How do you stop a Temper Tantrum in a two year old?

In My Humble Opinion
1

My illustrious wife and I have agreed to watch our two year old nephew Hayden for a few days whilst mom - my SIL - goes to Boston to look at some real estate (they are moving). Hayden is a wonderful kid, well behaved, sleeps most of the night…and has basically drooled on everything we own. :slight_smile: It’s very cute.

Now last night around 4 pm…my wife was making dinner and I was playing with Hayden and the kitty. He wanted to watch Dora the explorer however, realizing I left it at grandma’s house I said no, but we could watch Elmo or Barney.

DOOOORRRRAAAAA!!! - DORA - DORA - DORA - DORA !!!

:eek: AWW Hayden it’s ok we can watch Elmo!

I go to pick him up and he hit’s the floor with a loud DUD and starts slaming the floor and kicking everything. I pick him up and he arches his back and starts screaming *** DORA!!! DORA!!!***… His face is bright purple and he simply won’t stop…My wife comes over and tries to divert his attention with the dog and he just screams louder. This goes on for a few minutes until he’s breathing hard and there are no more tears to cry…

Then when we are eating dinner…about an hour later, he falls asleep at the table in his spaghetti’O’s. He slept till about 4 this morning…and when I got up to get him…guess what the first words out of his mouth were? Yep…Dora

So to the SDMB Moms and Dads out there…How does one stop a temper tantrum when they happen? Let’s say you are at McDonalds or Target or somewhere in public when one of these tantrums start? How do you stop them? Do you ignore them? Is there a tried and true way to stop them? Please for the Uncles sanity…How do we stop the little guy from tantruming? :slight_smile:

2

AHHH, temper tantrums. In public, we leave immediately. Without making intended purchases. Once, in a grocery store my middle daughter started to throw a fit, I told her that this was not acceptable behavior, and if it continued we would leave. She continued, we left. When we got home and she had calmed down and wanted milk, I told her we did not have any, as we were not able to finish shopping because she was busy having a tantrum. She has never behaved that way in public again. I have left eating establishments with out finishing eating before, taking which ever child can not behave out to the car, while the others finished in peace.

At home, I just let it happen. I make sure there isn’t anything around they can hurt themselves on and walk away. The more attention you give the tantrumer, the longer it is going to last.

3

Speaking as a father of 4 kids, I have never successfully been able to stop a temper tantrum once it gets into full swing.

Since you will only be watching your nephew a few days, the following advice won’t necessarily apply to you as the solution I have for preventing them is a long term solution. You basically have to ignore the behavior. When you are at home this is easy because you can just put the kid in his room and close the door and wait until they calm down. What will happen over time is that the kid will realize that all his yelling and screaming won’t get him anywhere and he will have to learn other ways of dealing with those types of situations. It takes time though (YMWV depending on the kid).

Our kids (the two older ones that is) never really had temper tantrums so we were rather lucky. My two younger kids haven’t quite reached the age of temper tantrums yet so our fingers are still crossed. :slight_smile:

Our nephew that visits us a lot used to have them all the time. He came from a house where his mother would spoil him. When he came to our house, we wouldn’t give in to his whims and he would go off. His were very severe too as he would not only yell and scream, but also thrash about on the floor and hit his head on the floor. Still, we knew he wasn’t really huring himself all that much and that he would stop eventually once he realized what our rules were… and also when he realized that the pain on his skull wasn’t worth it either. :smiley: He did stop after about 3 weeks and has been fine to be around since.

4

True dat.

You don’t stop a tantrum once it starts - you ignore it.

The lesson to teach is that tantrums get you nothing. You don’t get what you are tantruming to get, you don’t get attention, you don’t even get punished during or after the tantrum. You get all attention withdrawn until the tantrum is over.

It happens. If it is reinforced, it happens again. If it is not reinforced, it sometimes happens again, but less.

Yes, other people will glare at you and think you are an inadequate caregiver. Those other people either had no children, or forgot that their children did exactly the same thing. And got the same glare.

