Our backyard has always been the ugly part of our outdoor area. Though it's quite large and has nice green surrounds, it has never looked great. We also couldn't make good use of it, given that it was sloped and quite uneven in places, making it hard to maintain and. Hence, I decided to level it and to put a retaining wall in.

How to determine the height of a retaining wall?

The first step was to determine how high the retaining wall would be that I need to build. For that I put a peg into the ground at the lowest point and one at the highest point, that I wanted to dig up to. Then I connected them with a string line which had a line level attached to it (a spirit level which attaches directly to string lines). Making sure that the string line was level, I measured the distance off the ground (of the stick at the lower ground) to where the string line was. The result was that I would need to build a 0.8m high retaining wall (I know you can't tell from this picture that it's such a slope). That turned out to be accurate.

Do I need council approval for my retaining wall?

The next step would be to check whether you will need council approval to build your wall. My friend said, that you don't need one, as long as your wall is under 1m high, which is usually true, however, it's best to check anyways. For instance when I went onto my council website, I learned that you need council approval if you don't add a drainage solution to your wall, as holding rain water will add additional weight to the wall. Another thing to consider is where your property boundaries are or whether you will have any surcharge on the wall, e.g. if you're going to use it to park your car on the higher ground. In my case our house was on the higher ground, so my architect friend suggested checking in with a structural engineer to make sure that the weight of our house wouldn't put pressure (surcharge) onto my retaining wall. I did so and found, that our house was far enough away from the wall to not have any surcharge. Had that not been the case, we would have had to to structurally engineer the wall and get council approval after all. That gave me some sleepless nights. So, make sure you're onto what your council requires from you, their rules are there for a reason. Auckland council has a tool for this: https://www.aucklandcouncil.govt.nz/building-and-consents/building-renovation-projects/build-retaining-wall/Pages/check-need-consent-build-retaining-wall.aspx

Will there be pipes in my way?

When doing ground work you should always make sure that you don't hit any water pipes while digging (especially if you plan to use a digger). Auckland council has a website, where you can look up all the connections that are in place for your property: https://geomapspublic.aucklandcouncil.govt.nz/

You simply enter your address and select "Assets" from the menu and then tick "wastewater" and "water" under the "Underground services". You might not know where exactly they are located but it will give you a rough idea and you'll know what the areas are that you have to be careful around. In my case there was a water pipe, and I needed to make my retaining wall shorter than initially planned, so that I wouldn't have to build on top of the pipe.. I like how it's turned out in the end though.

On a side note, it's really interesting to click around in this tool, as you can learn heaps about your property. E.g. they have air shots of your property going way back and you can see how it has changed.

Clear your site

Before I could get started, I needed to clear my site. This might not seem significant, but it just adds to the length of the project. I spent a couple of days moving the garden beds I had made up of bricks and removing the rather ugly paving that the previous owners had laid. I also dug out the old washing line in the process.

How to level your yard

Once you've worked out the permits and pipes, you can get started by setting your string lines. I used wooden garden sticks and marked two lines on each of them with a 5cm space in between. Then I banged them into the ground until the first line was level with the ground. 5cm above the ground, where the second line was, I attached the string. Then I did the same on the other side of my yard where the higher ground was and attached the string line to the upper line making sure that the line was quite tight. Finally, I attached a line level to the line. You'll be able to see whether the line is level or not and will have to start digging to be able to bring down the stick that is on higher ground until its on the right level. I set up a zig zagging string lines every meter or so, for the first bit I dug up.

Then I set up string lines parallel to each other, 1m apart.

Both worked quite well. Note, where the slope is obviously quite high, you can start digging first and once you think you're getting close to being level, you set up your string line. Or you can set them up straight away and dig a trench for the string while you level the ground around it. I used tarp to cover the ground already leveled, as I didn't want weeds to grow on it. If you wonder what I did with all the soil, that I dug up? I spread the soil around the bush property surrounding my backyard. It's bush and belongs to our property, so there was no problem with that.

Allow for some extra space behind your wall

Make sure to dig up some extra space for behind your wall. You will need that extra space to put your drainage layer in. Also, you will be screwing the timber screws in from behind, as this is the most stable way of doing it. Hence, you will need to factor in enough space, so that you can drill the screws in with your drill. Then when your wall is built you will need to have some soil handy that you can back-fill this with. So make sure to keep a pile of it handy.

This digging will take a while if you do it by hand!

