Screeching in the car

jnnfrrose6

DS (2 years) sometimes likes to test his boundaries on the ride home from DC by screeching loudly.  I get that it's his way of getting attention and testing boundaries right now, but I also have DD in the car (4 months) and half the time he does it, it's when she's sleeping and it wakes her up.  So far my, either I answer his screech (usually some form of "mommy") and he keeps doing it (thus waking up DD), or I ignore him, he does it a few more times and gives up, but he's still woken up DD.  Any suggestions on how to handle this/get him to stop screeching, or will DD just have to learn to sleep through it while I ignore the behavior?

Scorpgirl444

Just in the car?  You're lucky!  I've learned that this is something they are just going to do at this age.  I call it...the call of the toddler.  Mine do it when they are happy, sad, mad, silly...you name it, they do it and it's usually a competition to see who can be louder.

jnnfrrose6

Scorpgirl444 said:

Just in the car?  You're lucky!  I've learned that this is something they are just going to do at this age.  I call it...the call of the toddler.  Mine do it when they are happy, sad, mad, silly...you name it, they do it and it's usually a competition to see who can be louder.

Not just in the car, but when we're elsewhere, I can remove him from the situation or distract or whatever I need to do to get him to quiet down.  In the car driving down the highway, not so much.

ashiscute

I think she might just need to figure out how to sleep through it.  I would tell your DS once mommy doesn't respond to screaming and ignore.  I know its tough (mine are 19.5 mos apart and when they were little we were constantly shushing DD) but I think they'll both get used to it.  

jchytil

Totally feel your pain. My son at 2.5 years of age while we were on a family vacation decided to start doing this with his 6 month old sister in the car seat next to him. Which in turn made her cry. I called that the drive from hell. We had to keep pulling over to correct him and calm her down. Now he still does it when he knows his sister is sleeping and we want him to be quiet. We had to take things away from him toys blanket and then just the threat of that would get him to quiet down. Good luck