The Problem With The Viral 'Jessica' Hack To Halt Toddler Tantrums

Parents are attempting to halt toddlertantrums by asking their children about a made-up person called “Jessica”.

The distraction technique seems to work, too. In one clip shared on TikTok, a father is buckling his crying child into a car seat and says: “Jessica, come here.”

“Are you going to stop crying? Because Jessica is coming. You want Jessica to come?” he asks his son, who promptly stops crying and looks around.

In another clip, a crying toddler runs towards their caregiver, who calls out: “Jessica. Jessica. Where are you, Jessica?”

Again, the toddler stops crying and looks around, wide-eyed.

Dr Sasha Hall, a senior educational and child psychologist, certainly understands the appeal to parents of young children. Who wouldn’t want a magic ‘pause’ button to stop those mid-supermarket-shop-meltdowns?

But the expert warns it’s not an effective long-term solution for helping children navigate big emotions. 

Why calling out for ‘Jessica’ stops toddler tantrums

It’s basically a form of distraction. “It can work initially because young children are highly responsive to novelty, unexpected input, and disruption of pattern,” says Dr Hall.

“During a meltdown, the nervous system is already overwhelmed, so an unexpected cue such as a different name being called can momentarily shift attention away from the emotional peak.”

Jo Walker, a hypnotherapist at Walker’s Therapy, previously said when a child is having a meltdown, there’s no point trying to reason with them as it simply “won’t work”.

Instead of speaking to someone who isn’t there (ie. Jessica), she asks a “tiny, non-threatening question”.

The question should have nothing to do with the tantrum. So, Walker gave an example of, “hey, I just noticed your shoes. Where did you get those from?” or “what is the animal on your T-shirt?”.

Other parenting pros, like Jon Fogel, have recommended similar techniques, such as the colour game, where you ask your child to find something of a certain colour to help distract them from their big feelings. 

Why shouting ‘Jessica’ isn’t a long-term tantrum fix

It’s certainly not going to hurt your child to distract them with a conversation about ‘Jessica’. But it’s also important to bear in mind you’re not really teaching kids emotional regulation, either. 

Dr Hall says it’s “not a technique that should be encouraged or used regularly, and it is not something to build into everyday responses to distress”.

“What is happening here is interruption rather than regulation. The emotional experience is not being processed or supported, it is being briefly redirected, which is why it may appear to stop the behaviour in the short term,” she says.

The issue is, if parents use this technique regularly, it’s “creating interruption without understanding, and over time this can begin to impact the parent-child bond, where the child starts to experience the adult as unpredictable in their response to distress”, notes the expert.

“For young children who are in the process of learning how to manage their big feelings with adult support, this needs to happen with co-regulation and connection, not through interruption and distraction alone.”

Emotion coaching and validating their feelings can help in the long-term

Dr Hall suggests approaches such as emotion coaching tend to be more effective in supporting long-term emotional development.

“This involves recognising the feeling, naming the feeling for the child, helping them begin to link language to their internal experience, for example ‘I can see you are frustrated’, and staying emotionally available while the intensity passes,” she explains. 

And it does work. One parenting coach previously explained how doing this helped stop her son’s tantrum in a matter of seconds. 

Gen Muir had accidentally broken her toddler’s banana in half while peeling it – and needless to say, he had pretty big feelings about it.

“One thing and one thing only saved me in this moment,” she said in a TikTok video, “I remembered that I don’t need to fix this or solve this, I just need to let him know that I get it.”

She continued: “I just said: ‘your banana broke, you did not want it to break [and] you wish it didn’t break, and you are really really sad about this’.”

The parenting educator said within six seconds her son’s head was on her shoulder, and within another second he was quietly eating the broken banana.