Tantrums

yellowtulips80

When your LO pitches a tantrum do you think it is best to ignore them or put them in time out?  Lily has really started throwing these dramatic fall on the floor fits recently.  I'm wondering if ignoring the behavior is going to make it worse. Here is what I have been doing:  She throws a fit, and I tell her that I will talk to her when she can be a big girl and behave.  I walk away but stay within sight.  When she calms down I follow up with "I expect you to be a big girl talk."

What do you do if they do it in a public place?

mrsd0907

I've learned that ignoring Derek completely and walking away has the best effect. He thrives on attention and praise so when I'm not paying attention to him at all anymore he stops and will move on to doing something else. I don't think he's done it in public yet since he hasn't had success doing it at home.

slwprincess

It depends on the type of tantrum.  Tantrums are usually for attention.  If he doesn't get it, he stops.  Sometimes though, his tantrums are more because he's tired or sick.  Then, ignoring doesn't help and he will go on and on and on.  It's not pretty.  We usually only do TO for tantrums if the tantrum itself includes a specific undesirable behavior (hitting, biting, scratching, back-talking, etc).  My thought is that when TO is over, I need to be able to discuss why he went to TO.  If he's just having a plain old toddler tantrum, there isn't much to discuss about it.  I mean, I can't say, "Gavin you went to time out b/c you had a meltdown."  A meltdown is part of their way of coping with the world.  They don't understand why that's bad.  So in that case, I would just ignore it.  In public, I remove him from the situation and deal with it in the car or somewhere away from everything else.  I rambled... hope this makes sense. 

barbarajon444

Tantrums are attention seeking kind of behavior. But I think the best way to deal with it is that I found was to ignore them. My DS hasn?t done anything of this sort in public yet.