Three is the new two. People often talk about the "terrible twos," but in my experience, the threes were worse, and my sons were more prone to tantrums in their third years than their second.

Tantrums are often described as "emotional storms," implying that they're chaotic and uncontrollable. Research published in the journal Emotions might have proved that wrong. Scientists listened to high-fidelity audio recordings of more than 100 tantrums.

(No amount of money could have adequately compensated them for that.) The scientists discovered that the tantrums weren't chaotic at all. Instead, they followed distinct patterns and rhythms.

Also, the scientists disproved the age-old theory that tantrums begin in anger and end in sadness. Instead, the scientists found that tantrums are anger and sadness intertwined.

The researchers suggest that the trick to ending a tantrum is to diffuse the child's anger by not reacting to the tantrum. This way, the child is left with sadness, and sad children instinctively reach out for comfort.

Here's what our Mommy M.D.s — doctors who are also mothers — do to ease their own toddlers' tantrums.

"My daughter didn't have a lot of tantrums, fortunately," says Dora Calott Wang, M.D., a mom of one daughter, a psychiatrist, and the author of "The Kitchen Shrink: A Psychiatrist's Reflection on Healing in a Changing World" in Albuquerque, New Mexico. "One of my child-rearing goals is for my child to feel like we're on the same side — that she doesn't need to fight me. I try to see tantrums as opportunities to better understand a child and to teach a child about better methods of expression."

"If a toddler is just starting to misbehave, he can often be distracted or redirected ('Hey, what's that over there?')," says Victoria McEvoy, M.D., a mom of four, a grandmother of three grandsons, a pediatrician and the author of "24/7 Baby Doctor," in Boston. "But if a toddler is having a full-out tantrum, I found walking out of the room was often effective.

"One time, my husband and I decided to give our children some culture," McEvoy continues. "We took them to a very sophisticated art museum in Boston. One of our sons, who was 2 years old at the time, decided to have a full-on meltdown. He was on the floor screaming. My husband and I were so mortified that we left the room! That worked. Our son stopped screaming. He was probably wondering, 'Where'd my audience go?'"

"I'm a big fan of positive feedback and encouraging positive behaviors and discouraging or ignoring negative ones," says Heather Orman-Lubell, M.D., a mom of two sons and a pediatrician in private practice at Yardley Pediatrics of St. Christopher's Hospital for Children in Pennsylvania. "For tantrums, for example, I'd make sure my sons were safe, and then I'd walk away. Then, after they were done having a tantrum, I'd give them hugs and kisses. If you do a lot of yelling when they're yelling, you're giving them attention. If they don't get attention, the behavior will extinguish.

"Toddlers don't have a lot of control in their lives," Lubell continues. "They have control over their pooping, eating and falling asleep. That's where you're going to have the battles."

"Most adults lose it and go to pieces from time to time, and small children — who are much less experienced at managing themselves and at managing the world — are particularly vulnerable to feeling overwhelmed by hopeless frustration at times, a kind of falling apart that is sometimes captured by the word 'tantrum' or 'meltdown,'" says Elizabeth Berger, M.D., a mom of two grown children, a child psychiatrist and the author of "Raising Kids with Character" in New York City. "I remember very well feeling very sad, anxious and bewildered when my own toddlers collapsed in this manner.

"What helped me was the conviction that providing a soothing comfort to the child was the shortest path to children pulling themselves back together," Berger continues. "Whatever other agenda had occupied me the moment before had to give way. Providing a lap, a voice that said, 'There, there,' and a relief from whatever pressure had precipitated the breakdown had to come first.

"A parent who frames these moments as a power struggle with the child is in for a very hard time. The struggle is within the child. The parent's job is to help the child settle the raging war inside so that the child can pull himself together and move on, supported by the parent's empathy."

"My daughter is very strong-willed," says Dina Strachan, M.D., a mom of one daughter, a dermatologist, director of Aglow Dermatology and an assistant clinical professor in the department of dermatology at New York University. "Even as a toddler, she had an opinion about everything. Some days, when her regular babysitter was on vacation, the temp would bring her to my office at the end of the day, and then I'd take her home with me.

"One day, my daughter decided she didn't want to take our usual subway train home," Strachan continues. "She wanted to take a different train, never mind it was going in the wrong direction. My daughter became very upset when I explained that wasn't the right train. Her tantrum was so extreme that I grabbed her and held her close because she was becoming so explosive. People were staring at us! I had to hold her tight all the way home on the train. We got through that phase, and today, my daughter is the happiest person I know."

Jennifer Bright is a mom of four sons, co-founder and CEO of family- and veteran- owned custom publisher Momosa Publishing, co-founder of the Mommy MD Guides team of 150+ mommy M.D.s, and co-author of "The Mommy MD Guide to the Toddler Years." She lives in Hellertown, Pennsylvania. To find out more about Jennifer Bright and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.

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