Tantruming Toddler!

In My Humble Opinion
1

Our daughter is 21 months old and has recently started having temper tantrums. She is also starting on her two year molars so is in pain some of the time.

I stay at home with her full time but she does go to a nursery for 4.5 hrs a week. She also does a little gymnastics class for one hour, once a week.

My husband and I have been wracking our brains trying to figure out what to do about these tantrums. We’re trying to ignore them, don’ t really think they are ‘dangerous’, but would like some tips from experienced parents on how to handle tantrums.

2

My wife’s stepsister used to throw temper tantrums when she was young - and particularly in public places - until one day she threw a big one in a supermarket, and her mother got down on the floor and kicked and screamed along with her. This was such a shock to the little girl that she stopped that tantrum and stopped the fits all together.

I have heard of this elsewhere as a technique to combat tantrums.

Some other links
http://www.faithwebbin.net/truewoman/mothers/young/tantrums.html

http://www.surgerydoor.co.uk/level2/sdm_toddler.shtml

3

Oops - forgot to post the disclaimer - IANAParent (experienced or otherwise).

4

My kids didn’t have MASSIVE tantrums, so I found that ignoring them was best.

But I have heard that some kids, once their tantrum starts, really cannot stop, even if they want to. Its like they lose control. I heard the thing to do with that is just hold your child. Don’t necessarily talk or anything, just sit down with them on your lap and hold them.

Like I said, I’ve never tried it myself…

If the tantrum is occurring in a supermarket or someplace else because she can’t get her own way, and she ISN’T losing complete control, I say ignore it, stick her in the shopping trolley and keep going about your business. Sure, people may look, but she will learn that no means no.

Good luck!

5

My first instinct is always to laugh at them but this just enrages them more.

The only solution I know of is to be absolutely resolute in your response - every time. Never give in and never be the audience if you can avoid it. Remove hazardous objects from her vicinity and leave the room. If you are in a store when it happens, stop shopping immediately and carry her from the store.

When things have calmed down you can offer her the option of talking about what upset her and explain that you love her but that behavior will not be a useful way to communicate with you. This will not be a deep conversation with one so young but she is old enough to get your message from your actions even if the words don’t do the trick.

Above all, remain calm. Never let a toddler see you sweat.:cool:

6

Thanks, grimpixie.

Mostly what I want, I suppose, is encouraging words that this will be over eventually. And that just because she has tantrums now, doesn’t mean she’ll always be a problem.

Sheesh. Teachers always joke that teacher’s kids are the most difficult, and in my case, I really really really hope it’s not true!

7

Fortunately, for us, she has only been doing this for about a week or two, and never in public (luckily!) so we are new to this whole thing. I’ve seen kids get ‘totally out of control’ and I wouldn’t say her’s are that bad.

She just had a major one because I wouldn’t let her climb onto the dishwasher door when I was unloading it (I’ve never let her do it, so it’s not as if she thought it was really fun before or something) and that spawned the tantrum.

After she was mostly finished, just sniffling, I held her and told her that she had to calm down, which made her more tantrumy, then, oddly, she wanted to take a nap (she woke up at 7am, and it’s now 10:30am) which she never does in the morning. Maybe she needs to go back to two naps a day until her molars break through?

Gah, this parenting stuff is HARD!!!:confused:

8

Ha ha ha! It’s not my kid! Oh wait… Katcha turns two next month… eesh.

Anyway, we’ve been lucky on the tantrum front. Neither boy broke into full-blown tantrums without a good run-up first. Mostly when thet get tired, then whiney, then crabby. They always (Soupo then, he’s past the tantrum stage now. Katcha now.) gave us plenty of warning.

When they start getting wound up, we send them to “time out”. Just a quiet sit down, nothing extreme. Sit still untill you can calm yourself down. USUALLY it works. If you can see the tantrum coming.

Teething is the worst. Soupo had a long, hard teethe. Every time his teeth would move in his head, he’d be a grump. Children’s Ibuprofen (Motren, not Tylenol. We get store-brand. It works just fine.) is a blessing. It also lets them sleep harder so when they wake up they are more rested which means a little more resilient.

Oh, and what everyone says: Never give in to a tantrum.
-Rue.