I dug and dug and dug for a couple of months for an hour or two every day.... I started in February and dug and leveled until, at last(!), middle of June I had done enough for the retaining wall to go in. In hindsight, a digger would have saved me lots of time, but access might have been difficult with our site. Also, I figured, that this could be my daily workout while I'm taking some time off. If you happen to break a spade while digging, I'm told that this is part of the experience.

What to do with an old septic tank?

Before I started digging I already knew that the leveling process would have the bonus of having to destroy an old septic tank that is in the way... This tank was no longer in use, disconnected and just buried in our backyard. At some point we had filled it with rubble, so that our kids couldn't fall into it. So now we had to dig out all the rubble and get rid of the tank.

We hired a demolition breaker from our local Bunnings. I found that hiring it from the hardware store worked out much cheaper than hiring this from a company specialised in equipment hire. First the hire fee was much cheaper. Second, as this is just a side business for the hardware store, they are a lot more lenient on how long you keep the equipment for (at least at my local one). Whereas the hiring companies will be quite exact when it comes to that and will charge you extra for lateness.

We got destroying. The septic tank didn't have any steel reinforcements, luckily. So we managed to break it down, which took us about 5 hours, spread over two days. There's still some of it left. But we've destroyed enough of it, so that it won't be in our way.  This is really hard work, so we found that we couldn't do this for more than 1-2 hours / day each. We needed a long hot bath after that!

What to do with all the rubble?

Getting rid of the rubble from the septic tank, plus my bricks from the garden beds, was another headache. I put part of the rubble behind my retaining wall. Then I researched where I can dispose of the rest. However, I've found that it's quite expensive to get rid of rubble, as the cost is based on the weight and rubble is naturally heavy. I checked out a couple of landscape yards and quarries, but found that the Auckland council refuse station seemed to be the cheapest option when disposing of hard fill. Then I figured I could try putting it all on Trade me as free bricks and hard fill... And hooray! Someone took a good chunk of the bricks off my hands for free. I was left with lots of broken bricks and rubble. I had them on Trade me for a couple of weeks, but there were no takers for them. Then a friend of mine suggested burying the rubble around my property. According to him, it helps with ground erosion and doesn't do any harm anyway (it's not toxic). As we have a big property, I decided to do this in the end. A couple of days more digging and bye bye rubble!

Subscribe to my blog if you want to find out how I built the retaining wall and more.

Fünf Jahre ist es her, dass ich das letzte mal in Deutschland war. Ein Baby, gefolgt von einer Pandemie, bei der Neuseeland die Grenzen dicht gemacht hat, haben dazu geführt dass ich meine einstige Heimat so lange nicht zu Gesicht bekommen habe. Nun, da ich wieder da bin, fallen mir viele Dinge auf, bei denen ich mir früher bestimmt gar kein Gedanken gemacht hätte. Wie meine Schwester schon festgestellt hat: "Du bist bin ein echter Ausländer geworden" :) Hier sind meine Eindrücke.

Drogeriemärkte!

Ich glaube Deutschland ist das einzige Land, das ich bisher kenne, in dem es Drogerie-Märkte gibt. Jedes Mal, wenn ich einen betrete werde ich von der Auswahl erschlagen. Tausende verschiedene Shampoo Sorten, Cremes, Kosmetik, Bio Nahrung und Babyprodukte. Nirgends gibts so viel Auswahl wie hier in diesem Bereich -  ganz bestimmt nicht in Neuseeland, wo ich Letzens 1 einziges Lockenshampoo finden konnte im Supermarkt, als ich nach einem gesucht habe....

Treppen

Meine Töchter haben schnell festgestellt, dass hier viel mehr Leute in Wohnungen in Mehrfamilienhäusern wohnen. Dementsprechend muss man viel mehr Treppen steigen. Im gegensatz zu Neuseeland wird hier viel mehr in die Höhe gebaut. Meine Schwester wohnt im 3 Stock (ohne Aufzug), also kriegen meine Beine jetzt mehrfach täglich ein kleines Workout. Meine Kinder haben während unseres Trips Treppen zu ihrem größten Feind erklärt.

Bäckereien Überall!

Egal wo man hingeht, die nächste Bäckerei ist nicht weit weg! Selbst als ich zum Baumarkt gefahren bin, habe ich festgestellt, dass dieser am Ein-/Ausgang ein Bäckerei-Cafe hat...! Das ist meiner Meinung nach ausgesprochen klasse, wenn man bedenkt wie lecker hier das Brot und die Brötchen sind. Ach, wie schön wäre es, wenn es das auch in Neuseeland gäbe. Das Brot und die Brötchen sind in Deutschland einfach Weltklasse...