“The cir-cle of liiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiife,…”

Regards,
Shodan

5

True, but my wife and I are trying to have children right now…so it’s all good advice:)

6

You can’t stop it but walking out of the room always seemed to cut its duration with LilSnoopy. Half the point of temper tantrums is having an audience.

7

When this became a problem for my wife and I in our kids at the first onset of the tantrum we would pick up the child and take them to their room with the firm admonition that they could not come out until they quit throwing the fit/crying and act right. At first, we would stay close to the door and as soon as the crying stopped we would open the door and tell them they could come out now, which served to re-enforce the good behavior. Before long all we had to do was tell them that they would have to go to their room if the fit didn’t stop and that would be the end of it. They may try you a little bit in a public place, but a slight modification as mentioned in the above posts will work if the foundation is there.

To me, the key is to be consistent. If we had to take the kids to their room 10 times a day, then thats what we did. However you choose to handle the situation be assured that the behavior will probably get worse before it gets better but don’t get buffaloed and give up. Settle on a firm, fair and appropriate plan and stick to it and the behavior will change.

8

Non-parent here, but an active aunt, and all the advice sounds good for long-term care–it was amazingly consistent, too, wasn’t it.

A tantrum takes a lot out of a kid, but your nephew was really zonked. Could it be that he was just very very tired, and missing his parents? I’ve known several little kids who are good kids, so you don’t notice that their fuses are getting short until they finally are totally out of steam. And this kid was only two. Even fun takes a toll on a very small child.

Maybe it would help just to have more naps or very quiet time, for the short run? Although I have to say, your method of trying to distract is usually a very good one for minor lapses of two-year-old manners.

9

If you’ve got a chair that you can tie the kid in – I’m thinking of a booster chair for dining, with safety belts to prevent the tyke from falling out – tie him in it, then walk away.

Sounds cruel, but as others have said, the whole point of the tantrum is for the kid to scream for an audience and get his way. If you secure him and ignore him, that’s a clear sign you’re not going to play the game.

10

Clear consistent behavior on your part and they learn quick that they will always get the same result from throwing a tantrum - ignored.

Tantrums are few and far between around here and usually have to do with an over tired kid who has simply been pushed beyond her limits. She has only thrown tantrums at home also but I agree that should she pitch a fit in public we will all simply go home.

Dora is like kid crack! She’s playing in our house right now. We also have the dora computer games. They get really boring really quickly but the munchkin loves them.

11

Shirley’s Advice Generator Du Jour
Remove the child from a public place immediately. Purchases or not. Even if you have to heft one over a shoulder and drag another sibling who wasn’t misbehaving out and make it clearly exactly why you are doing it. Kids understand more than you think. I’d like to state that I can handle tantrums like nobody’s business, however, when God handed out children, they didn’t have tantrum models available. I got the “Manipulate through Barfing” and " Manipulate through Pouting" models. Barfing I learned to handle, pouting just chucks me a spit ball.

At two, they don’t fully comprehend rules, they are still very much in their selfish phase which usually starts fading away by mid to late threes or fours, depending on the child. Try to re-direct their attention. If that fails, just ignore them and when they are older, but them in their room or a corner for a time out. Eventually, as they grasp cause and effect, the need for time outs fade.

Kids also find tremendous comfort in repetition.New things frighten the bejesus out of them. DORA DORA DORA is Hayden’s comfort right now. Hola!
Also, between 4pm and 6pm is what is lovingly referred to as the Witching Hour. It’s when the kids just start bouncing off the walls or turning angels into surly/crabby little despots. Their naps are getting shorter and they are much too busy investigating to sit down for a breather. I think it is a combination of too much stimuation, overtiredness and the inability to express themselves with words properly. Remember, they are just little kids. I can set a clock to my kids ( usual angels) at 430 I know they will just start feeding off of each other unless I step in. This is usually an excellent time to chill out with a cartoon while I hurry to get dinner. Within minutes after eating, they are back to their normal selves.

