During her son’s seven-year old well visit, Sue told me that her son, Corbin, was having some temper issues. I asked her to describe them. “Well,” she said, sometimes he just has meltdowns. For instance, if I tell him to do something as simple as picking up his toys, he screams!”

That sounds kind of normal, I thought. I waited for Sue to elaborate. “I mean, he really screams–at the top of his lungs for an hour. It’s exhausting.”

I was surprised at Sue’s calm demeanor. She wasn’t upset or even asking for advice. My curiosity prompted me to ask, “So what do you do when he has these episodes?”

“Well,” she said, “at first they really shook me. I wondered what in the world I was doing wrong that would cause him to do this. I never knew any child this old who did. Then I realized maybe it wasn’t something I was doing; maybe it was something deep that was bothering him. Maybe he gets emotionally overcharged and needs to erupt once in a while. There doesn’t seem to be any rhyme or reason to his episodes.”

Well, that makes good sense, I thought, but it still didn’t seem…