To put toddler outside so I can calm down

[brokendownagain26]

My 2 yo has been screaming at me all morning resulting in me being late, very flustered and stressed. I stayed patient until I didn’t and lost it, put him outside so I couldn’t hear the screams. But I’m just so fucked off

Hard, and harder if you are you on your own with the two toddlers through all of this? No DP/DH to deal with the kids while you're in the shower? Or are we in "useless and doesn't pull their weight DP/DH" territory.

While I’m trying to get dressed to go to work and the toddler is going to nursery and the four year old to school? I have to parent in the real world here sorry. And even if I didn’t work and the older one wasn’t at school I’d still need to get dressed to go to the park in a buggy that is gathering dust in the back of my car!

I’m not sure anyone’s reading my answers though so it’s probably a good idea to just let the thread die at this point?

Don't be upset by some of the judgemental posts .... it seems there are some perfect parents around but I have never met one!!

You did your best under difficult circumstances. I am glad things have settled now.

I do not think it is such an awful lesson for a child to learn that you can only push people so far... it is part of living in the real world.

Yes, you mentioned you'd just got out of the shower, and I said, you could quickly dry off and throw on a gown so you can go out for a breather and regulate yourself. That only takes a minute.

Leaving him in the environment where he already is keeps it about you going out to get a breather, not about him having something done to him. If you step out, he doesn't have to be involved in your emotional reaction in any way whatsoever.

The act of picking him up, putting him outside and closing the door so he can't come back in is quite punitive and harsh for a child. Being taken and shut outside could be quite a scary and isolating experience. The house is his safe place, he's already there. It's you who is having the reaction to his normal toddler behaviour and needs to calm down.

As for the unsupervised thing, you said it was a glass patio door you can see through both ways. You shouldn't be shutting him out either if he's unsupervised.

Thanks. I’m not upset, just not sure some people understand we’re not all stay at home mums who have been showered and dressed before the kids wake up and are cheerfully able to skip out any minute!

Besides we’ve had plenty of tantrums in buggies and many more at the park …

@wiredandtired it only takes a minute when you’re calm yourself. That’s the thing I don’t think you and others are getting tbh. After nearly three hours of it by that point my nerves were absolutely frazzled, I couldn’t see a shoe that was right in front of me, I was rushing round in manic circles trying to find this thing he wanted, I was completely, utterly wrung out and I was getting to a point where I was either going to have to stop the screaming NOW or blow. So I went with the former. Ideal? No, but the ideal on here is one that just isn’t realistic so I have to work with what I have.

If you're so sure you did the right thing, I'm not sure why you started the thread?

No one is judging you, we've all made bad parenting decisions at one time or another.

We all parent in the real world and have similar challenges around getting ready.

But most people wouldn't recommend shutting a child in the garden as a way to cope, for reasons that have been pretty well outlined in the thread.

Look, I get it.

It's more the fact you are saying you would do the same thing again as long as you calmly explained it to your child. I wouldn't say that's a good plan.

@wiredandtired i wasn’t at the time. I’ve reflected since and I think I did, although I do think I could have handled it more calmly and I think I could have done with doing some stuff differently. I started the thread when still feeling very panicked and wound up, I’m not so much now.

I don't understand you saying it's not ideal, and then in the next breath saying you think it was basically the right thing to do but just needs some tweaking.

I disagree that it's ever the right thing to shut a 2 year old out in the garden.

you tried to be the nice patient mum for too long.You need to draw the boundary before you get to the place where you cant cope any more.Go out into the garden yourself for 5 minutes and let them scream the house down!
you really should not shut your child out of the house.He stopped screaming not because he calmed down, but because he was shocked and scared and his basic survival instincts made himo pipe down.

The thing is, the accepted ‘right thing’ to do according to you and others was for me to go into the garden and I’m going to ask very genuinely and without wanting to sound prickly or argumentative, I’m genuinely asking - why?

Especially given he was more upset yesterday when I went outside than today when I put him outside.

I am honestly genuinely not seeing what the problem is.

As a mum of a 2.5 year old ( he is the youngest of 4), I can completely empathise. Sometimes you do just need a minute to compose yourself. It can be massively overwhelming and a huge sensory overload when they’re screaming. If he was safe and you could still see him then that’s better than the alternative of you losing your shit. Obviously in an ideal world it wouldn’t get that far but I’m yet to meet a perfect parent.
If this is something he does often, it may be worth speaking to your GP, there could be an underlying cause.

I answered that in my previous post in quite a lot of detail.

The act of picking him up, putting him outside and closing the door so he can't come back in is quite punitive and harsh for a child. Being taken and shut outside could be quite a scary and isolating experience

But actually he was more frightened and distressed when I did go outside and left him in the house then when I put him outside.

Perhaps we are all projecting a bit.

So if the problem is ‘he will be scared’ but in fact he was not scared and was actually more calm and more content than he’d been all morning, maybe there isn’t a problem at all.

My mum put me out the back in the 80s. I don't think it did me any harm but I wouldn't do it to my own kids.

You sound to have made your mind up anyway.

My thoughts are that if you are the one having the reaction, then you should be the one to remove yourself from the situation and your child shouldn't be brought into it.

I would say the same if you were both out in the garden, that you should go into the house rather than take him and shut him in the house.

The act of putting a toddler somewhere and shutting a door on them is in my opinion quite a harsh and punitive thing to do.

@wiredandtired so you would cause more upset just so that it was ‘fair’? What’s puzzling me is that the two year old isn’t going to see it like that.

I hadn’t made my mind up at the start of the thread; I do think now on balance it was probably the best thing I could have done at the time, although of course ideally things wouldn’t get to that point they just do. There is only so much screaming I can take and I do think something needed doing to sort of break that cycle.

White noise and noise cancelling headphones

for a start, in one scenario he's still safe in his house, and mummy goes outside for a while/ or in the loo/ in the bathroom/ in the loft whatever.

in the other scenario, he's being kicked out of his own home to be sent in the garden.

I am not accusing you of anything horrible, but the 2 things are not the same at all, especially not from his point of view.

He lives there, the house should be safe enough for him to be unsupervised anyway, parents sleep, go to the loo, are distracted cooking. Home must be safe by definition.

also he's 2

It's normal you want a breather, but you don't actually punish him for having a meltdown. That would be an over-reaction and kicking him out of the house is just that.

In one scenario he’s in the house crying his eyes out; in the other he’s happy playing in the garden.

Just depends on the language you use, doesn’t it? I mean, he was safe in the house all morning but screaming his head off, then safe in the garden but happy!

It wasn’t intended to punish, it was intended stop me punishing by blowing my top.

By saying you think putting your toddler in the garden was the right thing to do, you are suggesting you would act the same way in the future. We can empathise with you, parenting is hard and everyone makes bad parenting decisions, but this was a bad parenting decision. If your DC go into school or nursery and tell a teacher that this happened they have a duty to report this to SS. I would suggest reaching out to early help as some strategies and advice could really help you and your DC.

I think you're best leaving this thread OP. You did absolutely nothing wrong and I hope mornings get easier (they're complete demons at 2 years old but it does get better, I promise!).