Überall Beton

Mein Auge ist nicht mehr an so viel Beton gewöhnt. Der Klimawandel lässt grüßen und gleichzeitig berichtet mir meine Schwester, dass unsere Stadt weiter zubetoniert wird. Das trägt dazu bei, dass es sich im Sommer mehr aufheizt und Wasser im Herbst/Winter nicht ablaufen kann, was zu Überflutungen beiträgt... Aber immerhin sieht alles ordentlich aus. In Neuseeland werden Häuser hauptsächlich aus Holz gebaut und es gibt viele Grünflächen (mit Ausnahme der Innenstadt von Auckland vielleicht). Laut meiner Schwester werden dafür jetzt Dächer mit Moos bepflanzt oder Wände mit Pflanzen bestückt um mit dem "natürlichen Abkühlen zu helfen".

Zu heiß, was tun?

Wir hatten während unserem Aufenthalt schon ein paar ganz schön heiße Tage - so um die 40 Grad herum. Wenn ich zurück denke an meine Kindheit, war dies eher nicht der Fall in den Sommerferien - Klimawandel hallo! Die meisten Leute in Deutschland haben keine Klimaanlage, und selbst wenn, gehen sie damit eher sparsam um. Viele haben auch keinen Garten. Der Beton heizt sich auf, die Hitze staut sich, es weht kein Lüftchen, die Schwimmbäder sind überfüllt. Wie unserer Freund es beschrieben hat: "Wir waren die letzen 2 Tage nur im Freibad... zusammen mit dem Rest der Stadt..." Kurzum, im Großstadtdschungel schwitzt man sich einen ab... In unserer Verzweiflung sind wir mal in einen Drogeriemarkt gegangen in der Hoffnung, dass dieser eine Klimaanlage hat. Bier hilft natürlich auch mit dem Abkühlen und davon gibt’s hier ja reichlich.

Ich bin gestorben und im Bierhimmel wieder aufgewacht.

Deutschland hat, wie jeder weiß, eine wunderbare Auswahl an Bier! Das haben wir sehr genossen als wir in Deutschland waren (ich nehme an daher auch die 2 -3kilo extra auf der Wage). Weißbier, Pils, Bier und Limo Mischgetränke – ich glaube es gibt sonst nirgendwo so viel Bier Auswahl wie in Deutschland. Was mich positiv überrascht hat, war, dass es jetzt auch eine große Auswahl an nicht alkoholischem Bier gibt und dies auch jeder da zu haben scheint, wenn man Leute besucht. Warum also Wasser trinken? Deute dies an und die Leute schauen dich schräg an.

Der Konsum - eine patriotische Pflicht

Überall kann man konsumieren und ich werde von der Auswahl erschlagen. Ich erinnere mich, wie ich das in meiner Anfangszeit in Neuseeland vermisst habe. Jetzt gehe ich lieber in einer deutschen Kleinstadt shoppen, weil ich mit der Auswahl in der Großstadt überfordert bin. Spaß macht das Shoppen natürlich trotzdem. Der Konsum ist gerne gesehen und treibt die Wirtschaft an. Dies hat der deutsche Wirtschaftsminister Peter Altmaier während der Corona Pandemie sogar in Worte gefasst: „Der Erhalt des stationären Handels ist eine nationale, ja auch eine patriotische Aufgabe… Teil unserer Identität, Leitkultur“. Bitteschön Deutschland, gern geschehen. Alle um herum kaufen andauern etwas für uns, obwohl wir ihnen sagen sie sollen es nicht tun... vor allem den Kindern natürlich. Wie das wohl alles in den Koffer passen soll?!

Alles ist so günstig

Hier werden mir meine deutschen Freunde widersprechen und mir versichern, dass alles ja so teuer geworden ist. Und ein bisschen ist mir das auch aufgefallen, Aber, es ist nun mal alles relativ und wenn man aus Neuseeland kommt, wo es nur 2 Supermarkt ketten gibt und einiges weniger an Konkurrenz, dann sieht man die Sache nun mal anders. Während wir in Deutschland waren, haben wir Tonnenweise Himbeeren und Blaubeeren gegessen. Zuhause kaufen wir sie nur ab und zu im 200g Päckchen, weil sie sonst unbezahlbar sind.

