Where is the line between giving in to a tantrum and comforting an out-of-control terrified child? Is it easy to tell when they can start manipulating?
Comforting is putting your arms around them and comiserating. “Yes, I know, it’s so hard.” “It really feels bad when you can’t do/get what you want, huh?” “Are you so frustrated?” “Are you feeling sad? Angry?” etc.
Giving in is handing them the candy so they’ll stop crying.
I would never not comfort Celtling through the pain, unless she actvely pushes me away. Then I allow her the same privacy I would to an adult who just wanted to be left alone for a few minutes. I do check back on her though, and see if she’s ready for a hug yet.
ETA: Sometimes comforting is just sitting quietly near by, so that feeling abandoned isn’t added to their list of pain.
I think the Firebug is getting closer to the end of the tantrum phase. A couple of incidents from yesterday evening:
We were out spreading mulch (well, I was spreading mulch, and he was playing in and around it), when I hear the first ice cream truck of spring. I’d left my wallet inside, my wife was running errands, and we were both messy enough that I was planning that we should both take off shoes, socks, and pants before going back inside.
Once he realized that we were about to see an ice cream truck, he really wanted some. And there wasn’t a thing I could do.
But instead of throwing a tantrum, he sat there quietly with a disconsolate face after the ice cream truck went on down the street. I just came over, held him, talked to him quietly, and after a few minutes he got through it and got back to playing in the mulch.
After supper, as we let him do if he finishes his meal, he picked a piece of candy out of the candy dish. When we looked at the wrapper, we realized that this one had chewing gum in the middle. At his age, we still treat chewing gum as a choking hazard, and we thought we’d purged the candy dish of gum, but apparently not. (The candy in the dish comes from Halloween/Christmas/Valentine’s Day/etc. candy; it mostly isn’t stuff we’ve bought.) When we told him he couldn’t have that piece of candy, he didn’t throw a tantrum, but genuinely disappointed for the second time in just over an hour, he burst into tears. This time, my wife held him, talked quietly to him, and after awhile, his sobs ceased, he picked out another piece of candy, and everything was good again.
He’s getting there, bit by bit. The tantrum stage isn’t over by a long shot, I’m sure, but he’s at least starting to find it’s not the only way of expressing the unhappiness from not immediately getting his way.
Aaaaand today, in HIGH CONTRAST to yesterday, J was wonderful. No potty battles, almost no naptime battle… it’s like the pod people, in a good way. He was totally delightful from the moment he woke up this morning.
I don’t expect it to last, but I’m glad to have it for now!
(also, we’ll see what happens tonight when it’s time to pick up his toys and go to bed…)
Have you told him? It sort of helped with The Nephew (The Niece hasn’t reached that stage yet, or I haven’t heard of it), he didn’t want to pick up his toys and I said “ok, then” and started getting in his bed.
“What are you doing???”
“Well, I’m tired and I don’t want to walk all the way to Grandma’s home, so I figured I’d go to sleep in your bed.”
“But it’s MY bed!”
“But I don’t want to walk!”
We stared at each other, him arms akimbo and searching for something more coherent than “but… but… bbuuuuuuttttt…”, me sitting half-in his bed. “Let’s pick up the toys and then you have your banana and then we play some more and then I go to Grandma’s, ok?” He got a scrunchy look, so I clarified. “You’ll get your bed back, but first you have to pick up your toys and have your banana.” “OK.”
There were a few similar rounds with his parental units and of course the tactics which work with him only work with kids of that specific bent, but it may be worth a try. In general, turning the tables on him like that, demonstrating how his behavior is something he doesn’t like when others do it, works well.
My daughter was a bit older when I did a similar thing. She had been mouthing off and being generally nasty all day. Then she asked me to give her a ride someplace. “Nope.” “Why not?” " You’re asking me to do you a favor. I don’t do favors for people who are rude to me. Besides, I’m tired after doing all my work today. Maybe if you had been kind to me I would feel more like being kind to you now."
My brother-in-law is a bit of a smartass. Once, when the Oldest Nieceling was complaing about her lack of toys (“But I don’t have any toys! Nobody buys me anything! I don’t have any!”), he just looked all around her room. At the stuffed animals. At the barbie dolls. At the dollhouse. At the dinosaurs. At the figurines. At the books, the legos, the DVD collection, the drawing easel… And then replied, “No, you don’t have any toys at all.”
I think she got it.
