He isn't naughty. He just runs out of room for the feeling.

It's the third one today and this time it was about a sock. You've tried the calm voice and you've tried the firm voice and neither touched it, and somewhere in the middle of it you heard yourself shouting at a four-year-old about a sock. Then he fell asleep on you at seven and you felt awful. That's the bit nobody warns you about.

What actually helps

• Nothing you say lands mid-storm. When he's at full volume, the part of him that processes reasoning is offline. Explaining, bargaining and counting to three all fail for the same reason. Stay close, stay boring, wait.
• Name it after, not during. Once he's back: “That was a big one. Your body got full.” Words attached to the feeling afterwards are how he eventually gets to use words instead of the floor.
• Separate the feeling from the act. Being furious is allowed. Hitting isn't. Keep those two sentences right next to each other every time, in that order.
• Watch for the setup, not the trigger. The sock is never the reason. Hungry, tired, too much day, an hour of being told no — that's the reason. The sock was just last.
• Give the feeling a size and a shape. Young children take physical descriptions literally, which helps: it fills up, it gets too big for your body, it comes back down. That gives him something to notice happening.
• Repair out loud when you lose it. “I shouted. That wasn't okay. I'm sorry.” You are not undermining yourself. You are showing him what people do after they get it wrong, which he will need.

Why a book helps here, when talking doesn't

The conversation you want to have is impossible during a tantrum and unwelcome straight after one. A book gets read at a calm moment — bedtime, a quiet Sunday — when he can actually take it in. That's when the vocabulary gets installed, so that it's there next time.

A book about his temper. Not a lesson.

His name, the thing that usually sets it off, what his version looks like — stamping, going silent, hiding under the table.

Written the way that works: he isn't the villain of it, the feeling is described rather than judged, nobody is grateful and improved by the last page, and the adult in the story stays.

Or the whole book in outline, for him to color.

You choose how it's drawn: painted and full color to read tonight, or the same story in plain outline for him to color himself.

Coloring is also, usefully, one of the few things that reliably brings a wound-up four-year-old back down.