Draußen wird man zugeraucht

Ich erinnere mich an meine Studienjahre, in denen ich in einem Café gekellnert habe. Damals war es normal, dass innerhalb des Cafés geraucht wurde und dass ich und meine Klamotten am Ende der Schicht wie ein voller Aschenbecher stanken. Meine Schwester kellnerte auch. Eines Tages fragte sie einer der Gäste ob sie der Rauch nicht störte. Sie sagte "Man gewöhnt sich an alles." Er antwortete: "Stimmt. Man gewöhnt sich auch an Lungenkrebs.". Heute darf man nur noch draußen rauchen und das wird auch gemacht. Tatsächlich habe ich es während der ganzen Reise nicht geschafft mich draußen in der Stadt aufzuhalten ohne zugeraucht zu werden. Besonders hat mich das gestört, als wir mit meinen zwei Kindern frühstücken waren und sich eine Oma direkt neben ihnen eine nach der anderen angezündet hat. Meine ältere Schwester (auch Raucherin) hat mich auch schon als "extreme Anti-raucherin" bezeichnet - weil ich nicht passiv rauchen und möchte und einmal erwähnt habe, dass mich dies and Deutschland stört. Ich fand das sehr amüsant... Echte Deutsche scheinen da weniger schmerzlos zu sein. In Neuseeland, wo eine Packung Zigaretten mittlerweile um die 30$ kostet, kommen einem Raucher einfach viel seltener in die Queere.

Alte Gebäude

Ein Merkmal Europas sind natürlich auch die vielen Jahrhunderte alten Gebäude. Es gibt sie überall in Deutschland. Selbst in Essen, das während des zweiten Weltkriegs zerbombt wurde, weil es eins der Orte war in dem Eisen und dementsprechend auch Waffen hergestellt wurden. Wir haben einen Abstecher an die Mosel gemacht und uns dort ein paar uralte Burgen angesehen. So etwas kriegt man in Neuseeland nicht zu sehen.

Straßenusik

Etwas, das ich sehr schön fand in Deutschland, war dass man in den Innenstädten oft auf Straßen-Musiker trifft, die sich ein paar Groschen dazu verdienen wollen. In meinen Augen trägt dies viel zum Flair einer Stadt bei, lässt einen den Alltagsstress vergessen und zaubert einem ein Lächeln aufs Gesicht.

Öffentliche Verkehrsmittel sind super angebunden

Etwas, das in Neuseeland noch zu kurz kommt, sind öffentliche Verkehrsmittel. Davon gibt es in Essen jedoch reichlich – U-Bahn, S-Bahn, Regionalzüge, Straßenbahnen, Busse etc. Reichlich von allem, man ist vor allem in den Großstädten sehr gut angebunden. Auch wenn mein Schwager wahrscheinlich wiedersprechen wuerde, ist es hier alles wieder relativ... Ich erinnere mich daran als wir 2009 das erste mal in Auckland angekommen sind und vergeblich in der Innenstadt Aucklands nach einer U-bahn Station gesucht haben… Pustekuchen! Gibt’s hier nicht. Da kann Neuseeland sich noch einiges von Europa abschauen, vor allem auch der Umwelt zuliebe.

Fazit

Alles in Allem, war es sehr schön wieder in meiner alten Heimat zu sein, freunde und Familie wiederzusehen und meinen Kindern ein Bisschen meiner alten Welt zu zeigen. Es ist wie wenn man in ein altes Leben abtaucht, das man zum Teil hinter sich gelassen hat. Nach 6.5 Wochen haben wir uns dann auch alle wieder sehr auf unser eigenes Zuhause in Neuseeland gefreut.

During my 5 years at Playcentre, we sometimes had to deal with challenging behaviour from our 0-5 year olds (from their parents sometimes too, luckily way less often!). We made a point of discussing how we can better deal with these situations at our meetings. I led one of these talks and decided to share its content hoping that it will help other parents on their parenting journey. I can see it being useful for a lot of different group settings with pre-schoolers and parents involved, e.g. Playcentres, community playgroups, family groups etc. The basis for the advice is mostly based of the Playcentre training programme, which leads to a NZQA accredited level 4 certificate in early childhood education. Happy reading and good luck on your journey!

