom's cooperation in getting her back into the guppies program, we got mom's cooperation in bringing a whole pile of books to the YMCA uh so that she can have lots of books to read. And um, you know, we straightened out some other things. Um there was another little exercise that we did where we kind of practiced remembering things and uh just got her skills up on remembering things. And if you if uh you we taught her that if she can uh be in control of her own memory and remembering what she wants to remember and not sticking in on the bad things that happened, that you know, that she can learn things, she can study and she can have fun with things, and she can just disregard what maybe some kid said to her in school or whatever. And so that was a fun little exercise. But there's a whole set of tools here that all goes back to um the books that we use and that we are making available to parents. And um, your basic, basic book on this is the learning book. And um we'll have to put like a link in the show notes or whatever about where the parents can get this book. That's a that's the first step is learning the language of learning and education so that the parents who are the original educators, I mean the kid, if your kid can tie their shoes, it's because the parents taught them how, probably. Right? And uh and so they just need to the parents need to round out their education so that they can talk to their kids about what's really going on.

How Confusion Fuels Tantrums

SPEAKER_00 12:49

Yeah, I like that a lot. Um, I know from working with people and seeing them find words or things that they didn't understand and then no longer be upset or realize that they even had some sort of, you know, maybe feeling of discomfort or annoyance with the subject because they had a word that they didn't understand. That's such kind of it's almost magical. They just you find the word, you clear it up, and all of a sudden the skies are clearer, so to speak. So absolutely. And I know parents would definitely appreciate being able to do that after uh checking out the learning book and whatnot. So let me ask you this. I know you've done this probably thousands of times, um, these type of things. How is it that you know, not understanding words or not figuring them out in the moment, or these gradients that you mentioned, lead to temper tantrums? What's the connection there?

SPEAKER_01 13:51

Sure. Well, uh any child has the really the purpose of growing up and being an adult. Uh they start out um mimicking their parents and mimicking adults and trying to pretend like they're uh doing the same type of chores that they see their parents doing. They they try to uh they try to cook in the kitchen or clean with various things, and they're they're imitating the the grown-ups that they see. They have this goal. And anytime they're running into uh things that they don't understand, they are frustrated in that goal. Right? And so and so every word that they don't understand, every time they ask, what does that mean? And it's disregarded as being not that important. Um or or people are saying things that they don't even realize, they don't know, they don't understand. Kid comes home from school and what did you learn in school today? And they they just shrug their shoulders, they don't know, they have no idea what's going on, they're completely blank all day, they're confused all day. And this just has a cumulative effect of they start getting more and more disconnected from the activity that's going on. And so eventually it just it blows up, it just boils. It's just a um you know, pot of boiling water. I mean it eventually eventually the teapot makes a lot of noise, you know. You keep you keep he heating that thing up and it's just it it just blows, you know. And that's all that's happening. It's it's an accumulation of many, many different things. And um just being concerned or trying to console the child isn't going to get to the actual confusions that were going on. And that's why we need to arm the parents with uh really the guidebook for how to dig in and find out what these confusions are and help clear them up, make them smoother, make it easier, and and help that kid get back in touch with their goal, their natural innate goal of growing up and and and being in control of their own life, right?

Go Earlier And Make It Fun

SPEAKER_00 16:14

Yeah, absolutely. And I think it was very appropriate where you were talking about these things build up because obviously maybe one misunderstanding or one time of being put in the wrong level of you know, gym class or swim class or whatever is you know just leads to a little bit of temper tantrums, but like a hundred times, which is really easy to envision with all the schooling that we do these days and different activities, a hundred times things like that happen, or a thousand even. And then, like you're saying, all of a sudden the tea caught teapot boils over and uh you have a whole situation on your hands, which is sometimes where people end up reaching out, uh, you know, when the teapot's fully boiled over and things are like really hot, and other times I think we catch them earlier, like you did with uh Nicole there.

SPEAKER_01 17:11

Exactly, exactly. And that's where we like to uh catch it, right? That's why that that's why this is the teen and preteen, you know, podcast. It's like it really starts as early as third and fourth grade, as soon as they start learning language, and when they fail in school to get the students to really master language at that early level, those are the basics, that's elementary, right? The old the old one-room schoolhouse, uh, they had no choice but to get these kids uh to really master everything that they were studying at that time because um once the kids are out working in the in the world or working on the farm or whatever was going on at the time, um, that's it. It's it's over. Um they they they needed to be able to uh read and read extremely well so that they could continue to learn and enjoy learning for the rest of their life. And that's what we need to restore.

