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Parenting
How would you handle a 2 am temper tantrum?
DD is 33 mos and about a month ago started this habit of throwing a screaming temper tantrum at least once a night about 5 out of 7 nights a week. It's not nightmares or fears or anything like that, it's that she wakes up either to pee or just a normal wake from a sleep cycle and just starts screaming over something random. Examples - she needs her hair out of her face, she needs a different sippy of water, she needs me to cover her back up, she needs a book, or my personal favorite - "It bothers me to be asleep." We try to anticipate the needs before bed and have practiced her re-covering herself, I pull her hair back before bed, she has books, etc. I would let her scream / cry it out except that she shares a room with her twin brother and it clearly bothers him. Sometimes he wakes, and other times the poor kid is sleeping holding his hands over his ears. It annoys the crap out of me from across the hall, and I cannot imagine having to be in the same room as her. And, if we ignore her, she comes into the hall and screams, thus waking the baby too.
The last few nights I have scooped her up and brought her to the basement, put her in the guest room, and closed the door. She screams and yells for 5 minutes or so and then says she's all done. I open the door and she goes back to bed and doesn't cry anymore. I don't know if it works because she's gotten her frustration out, or because it scares her to be in that dark room alone. My guess is a little of both.
I'm looking for a better solution or ideas to get it to stop, though. We have a tiny little house and I get precious little sleep as it is. Getting up to take her to pee is one thing, but these temper tantrums have got to end!
Jenni ~~Alex & Avery ~~ 6/13/06~~Adam ~~3/26/08
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Re: How would you handle a 2 am temper tantrum?
Just curioius...is it possible to move her room to the guest room?
H went through this but so far our only solution has been to let her come to our room : ( which she does every night.
Dh and I went through this with DD and it is not fun so I feel your pain!
Let her CIO in her room and shut the door. I think by taking her out of her room you are giving her what she wants, not to be in bed. Make her stay in bed or at least in her room. If she likes to sleep with the door open tell her that if she is not quiet you will have to shut the door for the rest of the night.
We also started a TTHN chart and reward system and she is doing really well. It took about a week for the full on tantrums to stop and another week or so to get her to stay in bed. She would get up and we would CALMLY walk her back to bed it took less and less time for her to settle. Now she is really proud to earn her sticker and put it on the chart. Last night she was resisting bedtime and I told her that she was about to loose her sticker and she stopped and that was it for the night.
I know it feels really overwhelming and being woken up makes it feel worse. Just remember to stay calm and firm.
Good luck.
A straight answer? Not well! But we did go through this w/DD at that age. We would respond to what she was asking for if it was reasonable (more water, bathroom, rub her back) but drew the line at "awake time" things like reading another book--that was what always threw her into high gear. We'd usually eventually just have to let her scream it out. She never cried more than like 3 minutes before konking back out. She'd almost always wake up younger DD, though, which sucked, but we'd just have to get her to go back, too. No matter where we took DD1, she'd still wake DD2 up. Our house is small and DD is L-O-U-D. So I feel your pain there. Good luck--this too shall pass!