To have gone to ds when he was upset? Dh thinks so....

[Tory79]

To the extent that he's not speaking to me!

So dh took ds (2.8) up for his bath and bed last night. Ds was overtired I think, and for whatever reason, bath time quickly descended in to a hysterical screaming fit on the part of ds, typical toddler issues of want to get in bath/dont want to get in bath etc etc but from downstairs I could ds doing those horrible chokey sobs, despite dhs best efforts to calm him. So I went upstairs, poked my head round the bathroom door and dh asked me to go away and let him handle it - I went back downstairs.

A few minutes later ds could be heard wailing for me at the top of the stairs, clearly no calmer and really wanting mummy. So I went back up, ave him a cuddle and stayed up there for about 5m until he was calmer, then I went back downstairs and dh finished putting him to bed. When he came down he was clearly annoyed and we spent the rest of the evening in silence. The same thing happened about 4 weeks ago as well.

So, I think I was not being unreasonable to have gone to ds, on the basis that Ds has no problem with dh putting him to bed, they normally have a whale of a time. It's not like we have a problem to fix iykwim. Ds was just overtired, and to be frank I'm better at calming him down than dh is - if I'd not gone up dh would probably have ended up getting cross and putting ds to bed still upset.
Or was I being unreasonable because dh wanted me to let him deal with it?

YANBU.

Let me qualify this. This is what I always did- every time.

Outcome- a school-aged child who cannot self-regulate and who you cannot win an argument with. A child who is in control a lot of the time. It's a scary place for me and her.

I do wonder if I should have not gone in all those times, she wanted me. At the same time If I had my time again I would probably have acted the same.

It sounds like some parents are prioritising training their children to do as mummy/daddy says rather than responding to their basic emotional needs.

Defiant children lack emotional maturity - understanding your own emotions and empathy are significant factors. Ignoring your child's basic emotions is not the way to help a child develop emotional maturity, particularly in boys.

I think you get a far better outcome for your teenage child if you brought them up ignoring tantrums

I disagree.

I think you get far better outcomes throughout childhood if you don't allow fear of tantrums to influence your decision making but at the same time are able to recognise when the crying is a result of emotional overload and respond with the support and comfort that enables them to learn to manage these emotions as they mature.

There is a growing ethos in schools to respond to all challenges as bad behaviour and punish swiftly and rigidly and I'm not surprised that this black and white approach is being advocated by a teacher. There are dozens of threads on MN prompted by the damage that approach causes and I've seen plenty of it in RL too.

Firm, clear boundaries are important for every child and they need to know that they are secure within them. However those boundaries also need to be managed by an adult who is prepared to consider and acknowledge the reason behind the behaviour and manage it appropriately to the individual circumstances.

Yes i can see your dh point, I guess you could have said, no ds daddy is putting you to bed, he will give you a cuddle and leave dh to put ds to bed.

Allsfar so you've known these thousands of children since being toddlers and saw how their parents interacted with them at that time, so are able to say that was the out come as teenagers?

Well, I see how their parents interact with them now, so it is often quite clear which end of the spectrum they are on, and the parents often tell me what has gone on in the past.

Would you say though, that would mainly be with the problematic cases? because you'd probably not have much call to hear about the upbringing of teenagers who aren't displaying behavioural issues would you.

I think you're posts are spot on Goldmandra.

'There is a growing ethos in schools to respond to all challenges as bad behaviour and punish swiftly and rigidly and I'm not surprised that this black and white approach is being advocated by a teacher. There are dozens of threads on MN prompted by the damage that approach causes and I've seen plenty of it in RL too.'

On what basis do you make that claim? As far as I know, teachers are encouraged to have 'high expectations' of all their pupils. That primarily means creating a good learning environment and expecting pupils to respond appropriately. Of course, it does also mean classroom rules and sanctions if these are broken. How would you run a classroom?

As a parent, I also think that we should have high expectations of our children. That does not mean that we need to respond identically to all incidents but it does mean teaching a child (by both our responses to them and our own behaviour) what is worth crying over and what is crying about nothing.

Resilience in a child or adult does not come out of the blue. Of course, a part of it is genetic but a part of it is formed by looking at how adults respond to situations and changing behaviour accordingly. If every meltdown is met by a big cuddle, regardless of the reason, then you will almost certainly create a needy and unhappy person. If a parent can wait for the meltdown to subside and then find something praiseworthy (even if only marginally so) to praise and give a child a big cuddle over, that child will associate being cuddled with good rather than demanding behaviour.

Of course the above is age and situation appropriate and there are no hard and fast rules. But a 2.8 year old is not a toddler. He can walk and talk and certainly has choices about how he responds to situations. These are not always conscious but will certainly be affected by the way his parents behave towards him.

On what basis do you make that claim?

Let me give you one example.

My DD1, with the agreement of the school, didn't attend RE lessons. After a year of not attending these lessons she was hoiked out of a maths lesson to be given a detention slip for not handing in her RE homework. She tried to explain to the teacher who gave her the detention slip that she didn't attend RE lessons, wasn't expected to complete the work and didn't even know who the teacher was. She was told that this was irrelevant and if she didn't attend the detention she would be further punished. The matter wasn't dealt with appropriately until I phoned the deputy head.