SPEAKER_00 18:12

Yeah, yeah, I love it. Absolutely. So um just so people have a takeaway, you know, let's say, you know, I can just imagine two super busy parents with several kids, and like, I'm not gonna buy another book, and even if I do, I might read it six months from now, who knows? What's one thing that a concerned parent could do to help their child not uh accumulate these misunderstandings that lead to uh problems or accumulate these skipped uh gradients or moving too fast and trying to learn or do something?

Parents As First Educators

SPEAKER_01 18:49

Well, like any any concerned parent naturally does, they're they're asking their kids um how to go to school, what are they learning? Um it really comes down to knowing what words mean. And you have to appreciate the fact that um and I ran into this just uh oh a couple weeks ago. I ran into a a mom, single mom, very busy working two jobs. She's assuming that her child, her her 11-year-old daughter, is going to be taught by the school how to read. And yet the mom's telling me, well, the problem is is she's dyslexic and uh and has comprehension problems. Okay, well those are fancy labels, right? But it doesn't solve the problem, right? Um this saying she's dyslexic doesn't fix the fact that she wasn't taught the alphabet and the and the letter combinations that make up sounds, right? Any any child can be taught how to read. If Helen Keller can be taught how to read, right? A braille, I suppose. Uh but it it's like your child can can learn how to read and can master reading. That is possible. So just recognizing that like their their trouble with oh, I don't know, they're in a ge geometry class or geography class or they're in social studies or whatever it might be later on and they're struggling, well recognize that there's an earlier problem. You have to always go earlier. What is it that they're uh is out in terms of their basics, what's missing, right? So back it up, back it up. If you're having trouble with algebra, what would you did you master the earlier math steps? Right, and what are those steps? Well, we can provide uh a guide for those, but you always just have to get earlier, earlier than that, you know what was going on. Go earlier. If if this step, if the if the minnows is too hard, well, let's go back and look at what was before. Did you master the earlier steps? Let's always take it a step back, right? And and and and the bottom line is the the child should be having fun. They what was fun before it became hard? Let's go back to the fun stuff, let's do more of that stuff, right? Let's make it fun again, right? That's what we want.

SPEAKER_00 21:25

I love it. Yeah, so simple. And I think it's important that people realize the power of that simplicity because that could change, and perhaps it did for your story with Nicole, uh, a child's entire trajectory towards becoming what they want to be, whether that's you know, having a master's in rocket science or or whatever, or you know, doing something else that that's more in line with that child or young adult's uh goals and life and whatnot. So the power of simplicities, a lot of the things we go over may sound like, well, I kind of knew that intuitively. Well, that's where it comes to now we're giving you tools on how to apply. Go earlier, find the thing that's not understood, clear it up, and watch your child then be able to move forward and enjoy, like you're saying, the fun stuff again.

SPEAKER_01 22:18

Exactly.

SPEAKER_00 22:19

Sounds good. Okay. Awesome. Anything else you'd like to leave people with about this specific area today, Mike?

SPEAKER_01 22:27

Well, we could just take that step uh that we just talked about, or that uh that point of of learning is fun. And that is covered in this in this book, the learning book. It says it says in the book that learning is fun. Well, if your child is not having fun, there's something wrong.

unknown 22:44

Right?

SPEAKER_01 22:46

And and uh it is totally within the power of the parents to uh learn this technology of studying, this technology of learning. And uh starting with just the terminology, the words of learning things the proper way so that they can restore um fun and enjoyment of learning to their child, which is what will propel them into the future.

Simple Steps And Next Actions

SPEAKER_00 23:18

Love it. Perfect. Great. So yeah, we will definitely have those that link in the show notes if anybody wants to check out that book. And it is a super easy read. I've read it myself and uh used it with people as well. So it is um very it's not not like you'd be getting a tomb that would take you six months of 10 hours of grueling work. You know, it's it's a really easy read. Probably in an afternoon you can read most of it. So absolutely. Hopefully that gives everyone some uh tools that they can use with their uh child and help improve their education and future prospects. Um, that is all for this episode. Thank you so much for listening. We will uh have this out, and if you ever want to reach out to us, it's learn at thecompetenceinstitute.org for our email. Thank you, and we'll see you in the next one.