This blog post will cover the following:

• Developing brains
• Behaviour is communication
• The Magic List for meltdown prevention
• Dealing with melt downs

Developing brains

Whenever we talk about challenging behaviours with regards to children, we have to take into consideration that their brains are still developing. The frontal lobe, which is responsible for executive function such as rational thinking, planning, problem solving, behavioural control and decision making, is what we want our children to develop in order to be able to deal with stressful situations in an acceptable way. However, our brain gets built from the bottom up. The frontal lobe develops at the very end and over time! I Know! A pretty infuriating order, but bear in mind that there are lots of connections to construct…

A brain matures at around 23 years of age, some children will develop certain areas of the brain sooner or later depending on a lot of influencing factors such as whether you’re a first child or second born child, gender, external influences, experiences, interests, family surroundings etc.

Even if children sometimes seem very confident and competent at what they’re doing, it doesn’t mean that they will be able to cope by themselves when stressed. They need consistent guidance and support to get through challenging situations.

Behavious is communication

The second thing that comes to mind is that the behaviour we see often is just the tip of the iceberg. We see that a child hits, bites or doesn’t share. But underneath there could be a lot of influencing factors.

Now this is not only true for the children but also the parents in our community. Often if someone is not getting their job done or acting inappropriately in some way, instead of judging them from the get go, try to take a supportive approach. Ask them if they're doing ok or why this seems to be a struggle for them. They might have their own iceberg which could look like this:

They might have lots of pressure at work (as many of us work part time or even full time), house renovations, health issues, marital issues, burnt out from being a parent, lack of sleep, be over committed…all kinds of things really, often simultaneously… Depending on the person they will be happy to share what is going on or not. So instead of jumping to conclusions, try to be supportive and kind to each other. Who knows, one day you might need some support yourself...

Coming back to the children, we need to dive deep, observe (especially if it's a recurring behaviour) and try to understand the cause whilst supporting the child to understand, express and regulate their emotions.

So how do we guide them through it? First of all, try to prevent meltdowns whenever you can with the following strategies.

The magic list for meltdown prevention

11 strategies to help with meltdown prevention in early childhood

At Playcentre this is what we turned to when it came to preventing our kids from melting down:

1. Supervision: Sometimes our 4 year olds can seem very capable in many ways and it can seem that they don’t need that much supervision (especially compared to a 1 or 2 year old). But when reaching that age, they might also feel a bit like they're the boss. If we don’t supervise them appropriately, situations can arise where children get excluded from play, no proper turn taking happens, things are being said that aren’t nice etc. So even if there’s a group of children who don’t want you to be actively involved in their play, it is always good to have at least one adult positioned near to them who can keep an eye and ear out just in case something does comes up. Doing that will also help to extend their play and thus keep them engaged. When they’re engaged they come up to less mischief.
2. Build supportive relationships – Children will listen to you better if they know you and have had positive and meaningful interactions with you previously. So when you’ve got a minute to spare, as you’re child is engaged in some activity elsewhere, try to make some little friends in addition to your grown up friends. This will help with our collective efforts to guide behaviour positively.
3. Food, sleep, drinks, cold - Cover the basics – if a child is hungry, tired, or thirsty or cold it can affect them in a major way and result in tantrums or acting out. Even if the child says that they're not hungry, but you know that they haven't eaten for a couple of hours this will most likely be one of the causes. So maybe try to coax them away from the situation with a cuddle and a story and then sneak in the yummy lunch box / sweater /drink.  
4. Anticipate situations, divert/redirect - If you see that multiple children are interested in the same activity, provide more resources where possible (e.g. another zippie, swing, tool etc.). If that is not possible you can try to redirect children to other activities, this especially works with the younger ones. Redirecting to an activity that feeds the same urge can also work well, e.g. offering a child who is throwing equipment, a soft ball to throw, or cotton balls dipped in paint he can throw on a paper wall. Another example is redirecting overly boisterous games or game fighting to an energy releasing activity such as running timed laps or letting them bump over soft foam shapes. This is also where planning comes in – we need to make sure our children are fully engaged through planned activities and need to make sure that these activities actually happen as planned. No better reason to act up than boredom.
5. Get support – ask for help, talk about it - This is quite important. When you encounter a child’s behaviour that has affected you or your child, don’t keep it to yourself. If you don’t bring it up, smaller issues can compile into a big mountain that might feel insurmountable and end in an outburst. At Playcentre we used to run an end of each session evaluation where you could bring these challenges up. In other settings it might be a coffee date with the parents or an informal conversation with the parties involved. The parents involved on both sides can work on approaches of how to deal with the behaviour. You might find that the child's parent is already aware of the problem and has a specific way to deal with it that he found to be effective. Or you might work out something together and also let other parents know about how to handle this behaviour. Taking the cooperative approach ensures that all parties feel heard and that the child gets a consistent response from all sides. This is important as the child will be guided into the same direction by everyone and will learn faster.
6. Give specific praise - Us adults tend to give our children a lot of feedback with regards to what our kids shouldn’t be doing. However, it is more effective to catch them in a situation, where they act in a desirable way and to reinforce the positive behaviour then and there in a specific way. E.g. “I love how you made sure that your little brother got a turn”. “I really liked how you made sure that all the children were included”. If you do this in front of them that is great, but if they catch you talking about this positive behaviour to someone else, it will have 10 times the impact. Unfortunately that also works the other way around - when you’re talking to others about their undesirable behaviour, it can damage their self esteem. So be careful of what you say in front of them, they soak it all up.
7. Use positive language – Say what you want them to do, not what you don’t want them to do. Our brains can't really do negation, so if you tell them do not throw the sand, the brains first impulse is to act on “throw the sand”. My marketing prof used to say "If you’re driving alongside a road with lots of trees and suddenly loose control of your car, think 'gap gap gap'. If you think 'don’t hit a tree', you will hit a tree…". So try to use positive language e.g.: A child throwing sand in peoples faces: “keep the sand low”, hitting/shoving – “keep your hands to yourself" or "gentle hands,”; biting – “teeth are only for eating food”; a child standing on chairs/tables – "feet on the ground" etc.
8. Point out natural / logical consequences - This does not relate to threats like: "if you don’t do this, then you won’t get screen time today.." If you threaten them children won’t think about their behaviour, they’ll only think about how mean you are. This point rather refers to natural or logical consequences. for instance: "X will be really sad if he doesn’t get a turn."; "If you keep hitting this, it will break and we won’t have any to play with in future."; "If  you don't put a jacket on you will feel really cold" etc.
9. Provide quiet time - Sometimes children can get overstimulated. Try to see whether you can see a pattern, e.g. do meltdowns always happen around the same time of day? Then plan for quiet activities for that time of day if you can.
10. Time in - If a child can no longer control themselves offer food or reading a story with them. Or say “X why don’t you come to me and have a little sit down together. We can watch what the others are doing”.
11. Change of scene “I can see that you’re getting really frustrated, why don’t we come back later to this activity.”

