An amusing new parenting trend is going viral online, with parents discovering a weird hack to get their toddlers to calm down from a tantrum.
On social media, parents are sharing videos of them shouting the name “Jessica” while their child is in the middle of a meltdown — and it mostly works to stop kids from crying and screaming.
Parents are showing the name “Jessica” and their children are pausing their tantrum to look around in confusion as they try to figure out who Jessica is.
“Jessica” has been the go-to name in many cases, but some say that calling out any random name works just as well.
Tiffani Ortega, a mom in Florida, shared a video of her husband strapping their 2-year-old son into his car seat after leaving the park, which he was crying over. Once the husband said “Jessica,” the son stopped crying.
“If I hadn’t said that, he probably would have cried the whole way home,” Ortega told Today.com.
California-based mom Evanthia Davis shared a video of her toddler hysterically crying — and stopping the moment “Jessica” was called out.
“Wow, this worked so well. This will be my new go-to when my baby / toddler cries,” she wrote in the caption of the video.
Another mom shared on TikTok that she’s tried the trick three times already and “we magically stop crying and start looking for the Jessica that does not exist.”
It appears to all come down to timing and the element of surprise.
Dr. Deborah Gilboa, a family physician and resilience expert, told Today that it’s harder to shift a toddler’s attention than a baby’s because “they have more perseverance, and they have object permanence,” so what’s causing them to react still exists in their minds even when it’s out of sight.
During a temper tantrum, toddlers tend to be intensely focused on whatever it is that’s upsetting them, and calling out a name that’s unexpected can interrupt that focus.
Just a brief moment of confusion can shift their attention and cause them to calm down from a meltdown.
“Saying something kind of unexpected, out of context, like Jessica, is acting as a pattern interrupt. and it’s causing a pause and break in the cycle, which then gives you the opportunity to do all the other things that aren’t being shown in the videos like validate your child’s emotions,” child psychiatrist Dr. Willough Jenkins explained in a TikTok video.
Even at a young age, the brain knows to look at new situations and assess potential risks, so the unexpected difference in routine signals a potential change to their environment and can cause their attention to shift.
“It works because the brain is like, ‘Wait, what?’ ” Gilboa explained.
However, she noted that it works because it’s unexpected, so as soon as a child starts to recognize the pattern, the “Jessica” hack will likely be over.
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