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Attachment Parenting
luvmybaby28
member
do you have an ap way of handling tantrums?
luvmybaby28
member
my lo is starting to have the WORST tantrums, especially around the house when he cannot pull chairs across the room or open the toilet seat - due to the chair possibly falling on him and the seat falling on his hands. We have babyproofed the house a ton, but there are still things like this, I try to close the door and he tries to open it and has another tantrum. Redirection is no longer working and I want to handle it the best way possible, I often have nursed him to calm him down, does not feel right to let him cry, but I don't know if this reinforces the behavior.
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Re: do you have an ap way of handling tantrums?
Once you close the door so he cannot access the toilet or chairs he wants to push, look away, walk into another room, busy yourself with something else (even if you're just pretending). When he realizes he doesn't have an audience he'll calm down and relax. At that point you can nurse. Right now it seems like you're feeding into his behavior by nursing him when he's tantruming.
EDIT to add... My DD throws tantrums just like your DS but she'll stop with in a few minutes if I don't attend to her behavior. Once she's calm I invite her to play with what ever I'm doing or we go find something fun for us to do together.
When they're tantruming they are unable to process information so use as little words as possible.
I agree with pp to walk away from the behaviour.
Sometimes with my LO I find that if I get down to her level and calmly say, "listen to me" that she'll stop tantruming long enough for me to say, "you can't go in the bathroom because x y z. So let's go and..." or whatever needs to be said.
She's often (although not always) accepting of a calm explanation.
If she still continues to fuss I just say, "Oh well you can stay there, but I'm going to..." and walk away.
i do sometimes be more comforting and nurturing if there's an underlying issue like illness or fever.
Elizabeth 5yrs old Jane 3yrs old
By nursing him when he has a tantrum, you are rewarding him for having bad behavior. It will take a little bit of crying to turn this around and that's ok. (I'm rather AP, anti-CIO, and all the rest, but not all crying is the same.) When he wants to do something you won't let him, redirect to something SIMILAR, but that you will let him do. (BTW, they learn very quickly not to close the seat lid on their fingers, it's not going to permanently damage him. Ditto on the chair, in the case of most chairs.) But in both of these cases you can help him do the things he wants to do so he gains the skills/coordination to do them himself. And when he gets to do something similar to what he wants, but in a safe way, you're far less likely to have a meltdown.
If a meltdown does ensue, you have to remain calm. It will not hurt him to cry because he is not getting his way. Yes, it's a stress, but some stress is normal AND GOOD for a person, and it's part of the process of learning self-control and following directions (and creativity, as he tries to get away with what you will let him get away with
). Stay calm, do NOT give him any positive attention (and nursing may be the worst thing you can do for a "I'm mad I can't have my way" tantrum), talk to him about understanding his frustration but the need to communicate it nicely and clearly, and talk to him about other options he has (this is the redirection part), and help him make the choice to do the right thing. If he really, really, really doesn't want to do anything but the thing he isn't allowed to do, make sure that he really can't do it (even if you have to hold the chair in place), and he'll cry and get upset, but he will see that the rules are consistent.
Maybe people will think i am horrible for this one but i would let the chair fall, I have tried with multiple things to redirect my daughter her thing was standing on the chairs, i would tell her over and over and over again "Sit on the chair" or "be careful you might get hurt" but when she fell over I comforted her and SHE NEVER DID IT AGAIN!
She just learned the potty, i would stand in the bathroom and watch her lift the seat and close it I would get annoyed and want to leave but when I let her do it, she stopped being so obsessed with doing it all the time, My daughter really learns far better from "Natural Consequences" I however don't let her get seriously injured but if its a busted lip or a scratched knee so be it she has learned so much more from natural consequences than from me hovering telling her what she can and can't do she is like "OK MOM let me FIGURE it out" so i backed off and she has great physical limits!
hope this helps:
https://www.naturalchild.org/naomi_aldort/tame.html
https://www.askdrsears.com/topics/parenting/discipline-behavior
Little Rose is 2 1/2.
But then again, I'm "that mom" who let her 17-month old crawl up the stairs of a playset on the playground when DD's legs were too short for her to walk up said steps alone. I casually stood at the bottom "just in case." But since she was determined to go down the slide, I figured that she'd work it out. Another mom walked up the stairs step-by-step behind her 2-year old and spotted him very closely the entire time. She even scrambled back down the steps to be at the bottom of the slide when he got to the end.
In general I think that tantrums are the symptom not the actual "problem," so how I deal with the "problem" varies based upon what's going on. So how I'd react depends on the situation. Do you have other examples of tantrum situations that are concerning to you?