Some some might think what rjung said is harsh, we had friends over who’s three year old ( this is 3 years ago) was your Basic Nightmare Child (because mommie and daddie both work 100 hours a week, the kid lives at Day Care and there was no discipline in the house. They didn’t need the money, they wanted it.) Oh, and he was an angel for the Daycare lady. Go Figure. and his behavior was making our two kids eyeball him. This child yelled, sang, screamed, cried and everything in between while not eating. Oh, and never sat still, getting up and running around or climbing under the table.

After watching this display at our house ( kids usually don’t act up at someone else’s house. They usually are to intimidated by the new setting) and knowing that allowing this behavior to go on would basically be giving our two children free passes in the future for Atrocious Table Manners, we waited until the parents were besides themselves with frustration. ( Not easy to do.) And asked after they were about to leave because this kid was just farking them over, if they would follow our lead and said child would not be harmed and they could stop anytime.

They were more than willing. (This is a friendship of over 20 years. I would never do this with a playdate/casual friendship.)

We told Child that he had to stop crying, whining, singing, screaming at the table and that he was setting a bad example for the babies at the table. And he needed to eat. He is a big boy after all. If he did not stop we would belt him to the chair and there he would sit until he ate at least X amount of his dinner.

He catapulted into hysterics nearly instantly and my husband secured him to his chair with his belt, which took his caterwauling to Defcon Five status.

I then instructed our friends to not make eye contact with child and to talk about things. Basically ignore him. It took about five minutes before the din died down, and we were all discussing something before we could see from the corner of our eye that the Nightmare Child was eating his dinner quietly. That had never happened before. Ever.

They were shocked that it worked.

I would like to say that this example changed their parenting techiques and let myself beleive I am the bestest parent evar, but, alas, it hasn’t and I’m not… They are great people, but not the most sterling parents. The child, who is very bright, has never had boundaries, is now on ritalyn. Meh.

Philo you ask the bestest questions.

12

Yep, ignoring it is the way to go. Even if they hold their breath (once they pass out, they start breathing again!)

4-5pm is danger hour for a lot of kids; they’re running out of energy and dinner hasn’t shown up yet. I would bet that he was more tired than usual, just from the unusual circumstances (plus whatever fun stuff you guys did). Does he still take a daytime nap, when and how long? Or, he may have been using TV as a nap-substitute at home and feel pretty dependent on having the Same Thing, especially in a strange place.

My suggestions, aside from ignoring the tantrums, would be to make sure to get quiet time, healthy snacks and enough fluids, not too much TV, and hopefully a good nap in the afternoon. TV does not really count as quiet time; although children are usually quiet and passive while watching TV, their brains are doing some weird stuff. You might as well show a very small child flashing lights. I notice that my 3-yo girl can’t really deal with more than about 20 minutes of TV a day, or she gets whiny and fractious. (That said, she just finished watching The pirates of Penzance, 'cause she’s sick. But she did throw a fit right afterwards.)

13

Wow, **Misstee’s ** advice is exactly what I would have recommended. Not that that comes as a surprise, of course. :slight_smile:

Ideally, you should use the same approach every time, and the single most effective remedy for a temper tantrum is to ignore it. But in a public place, allowing the tantrum to go on uninterrupted means everyone else has to listen to it. So in a public location, temper tantrums should result in an expediant retreat to some other place where the sobs and screams (if they have not stopped) will disturb fewer people, such as in the car. Then you can ignore it.

Never give a toddler in the midst of a tantrum what they want, and pay them as little attention as possible. This way they learn that yelling and screaming doesn’t get them what they want. Remember that manipulation is a child’s first survival strategy. They pick up on the concept of stimulus-response very quickly.

I once saw two ladies standing in the aisle at the supermarket, having a friendly chat. Once of the ladies had a toddler age boy sitting in her grocery cart. As she talked, the child kept tapping her on the arm and saying “Mommy, mommy” over and over again. Not getting any results from being gentle, the kid screamed “MOMMY!” at the top of his lungs. The mother stopped talking, looked down at her child, and said “Yes?” in a very sweet tone of voice. I said to myself, “Congradulations, lady. You just taught your son that the best way of getting your attention is to scream at you.”