I have seen numerous threads on MN about similar situations and it seems to be becoming more and more common for schools to have virtually automated systems of punishment for transgressions and at no point in the process is anyone checking to see if the child is in need of support.

If the RE teacher thought my DD wasn't handing in homework, why had nobody had a conversation with her to work out why before doling out a punishment?

Larrygrylls, the difficulty is that what for you is "crying about nothing" is "crying about something" for a small child.

If a child aged 2.8 is sobbing about something they are upset. Of course to us it's totally trivial.

The way to build resilience is to allow expression of distress and comfort it. Children learn emotional regulation through experiencing intense emotion then having that contained by a more adult and experienced person. Slowly they internalise that experience and start to manage to do it themselves.

Look at adults with borderline personality disorder (or emotional unstable personality disorder to give it its more modern and less pejorative name). One of the prime causes is a childhood in which emotional experience and expression was shut down by caregivers. People with this disorder have never been able internalise a mature way to handle feelings.

I do think some people on here have really lost sight of the huge gulf between the maturity of a 2 year old and an adults view of the world.

Take the mentalisation test, which all 2 year olds will fail until they get some point closer to 3.5/4 yrs old. Take a doll and a toy car. Show the toddler and the dolly that you are hiding the car in place x. Then take the dolly out of the room, return to the room with your toddler and Re-hide the car in a new place. Bring dolly back in and ask your toddler where dolly will look for the car. Toddler will think dolly will look in the "new" hiding place - toddler is still incapable of mentalising, of realising that not everyone has an identical experience to him.

They simply are not able to be "manipulative" at this level of immaturity. To "play the DH up" in the OP's scenario, the toddler would have had to be way more sophisticated. More likely toddler was tired and overwhelmed, wanted his mummy, full stop.

If the child had been 5, it would be a totally different thing. But a 2.8 year old is VERY LITTLE.

Ps I couldn't disagree more with the notion that comforting during/following a meltdown creates a "needy and unhappy" person.

Children who are comforted are children whose needs are being met. They are less likely to be "needy".

What's wrong with having needs anyway? But that's a whole other debate....

I couldn't disagree more with the notion that comforting during/following a meltdown creates a "needy and unhappy" person.

Ditto

All the research I am aware of concludes the opposite. Children learn to manage their emotions via scaffolding. They need someone to teach them and then support them as they learn to do it themselves.

Children whose emotional needs are ignored or repressed are the ones who struggle in later life.

Gold and Bumps,

The concept of not meeting a child's needs is, by definition, deleterious to the child. That is what a need is. This discussion is about what constitutes a need. Ditto, re scaffolding; I am not saying that a toddler should be expected to behave like an adult. That would be ridiculous and expectations should be linked to age. I totally agree re scaffolding but, to me, at 2.8, leaving a child (up to a point) with one caring loving parent IS scaffolding. There is no abandonment or telling them to behave. There is merely a lack of getting the parent they choose.

I have never been a believer in allowing a child to 'cry it out' or deny any form of comfort to a clearly distraught child. However, where I disagree, is whether all meltdowns constitute genuine need. I have seen 2-3 year olds have a surreptitious look around, during an apparent meltdown, and suddenly turn off the tears if they realise no-one is paying attention. I am not talking about abnormally adjusted, emotionally abused children who are repressing their genuine needs. I am talking about well adjusted children 'deliberately' trying to obtain a particular outcome (such as an ice cream or fruit juice) by using a tactic that they have found to work.

We can debate the semantics here in the sense of what does 'tactic' or 'manipulative' mean when applied to a very small child. I am using them in their original meanings without any moral weight applied to them.

Scaffolding is an active process. Simply being with someone isn't scaffolding unless the child already has skills they can use without active guidance. It would be appropriate to leave the child with someone else who was scaffolding him but, despite his best efforts, the father wasn't doing that.

The OP has clearly identified that,on this occasion, the distress was real, not something that could be turned on and off for effect. I think we have to take her word for that as she is clear that she does recognise the difference between a meltdown when her child has lost control and a tantrum targeted at getting something he wants.

The child was in an escalating situation he couldn't manage alone. He needed help and his father wasn't able to provide it.

There is merely a lack of getting the parent they choose.

It sounds more like the child was aware that his emotions were beyond that which he could handle without support and he was actively seeking the scaffolding he needed from the person he knew from experience could help him. That is the first of the many strategies he needs to learn to manage his own emotions.

She recognised his need and responded appropriately. By doing this she is going to enable him to grow up managing his emotions appropriately and certainly will not create a needy and unhappy person.

Once he had received the support he needed to regain control of his emotions he was perfectly happy for his father to continue caring for him. That doesn't fit in any way with the scenario of a child demanding to choose who cares for him and screaming to get his own way.

Thank you for that last post gold. In my sensitive pregnant state that has made me well up a little

Tory,

Although in theory, I am not sure you did the right thing, I certainly would not criticise you for doing it.

I hated not being able to comfort my little child during his 'Daddy phase' when he only wanted me and was crying out for me. My wife hated it when I did, though. So, sometimes I did and sometimes I didn't. I had no consistent approach at all (maybe the worst of all worlds).

In reality, we are all better theoretical than actual parents and, ultimately, as long as children know they are loved, they tend to get there in the end!

Thank you for that last post gold. In my sensitive pregnant state that has made me well up a little

Oops!