9

You’re doing the right thing. They want something and they are trying to learn how to manipulate you into doing it. Teach them that this is NOT an effective way to: a) get your attention; or b) get their way.

If they aren’t harming themselves or others, simply walk away. Get on the phone and pretend you are talking to someone. Go garden. Ignore the little monster even if she is clinging to you until she calms down.

And then–and this is key–don’t EVER then give her what she wanted (e.g. a piece of candy) after she calms down. Because you are rewarding the behavior. Instead, the next time she politely asks for something or the next time she doesn’t throw a hissy fit when you ask her to get out of the dishwasher, THEN you praise her, tell her how proud of her you are for being a big girl, and give her an appropriate reward.

Good luck!

10

Baby Kate turns 2 in less than a month!

And we’re seeing some tantrum issues, too. We’ve just used the ‘ignore her’ or ‘remove her from the situation’ tactic. They’re still coming (it’s not really frequent) but they haven’t gotten any worse. I’m hoping the lesson will sink in at some point.

And it’s over the strangest things…

ME: “What do you want to drink?”
BK: “MILK!”
ME (pouring): “Here you go!”
BK: “NO! NO MILK! WAHHHHHHHHHHH!!!”

Oh my aching head.

11

So the dishwasher door craving is universal huh? Who’d of thunk it? I’ll usually grab the midget and head outside to “oooooh” and “aaaaah” at flowering plants when I see a tired grumpie coming on.

12

Oh yes, I can remember being in tears at one point, thinking “My child is mentally ill. Our family is dysfunctional. I have somehow ruined my son. No one has it this bad.” I seriously thought he might have a brain tumor or something.

Then I’d make a small peep about my misgivings to some other mom friends with kids the same age, and receive a deluge of stories that sounded even worse than mine. It’s normal, even when you can’t believe that it could be normal for a kid to freak out just because you broke the graham cracker in half when they wanted it WHOLE!

A kid having a tantrum is out of control, so they need you to be in control. It’s scary for them. Be calm, ignore it as much as possible, and know that neither the tantrum nor the difficult age won’t last forever. Maybe have a glass of wine. Or three.

Cranky Jr would go through periods lasting about 7-10 days where he’d be AWFUL! So difficult I wanted to sell him for $3 to the circus. Then boom, he’d be fine for a while. Recently we had our first period ever where he was difficult for 3 weeks straight. That was killer. But it never lasts.

13

Thanks a ton for the encouraging words. I think that it’s just that she’s quite perceptive, and John is under some pressure at work, and he’ll be out of the country quite a bit in the next few weeks, so I’m just freaking out that I’ll have this non-stop with no help!

Please, let this pass quickly.

14

This was the method I used on my daughter. I was 30, and a single dad when the toddling Toadette started to throw temper tantrums. Since she was the first, and only child, I didn’t have any experience in hadling tantrums. Her tantrums were the “scream and hold your breath until blue” type. I solved the problem by breaking her concentration. I kept a spray bottle handy and sprayed a mist of cold water in her face. It startled her and made her stop and catch her breath, which stopped the tantrum. Once she stopped screaming, I could talk to her and calm her down. It didn’t take very long before she stopped throwing tantrums. It was safe and effective, so I don’t think it was cruel or abusive.

15

I was a horrible tantrum thrower. Evil. Public/private, with audiance/without…blah didn’t matter. (Out of control rage, anyone?)

The holding thing didn’t work, if I couldn’t move I got so upset I forced myself to pass out.

Ignoring me kinda worked, in that yes, eventually I would stop, but that may take an hour or so.

I don’t know what my parents did, other than try to convince each other not to kill me.

(My main problems with life were clothes, I didn’t like them. I spent a considerable amount of time naked.)

But, I do know that I was really, really bad. My little sisters never really even phased my parents because they couldn’t even get close to how awful I was.

So, the lesson here is, the child will grow out of them. It may just really suck in the mean time.

(And let me apologise to my parents again for being such a brat.)

16

[Medea’s Child**
I hope that she turns out like that. In essence, she is a lovely sweet, gentle, loving child, but when she gets the tantrum going, I end up thinking, “Oh. My. God. That monster came out of me?!?”