14

At the risk of sounding repetitive… you’ve gotten lots of excellent advice!!! In a public place, get the hell out. At home, basically try to ignore. I would add that with some kids (e.g. mine), trying to talk or reason with them after they’ve reached a certain “fever pitch” level only annoys the child more and makes the tantrum worse. It’s hard to find that fine line before which you are able to reason with them somewhat, and after which you have to just leave them alone until they calm down.

With a child a bit older than 2, it helps to let tell them when they’re starting to develop a tantrum. They can’t always recognize when it’s starting to happen. If you help them recognize it, they can start learning how to calm down befoer it blows out of proportion.

15

To offer a slightly different perspective:

My dad has used a different tack when one of his grandchildren throws a tantrum. Dad will encourage them - literally.

Say the two-year-old wants a marshmallow. He doesn’t get it. After whining and clinging to the legs doesn’t work, he throws himself down and pitches a hissy fit.

Dad will settle himself comfortably in a chair, and give the child pointers:

“Come on, now, you can cry harder than that. Really yell it out!”

“That’s it, now, kick your feet a little.”

“Don’t stop! You’re doing just fine. Roll around a little bit.”

This makes the tantrums very intense for a minute or two, because the child knows he’s being mocked. However, it also ends the tantrum pretty quickly, because the child also knows he’s not going to get whatever he’s pitching the fit about if Grandpa is encouraging him.

When used on a slightly older child (say, five or so) this makes them quickly stop whining or crying and run off to sulk in private. Once communications have resumed, the child is told that we don’t intend to embarrass him or her, but that we will point out behavior that isn’t acceptable.

I don’t know that this would work in all situations (obviously, in public I doubt you’d want to try this), but it seems to work okay in our house. I’ve used both the ignoring technique and my dad’s technique with success.

Of course, the classic way to handle a temper tantrum was displayed by Andy Griffith on the old Andy Griffith Show. Opie (his son) has been given pointers on how to throw a tantrum by a friend, and Andy’s reaction to the ensuing tantrum is just wonderful. He doesn’t ignore it, exactly, but he does make it clear that the tantrum isn’t making an impression on him at all.

16

I suggest pepper spray.

17

To elaborate on the “witching hour” advice, I’ll give my son as an example. When he was younger he would get hungry at about 5 p.m. and his mood quickly soured. (Incidently, his mother is the same way.) So I was prepared for this by carrying snacks for the ride home from daycare. I knew he’d need a snack or I’d be tempted to toss him out the window on the drive home. Now that he’s older, he has learned to recognize hunger and will let me know. Even if he doesn’t, I can usually tell he’s getting hungry or tired by how cranky he gets.

18

some tips from experts:

http://library.adoption.com/Child-Development/Temper-Tantrums-What-Causes-Them-and-How-Can-You-Respond/article/3356/1.html

http://www.resa.net/early/WonderYears%20Newsletters/22%20to%2024%20mos.pdf

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0738207837/ref%3Dpd_sl_aw_alx-jeb-6-1_book_2138855_1/103-1101746-0642222

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0738201995/ref=pd_sim_books_1/103-1101746-0642222?v=glance&s=books

t. barry brazelton argues that tantrums are at least partly the result of the kid’s frustration with his inability to express himself well, and he has techniques to teach the kid some basic communication skills. if he is able to say what he wants or what he doesn’t like he’s less likely to throw a tantrum.

and remember, YOU’RE the grownup. if you lose your temper with a toddler, it’s all downhill. last week’s “law and order” episode was about a young mother who shook her kid to death during a tantrum.

19

Of course, sometimes (the smart little devils) ignoring it just ups the ante. Then, because you can’t ignore them when they hurt themselves, they start banging their head into the wall. Then its time to call the behavioral psychologist.

20

Give the kid back his joint.

sorry, couldn’t resist