Will ‘Jessica’ Tame Toddlers’ Tantrums?

Videos of parents calling out the name “Jessica” to stop tantrum-ing toddlers in their tracks are lighting up social media.

In the viral clips, parents call out the name, looking for a “Jessica” who doesn’t exist. Almost instantly, screaming and crying toddlers are hushed and focused on the new activity around them.

As the trend spreads across social media, seemingly being used with success, experts weighed in on what makes this tactic work, and whether there are any downsides.

“While the trend of yelling ‘Jessica’ is novel, the art of redirection is not,” pediatrician Katie Lockwood, MD, MEd, of Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, told MedPage Today.

“If your child wants something that you don’t want them to have, offer them something else new and desirable and they will forget about the other object,” she explained. “The ‘Jessica’ hack works similarly at offering a new distraction to make them forget about whatever they were upset about.”

Ari Brown, MD, an Austin, Texas-based pediatrician and spokesperson for the American Academy of Pediatrics, agreed, noting that it’s about “changing what the goal is.”

“Instead of whatever it is they’re doing that they’re frustrated about, we’re going to have a new goal, and that’s going to shift the attention and shift the focus, and then, hopefully, shift the mood,” she added.

Psychologist Kimberly Brooks, PhD, of Children’s National Hospital in Washington, D.C., told MedPage Today that after the child has calmed, a next step is to identify what they’re feeling — “‘I understand you’re upset,’ ‘I know you’re disappointed,’ ‘I know you’re sad,’ whatever the feeling might be” — and then “provide support for that” and a “way to manage that feeling.”

Though the “Jessica” tactic may work, there are caveats to the trend, or distraction and redirection more broadly, experts noted.

The technique likely won’t work well, for instance, if a toddler has skinned their knee and is in pain, or in slightly older kids who have greater cognitive reasoning skills and a stronger need to express emotions, Brown said.

Lockwood cautioned against overusing the tactic. “In order to be effective, the redirection you are offering needs to be interesting and novel or it won’t have the same effect,” she explained. If toddlers keep hearing the name, “it becomes like white noise.”

“Another potential harm is that the child is confused rather than understanding how to express their emotions,” she added. “We don’t want to teach children that we can’t handle their emotions and we need them to stop expressing themselves, but rather we want to show them safe and healthy ways to express their emotions and that we are here to support them.”

Brooks pointed to the importance of not yelling the name directly at a child. Doing so would escalate a situation rather than de-escalate it, she said. Also, “if this particular viral intervention doesn’t work for your child, don’t assume that means anything one way or the other about your child or a particular technique.”

It doesn’t hurt to reach out to a child psychologist or a pediatrician for advice or guidance about dealing with tantrums, Brooks noted, emphasizing that tantrums are “very normal” and “very much an important part” of early development.

Tantrums help toddlers to “establish and learn a healthy sense of entitlement” and “how to deal with frustration and disappointment,” she explained. “It’s not something we want to stamp out. That should be clear, too.”

Brown was enthusiastic that the “Jessica” trend has “opened up an entire conversation about positive parenting and things you can do to help a child who’s having emotional dysregulation,” but added that it is important to note that discipline is a long-term process without an instantaneous solution.

“What I always say about discipline is you’re planting the seeds,” she said. “Do not expect your tree to grow overnight.”