Of course, usually she’s worse when I’m home alone, and John doesn’t see it. We’re spending a significant amount of time this weekend writing down strategies for what to do, and posting them on the fridge, so if either of us are alone with her, we have the collective support.

Thanks!

17

My kids have had some amazing tantrums. My eldest is a very resolute child, and when she was 2-3 she could scream for upwards of an hour without stopping. And over very goofy things too. The milk–no milk story was very familiar to me. And I was a very docile child, so my mother was convinced my daughter was mentally ill–but she’s a perfectly normal, sweet five year old now. Which isn’t to say she never throws any tantrums anymore–that’s just a fact of life.

I tried the holding thing, and it just makes it worse, in my experience. But different kids are different, and respond to different things–try it and see what happens. With both my kids, it just makes it last longer. We’ve found that the best thing is to ignore it. It can be very, very hard, because listening to the tantrum can get your own temper up very easily, but at least in our house that works the best.

It does get better! Hang in there!

18

Ignoring is hard, though, isn’t it? I don’t have kids, but some of the SpEd preschoolers I work with have developmental delays that gives them a, um, toddler-like amount of self control. I leave my two morning students for 15 minutes a day so I can go to the elementary school to get lunches for the older kids- it’s usually during activity time with other teachers, so they rarely notice I’m gone. I got back on Tuesday and one of them was in absolute hysterics. It seems that the teacher wanted her to participate in an activity that was not to her liking, so she threw a fit. For 40 minutes. Comforting her didn’t work, and in fact made it worse, so we let her sit by herself until she could pull herself together. The next morning her mother gave her a short lecture on doing what teachers said and she had a perfect day. Go figure.

While letting her get control herself eventually worked, it was hard to stand idly by and watch. I’m the one that hurt kids, my students or otherwise, run to when they’re crying, but in the case of tantrums…oh well, they don’t happen very often.

19

mine is 215 months old now.
yes, hellacious temper tantrums. different times, different reasons, different methods of dealing.

Sometimes I’d do a time out w/him, setting the little stand alone oven timer for 2 minutes. “another scream and I’ll put more time” (I didn’t, kids can’t tell time, time outs for more than a few minutes aren’t effective at that age anyhow). That worked semi, until one day I couldn’t find the timer. He’d flushed it down the toilet. :eek: Didn’t find out for about a week.

Sometimes, I’d try a distraction technique “look, there’s Elmo”.
He had a Cabbage Patch Kid (Vincent) who, apparently, had horrible tantrums, too, and my son would talk to me about how to deal with them.

Before going into a store, we’d toss his temper in the trunk. Sometimes, we’d toss it into a stranger’s trunk and would laugh about what will happen when they open the trunk. Then, when the tantrum was starting, I’d remind him that his temper was off driving down the street somewhere. Sometimes that would get him to laugh.

When he was overly tired or uncomfortable w/teething or illness, this to me was a different thing. Hell, I"m cranky when I’m overly tired or sick. So I didn’t worry so much about those.

I remember one time, one particularly nasty tantrum in the store. Prior to the tantrum, I’d asked him what he wanted for supper, so we could make sure we picked it up. Well, apparently, while in the throes of the tantrum, he decided what he wanted. So, in a petunlent voice, he said “I’ve decided what I want for dinner”. I told him it was too late, that he was going to have what I planned - cardboard. With sauce on it.

After being startled, he laughed.

with other people’s kids, (later in life) I did this one, too - “wow, that’s a particularly neat color of red you’re turning. Did you plan that out or did it happen naturally?” or “do you find that hitting the floor while you’re kicking and screaming increases the visual stimulation?” The words really aren’t that important - it was more of a startle effect - some one talking to them calmly but in a funny, unexpected way, and not reacting at all like they’d expected (ie coaxing them out of it).

20

oops forgot to mention that at 217 months old, he doesn’t really do them anymore…

(actually the last set were when he was around 5 or 6 years old, but were connected w/emotional upheaval at his dad’s house, and the therapist told me that it was a ‘good sign’ that he felt comfortable enough w/me to act out. I asked her how to make him a tad less comfortable w/me… )