Dealing with Toddler anger - Help

TinyPinkBug

Brianna has a serious temper.  It is short lived and definitely within normal ranges of a toddler so I am not concerned there.  But she gets so mad that she purposefully hurts herself.  It was just slamming her head into things at first, but now she is doing things like biting herself until she draws blood!  Yesterday she was angry because we were leaving some place, I couldn't calm her down.  Then it took two of us to hold her down into her carseat and strap her in, tightly.  She was so mad still that she managed to get her upper body out of the strips, her arms are all scratched up as a result and was banging her head on th window.  We pulled over and I tried calming her down again.  I didn't work.  I had to make the kids switch car seats because it would be hard for her to get free of Tyler's seat.  I'm at a loss on what to do about her hurting herself!  She has even squeezed her fists so hard that she drew blood on her own hands with her nails, we now cut them every 4-5 days.  Further compounding the problem, Ty can't stand the sound of crying/screaming, it sends him into a tandrum too.  The Tyler issue, we are working on.  But what to do about Bri?

MrsWhiteonWhiteSt

Maybe some kind of lovey or toy she can squeeze when she gets so mad?

I'm not flaming, I am innocently asking but is biting herself until she bleeds or cutting her own hands with her nails really in the "normal ranges"? It seems a bit extreme.

ArcticFox

My DD does things like bite her own arm or bang her head on the floor.  Bri sounds a lot more severe.  I don't know what would distract her out of the tantrum.  My DD used to cry so hard (like if she got hurt) that she would throw up almost every time.  One of the things we did was put her hands under cold running water - there was just something that must have felt good.  But if your DD is thrashing around, I have no idea.

TinyPinkBug

MrsWhiteonWhiteSt:

Maybe some kind of lovey or toy she can squeeze when she gets so mad?

I'm not flaming, I am innocently asking but is biting herself until she bleeds or cutting her own hands with her nails really in the "normal ranges"? It seems a bit extreme.

Hmmm, maybe that is a good point.  I think of it as normal because it is so brief and not that frequent.  Which are what they use to determine abnormal tantrums.  It all happens really fast and she fairly easily snaps out of it, well compared to Tyler.  Tyler never hurts himself when he gets mad, he just flips out and is in another world and it lasts for hours, days, even months.  I would say her average tantrum is under a minute!  She also yanks out chunks of her hair sometimes.  Everything else about her seems to normal, except her advanced understanding of numbers.

I think I will have to ask the social worker who comes to work on Ty's behavior.  Unfortunately, she is on vacation for the next two weeks.  I don't know if she could help, she doesn't work with toddlers, usually just school age kids.

Tyler does Yoga at school now and loves it.  Do you think Yoga might help?  I know nothing about Yoga, is she too young?

Telyco

Hmmm...I think Mrs White has a good point in that even though her tantrums don't last hours where you would start to wonder if it is a clue to a larger issue, they do seem more severe than normal. Lots of kids bang heads and things like that so I'm sure there have been some techniques developed to deal with it - I bet your behavioralist will help!! I hope it gets better soon.

(And for strength in numbers...Leah is going to be a TOUGH toddler too)

jnk062602

I don't know anything about tantrums like that, bc even with dd's worse I can take her outside to re-direct or re-direct pretty easily with playing in water or something that she loves.  But I wanted to say she is definitely not to young for yoga.  I don't remember how old she is, but I am picturing her as over 2 right?  My friend has a daughter that is about 5 months older than dd and takes her to a mommy and me yoga class and we joined her once when dd was only like 15 months old.  Her daughter was 20 months, the other girl in class was 2, and the 2 boys were 2.5 and 3 yrs old.  DD did awful, just walking around and bringing people their shoes.  But all the other kids did really good, even my friend's daughter did some of the moves.  A big part is they watch each other do it.  So I think if you have Bri do it along with Ty when they are both in good moods, she should pick it up quickly.