WE NEED HELP WITH OUR 16 mo OLD!

morethanready · October 2011

Ok. He is an overall good toddler, but he has MULTIPLE tantrums a day. They are VERY random. He could be eating, playing with a toy, just sitting on the floor, whatever, he will just start screaming and swinging his arms. Apparently last week, he threw his shoe at his teacher's face. (They just gave me details today). I understand they get frustrated but his tantrums have no pattern. Dealing with them is the issue. I don't see the point of ignoring him b/c if he's trying to tell us something, that will just make it worse. I encourage him to use his words and speak but... What should we do? Baby #2 will be here in 3 wks and the nanny starts in Jan so I want to atleast find a way to deal with this.

ebearwife · October 2011

Well, it doesn't sound as if there is anything really out of the ordinary here. 16 months old is a hard age for the kids bc they know what they want they don't know how to get it. And I have a boy and a girl, the girl is older. Isaac is way more physical than P ever was. He's just more touchy feely, pulls hair, grabs, etc. You will not get a coherent message out of a tantrum so I guess you just need to set him somewhere safe until he gets it out then try to help him. If he throws something, take it away. When the baby gets here, you will probably still have this problem or worse, but I think its probably a phase and adjustment. You won't have a choice but to ignore tantrums when you are nursing the baby. Just reinforce the positive behavior and ignore or punish the bad. Help him with his words by repeating what you think he wants a lot. Good luck and congratulations on your new baby!

californiafrog7905 · October 2011

What stress for you, and I'm sure at 37 weeks pregnant you could use less, not more!! Ditto what PPs said; it is a tough age for communicating wants and needs, and that only exacerbates the tantrums. Who knows what starts them; your son I'm sure does know but can't say! Not sure how much he's talking but I know with DD we taught her baby sign language early on and I'm a 100% believer that it helped her curb tantrums significantly. 16 months isn't too late to start, either, if you're interested; lots of YouTube videos to help, too.

Not sure how to help you pinpoint the cause besides trying to keep a brief daily journal of his activities/sleeping/eating habits, things like that so you can see if there is a pattern or typical precursor to a tantrum. No idea if his teachers will do that but most daycares I know have somewhat of a routine so maybe they could help after all. HTH; GL and I hope they ease up soon! (Any chance they're related to your expanding family somehow? He may not be able to tell you he knows something big is up but I bet he's very much aware his life is about to be turned upside down...)

lindzed · October 2011

It really will get better. Its is a tough age. I found ignoring the tantrum to work the best, but I did try to encourage Adam to show me what he wanted. Sometimes it worked sometimes it didn't. I will say at first I tried to reason with him or even tried time out and both of those made it much worse. You don't want to feed it with attention (good or bad), but you do want to help figure out what they need. Honestly, at 16 months I think its more of a stage that they will grow out of as they get better with communicating. Adam is autistic so the language part is still not really there for us, but he does communicate (point, take my hand and show me, hand me an empty cup) and that has helped a ton with the tantrums. Just wanted to point out you can encourage communication even if he isn't totally talking yet.

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