What do you do when your 3 year old turns into the girl off the exorcist?

[hophophippidtyhop]

DD, just turned three, has started having really bad tantrums in the last couple of months, and my usual way of dealing with bad behaviour just isn't working. She can completely lose it over something trivial and will not stop for a good half hour or more. She screams, shouts, pulls at my clothes, slaps out/grabs at me and generally loses the plot. I usually ignore her/walk away, alongside saying, "do not pull my clothes" etc, but when I walk away from her to ignore her, she just follows and limpets onto my leg! She screams,"leave me alone, mummy", then when I walk away, she screams for me to stay!
She pulled one of these screaming numbers in town today - initially because the shop assistant took the hanger out of a t shirt we were buying,cue running around shop, which I told her " do not run away from me, i cannot leave your sister to chase after you", and telling her to stay with me. I know that this is all standard for her age, but my usual tactic of ignoring her isn't working, I cannot always wait 40 minutes for her to finish and calm down, nor see why I should put up with that behaviour from a 3 year old!
How do you deal with this kind thing, I'm consistent in my approach with her, but it doesn't work. After a screaming session, I always sit calmly with her and talk about it, asking her why she was upset, how it makes me upset when she's like it, etc. She always says sorry and then repeats again in a few days! Any advice or different techniques on how to deal with it much appreciated!

I really sympathise. Both of my DSs did this at a similar age. For what it's worth, it does seem to be a stage that doesn't last, but I bet it doesn't feel that way.

I used to (temporarily) plan shopping trips around it, doing smaller shops rather than bigger ones, or spending shorter periods in shops, in case he kicked off. I also used to have the backpack ready to force him into so that at least I could get the smaller one back to the car. Worse case, I'd give a fireman's lift and brass it out among the shoppers.

At home, he behaved much as your DD. I used to keep sitting him on his bed, gently but firmly, without talking or making eye contact, until the temper batteries ran down a bit, then leave him on the bed while I waited outside the door for two or three minutes, before coming back to talk about it and 'make up'.

I think now that it's perhaps either hormonal or developmental. Sometimes DS appeared as baffled by his own behaviour as I was, as if his conscious mind wasn't really doing it. I may be inferring too much though.

Stick with it, and with your consistency, it sounds like you're doing really well: good luck!

I think that you're doing the right thing. I used to ignore my dc when they did this. I also made sure that I didn't have eye contact with them, even turning my back on them so that they knew that I couldn't see them. I would of course be aware what they were doing and where they were but it seemed to work.
It is just a stage and she will grow out of it but at the time it does feel like forever...

Completely relate. Posted similar thread over the last few days. I probably take the bait more than you though, ie when she plays up I get quite angry and very rarely ignore her because she makes me so cross. Mine will also scream for me to leave her alone when i'm not doing anything and I sometimes worry what the neighbours might think.

God, I really do hope it's a phase. If it is it's a bloody long one. To be fair she's been on and off like this for over a year now.

I know how awful it can feel when it happens in public though. You feel like everyone's judging you and somehow thinking it's your fault. Truth is you're probably judging yourself and everyone else just feels sorry for you and may have been there themselves.

I wish I could offer you some advice rather than a rant but you're probably dealing with it better than I am.

Chin up. :)

Thanks for replying, it's so good to know I'm not the only one! MissNutty, I don't always do a good job of ignoring it, it is so hard when she is quite literally right in my face.It is also hard to leave her in a room/ on the bottom of the stairs as she follows when i leave - I have to rush out the room and sometimes almost push her back in as I close the door!
The incident in town yesterday was not helped by a nosey old biddy who after staring for a couple of minutes, declared that "children only cry like that when they are desperately unhappy and sad" After replying it was because of a coathanger and to butt out, she then proceeded to stare at me for a good five minutes! Luckily I was quick for once and said," I can sell you tickets next time!"
Joy. Next time I will try the no eye contact thing too.

(formally MissNuttyNutkins)

Reading that has made me so angry.

I can't believe people can be so ignorent and rude. How dare someone judge you from clearly such a distressing situation, which i'm sure you were trying your best to defuse.