We had the worst day yesterday with our son. It was a scream fest - the first in months. And the icing on the cake was that I screamed, too. So the baby screamed. And my son screamed more. Oh, God, it was so awful, and I was kicking myself mentally all day for being so incredibly immature. But I just snapped. And I’d been on a hot streak - hadn’t so much as raised my voice for six months. Then I had to go out of town for the first time in about two years and came back to seriously whiny, irritated-with-mommy-working-out-of-town consequences.
Here’s what happened,
Five-year old starts crying. My blood is starting to boil. After all, I’ve been dealing with this since I got home, work is stressing me out, there are taxes to do and other household paperwork and I still need to put my shoes on and pack my lunch and get the baby’s shoes on, so I turn to leave. After all, I’ve got better things to do and I don’t want to raise my voice, now, do I? Then he screams. He knows that ticks me off. I freeze in the doorway, turn back. “Oh, it’s screaming day? I didn’t know it was screaming day! Awesome.” I let out a shriek worthy of a banshee, which sets off the baby. Son looks absolutely astonished, then he screams, too - “Mommy! Don’t scream!”
It was Not Good. So, not only did I do a stupid, stupid thing - I got to feel bad about it all damn day and dreaded going home.
But, there were several silver linings:
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Last night my son and I talked about it and he was totally calm. I apologized and he apologized and we talked about ways to avoid it later. He was awesome.
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This morning was really, really smooth.
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Most significantly, my husband, who usually loses it when my son misbehaves, was totally calm and supportive - of both of us. This was a first because he almost always winds up extremely critical of our son. Instead he held him for a while and spoke calmly to him, explained that what I did wasn’t the best way to handle the issue and got him to talk about best ways to handle problems in the future. Our son was so receptive and so happy to have his dad so supportive it was almost heartbreaking. I’ve never been so happy to do something so stupid.
I’ve got something in my eye…
Really? I actually don’t think it was so terribly stupid. I bet the kid remembers the lesson, and also he learned that sometimes, even grown-ups do things they later regret. Did you scare him (them)? Probably. But there are worse things than scaring your kids once in a while.
Actually, when my son went through his whining stage, the best way to get him to stop was to do exactly what you did, only with whining instead of screaming. It’s hard to whine when you’re giggling because Mommy sounds so silly. 
Oh, yeah. I scared the hell out of both of them, though she got over it faster, being 16 months old and all.
I’m just glad his dad was so calm and helpful. That alone might have been worth it.
We’ve just had two absolutely terrible bedtime, two days running. He’s still alive.
overly, I screamed this morning after having “No!” shrieked in my face while pinned on the floor in pain with a three-year-old trying to sit on my head and not being allowed to because Mommy is mean.
He burst into tears. We had a conversation about not screaming at each other.
After college I worked in the children’s department at a store. Right next to the register was a display with junk jewelry, lip gloss, hair ties and stuff like that. I used to call it the “meltdown rack” because there was always one flat-out, eardrum-popping “MOMMYIWANNIT!!!” tantrum per shift.
There was one little girl who started with the "mommy, can I have this, Please, It’s Really Pretty, Mommy I want this MOMMYWHYCAN’TIHAVETHIS MOMMYYYYYY!!!"
Mommy looked at me for help, got my polite “kids, heh” smile (I don’t give parents the evil eye when their kids are acting up in public because all it does is make them feel bad and little kids just don’t know how to handle Bad Emotions). Seeing she wasn’t going to get any help from me, she just bellowed, “NO!” at the top of her lungs.
I don’t know who she scared worse, me or the kid :eek:
Bro, I’m still wating for my 11 year old to run out of terrible.
Problem: I just threw up ont he carpet, and I hate the sound of Mommy’s carpet steamer machine.
Solution: I’ll just throw these sofa cushions on top, and try to look innocent while she walks around sniffing. . . hey! These would be fun to jump on! ! !
Lovely weekend we’re having at the Celt manse. . . .
Ah. We get a lot of “I need to poop. I will do it in my diaper and then make my parents chase me through the house and then clean everything.”
Did I mention that Gnat won’t let me wear necklaces? He freaks out and edges around suspiciously and tells me to take it off and cries. It’s really weird.
I always thought 3-yr-olds were rather funny in the way that their version of reality shifts every few seconds.
Man, I wish I could say this to some of my customers.
Also, this thread is the reason I want my sister to have kids: so that I can get all their cuteness and giggles, but then hand them back to her when they get all tantrum-y.