Dealing with meltdowns

You've done your best to prevent it from happening, but, as I often used to say, the universe has struck again and you do have a meltdown on your hands...Yikes! What to do??

1. Hugs, caring - Children's brains are unable to regulate themselves, so showing them that we care with hugs, kisses or other gestures that give them comfort will help their body to release the right hormones for them to calm down.
2. Get down to eye level - getting down to their level or even lower, will help you better connect with them. Otherwise they might feel that you're towering above them.
3. Mirror their feelings. Acknowledging their feelings will help them to calm down as well; e.g. "I can see that you are really upset that he took the only blue truck." (I found that this also works well with adults.) Naming their emotions will help them to articulate these feelings better in future.
4. Link to build rapport - Link their behaviour to what you know about the child, thereby validating their feeling. E.g. "That makes sense, I know that your favourite colour is blue." Note, that you can sympathise with their emotion even if you don't agree with their behaviour.    
5. Get them to calm down before you get into the nitty gritty - While the kids are in a state of high alert they won’t be able to act rationally or learn from the situation. That goes for both the child that got hurt and the one that acted out. So getting them to calm down is important before we talk about what has happened, why the behaviour is not acceptable, how it has affected the other party. Avoid blame, rather try to give their emotions names and work out ways with them in which they could cope with the situation better in future.
6. I wonder...  Instead of presenting them with a solution to the problem straight away, try saying "I wonder what we could do to solve this" or "I wonder how we could make your friend feel better again". Then pause and give them some time to think about this. This encourages the child's problem solving skills and will also make him own his solution to the problem. They might not come up with something the first time around you're asking them to problem solve. That's fine. But the more often they're prompted to look for solutions in such situations the better they'll perform over time.
7. Guide - If they've tried and they come up empty, guide them through it. e.g. Maybe we could try to find another blue car / use the blue motorbike instead / wait until he's finished playing with it etc...
8. Stay calm - This one can easily be forgotten when the kids get loud and you're trying to be heard. But it is counterproductive to match their emotions, as it will only make matters worse.  So try to use a quiet voice instead, be their rock... After all it's their meltdown, not yours. Reassure them that you are here for them when they're ready to work on a solution.

Best of luck!

Cover Photo by Alexandr Podvalny on Unsplash

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