Some toddlers are just calmer than others?

[Leahjx]

I just seen a tik tok and I always see them where its like "what i do to help tantrums" etc and its just stuff like saying basic statements etc

I used to look and think whats am I doing wrong. Why wouldn't this work with my now 3yo who has been prone to tantrums and meltdowns since he became a toddler. Ones that were so hard to work through and now his speech is getting better (he's 3.5) its getting slightly easier. But if he's tired / little bit hungry its a major one and I just go through them with him I cant stop them in the tracks

Am I silly to think some kids are just calmer than others? I feel like i see so many laidback toddlers but I know I'm not alone. Some are just more emotional and my son had a speech delay which must've frustrated him more

But when I see videos saying they tell their toddlers "squeak squeak mouses quiet voices on" - most likely would not work when my toddler is flipping out

Absolutely 1000% and unless you’ve had a difficult one you’ve absolutely no idea.

my first was impossible! She was a ball of rage who would shake, lash out, get herself so worked up she would vomit. She was a rabid animal and there was honestly no parenting trick or tactic that made any difference. You had to let her burn out which could take an hour or longer, and I mean of pure screaming meltdowns, then she would collapse exhausted.

my current 2 yo, if I point my finger at him, it’s enough to stop him in his tracks, he cries for about 2 seconds, then wants a cuddle and gets on with his day. If I just had him, I would think kids were easy.

Yes! All staff at the maternity told me DS2 was such a serene calm baby. He's 12 and still is.

Mine didn’t have temper tantrums. Literally not one.

o can assure you not wasn’t some kind of magic parenting I processed - I was muddling along like everyone else!

Agree mostly it’s who they are.

Agree and I know it's not the exact same but similar situation with dog/puppies.

Video: "how I taught my 14 week old to heel"

[30 second clip of young puppy heeling]

poster then proceeds to act and imply that puppy does this all the time now with this magic thing she did / her excellent training skills.

When in reality, it was 30 second clip, the puppy does NOT walk like that for hours, (especially when a distraction comes the other way) and it was a tiny snapshot when it happened to work not representative of all the time every day.

That's just one example. But I feel these stupid videos robbed me of my time with my puppy when she was small because I spent the whole time worrying and stressing if I was a bad owner because my dog couldn't unload the dishwasher and make the sodding tea by six months.

rant over. Sorry I had to use a dog as comparison but I don't have children. The damage is the same kind though.

my sister, who also had a puppy the same time as me didn't have trouble with this because she has three children and knows these TikTok parents are full of shit 😂 (and by extension TikTok dog owners)

Agree. People want to use every explanation in the book to think or say otherwise.

Yup, they have different personalities in my experience.

The brutal toddler years of DS1 were finally explained some years later when he had his autism diagnosis. From 10m he'd look at you, scream and smash his head on the floor when told "no". I'm not quite sure when the seamless transition from toddler to teenager took place. As he's become articulate, some things now make sense, such as parks that he viserally hated turning out to be because he mixed park name A with features of park B, so always felt disappointed that we were at the "wrong" park.

DS2 (thank goodness) was a much happier soul. But energetic. So energetic. One of my parkrun course bests still stands from those days as I had to be ready to sprint at any oppportunity. Possibly climbing a tree to guide him down.

I'd often be faced with a choice of deal with the screamer or the bolter. I tended to leave the screamer to it and trust that he was pretty unappealling to any passing opportunist abductors (and had a fine set of teeth he was willing to use in self-defense) and chase the bolter as he was more likely to get himself into danger. It was a safe bet that the screamer would still be in the same spot pummeling himself towards Australia when I returned.

No amount of chirruping about little mouse voices would have dealt with them. DS1 would likely just scream to stop the syruppy wittering anyway, and DS2 would have been out of earshot in seconds. Frankly I wouldn't blame them for that

It’s a mixture of nature and nurture ime.

In other news, bears shit in the woods.

Definitely. My daughter is 2 and 9 months. She doesn’t tantrum much at all. She’s definitely sassy and knows her own mind, but thankfully major tantrums are not often at all.

Last week she actually stamped her foot because I said no to a second ice cream. It was hard not to laugh to be honest!! I definitely think I’ve been lucky.

YANBU.
Of course they are.
dcs 1 + 2 were chalk and cheese.

dc1 - king of the tantrums, from about 14months through until about 7 yrs old.
dc2 - just never really bothered. Don't remember a single one.

OTOH
dc1 - would eat anything, and plenty of it
dc2 - fussy as a fuss pot in food refusing land.

When you have a child that is a "good......" (insert eater, sleeper, talker, etc etc) it is pretty natural and normal to congratulate yourself on your great parenting. I suspect we've all been there. Then either dc2 comes along and is the complete opposite, or they just head into the next 'phase' and bite another child at Nursery or something, and you realise that - whereas the way you deal with some things can sometimes help - ultimately, you have the baby / toddler you have and much comes from within them.