I had something similarish at toddler group. She started quite late and hadn't been there that long. One day I was chatting to another mum(heaven forbid) and this other mum comes marching over to me and says "your child has just snatched a toy from MY childs hand, it's not really on is it!!" At first I was appoligetic, but the more I thought about it, the more angry I got. I heard her muttering something about it to one of the other mums later about how her daughter was 'trained'not to do that sort of thing. She was 2!!! If I saw it I would have gone and told her it was wrong and told her to give it her back obviously. It was just her tone.

I know that's a slightly different situation but when I think about it it makes my blood boil all over again.

Smack the little beggars when they play up. Smack smack smackitty-smack! Soon solves the problem

I was about to post about my three and a quarter year old DD.She is having up to five horrendous tantrums a day.Sometimes we have a week or so tantrum free and then they start again.Dh is covered in scratch marks and bites and today I actually slapped her leg (I have never ever smacked ) to try and show her that it really hurts after she had thrown a chair across the room,tried to toss her lunch onto the floor and then spent twenty minutes hitting and scratching me.I had already tried putting two toys in the charity shop bag and one into the bin,sanctions which used to work fairly well. Then I just sat down and cried.Her older sister was tricky at three but looking back nothing on this.She is worse when tired/hungry but something seemingly small can set her off,and she even scratches her own legs enough to leave marks.I am at my wits end.If I ignore her she just screams and screams.If I go in she sends me out,if I go out she wants me back in,if I sit down next to her she shouts at me to stand up etc etc.It makes the whole family miserable,and yet the rest of the time she is lovely,kind,sensitive,very articuate and clever,sweet and funny,and then....this beast comes out!I will be watching this thread eagerly for any tips as today has been my worst parenting day ever and I feel terrible.

littlemissmerlot, yes, the last thing I needed was some old biddy like that. It helped suck the last bit of strength I had out of me!
hellymelly, 5 a day, wow, I thought one a day was bad enough, my dd's tantrums are very similar behaviour to yours. Nothing works does it? I've resigned myself to thinking that if I ignore it at least she's getting no attention for it and it goes some way to keeping me calmer, but it is so hard to not react. No one believes you though when they are so lovely with everyone else!

Strangely we've had a few days where she has had less sleep than she needs,and yet she has hardly tantrummed at all-we have praised her madly for turning it around,(when she managed to change tack) .We have a tick chart and she has chosen a toy that she'll get at the end of it,and she has been really lovely-time will tell whether this is the beginning of a change or just a good few days!I think me slapping her leg shocked her as much as it did me,and I'm not in any way advocating that as a tactic as I feel I made a huge mistake because I was at the end of my tether,but I talked to her about it and she seemed to realise how upset we all are about the hitting/shouting/lying on floor kicking legs etc.She hates to see me cry and I cried then so it did seem to sink in that she needs to try and deal with frustration in a better way. Fingers crossed for you and me both!

Oh no. DD is 2.6 and is already like this..... Is it going to last forever?

Tonight I really lost it and dragged her upstairs put her nappy on her and threw her in bed. She sounds like hellymelly DD, doesn't know what she wants and just screams about it.

Hi, my dd is nearly 4 and defiantley went through this stage prior to being 3 and occasionally still has really bad tantrums. Ignoring it never worked for me as i realised that the by having a tantrum was her way of getting my attention and the more I ignored it the worse she was. What I did (and it definatley worked for us) was as soon as I saw her getting worked up I tried to diffuse the situation by getting her to concentrate on something else rather than what was getting her upset. I also started to use the naughty step, which we still do and this also works. Another thing we use is if she does something naughty I get her to tell me what she has done, i.e. if she lashes out at me I then get to her level once she has calmed down etc and say that mummy is upset and can you tell me why? and why is hitting bad, how does it make people feel and by her understanding what she has done wrong has really helped with her behaviour. xxxx

Emmywoo I will try that.She does get embarrassed and upset when she sees that she has bitten Daddy etc,but maybe I do need to get her to talk about it each time to hammer the point home.I did once film her,just to see it with a bit of distance,and she looked so small and so beyond herself it was painful.It did help me deal with it for a bit-maybe I need to watch it again.It somehow put it in perspective for me as when she is having a full blown monster tantrum it is so stressful and overwhelming but seeing it on film did make it easier to see how little she is.

Emmywoo, I have tried to change the subject as such when she is going into meltdown, but once she is on the path to a tantrum, you just cannot get through to her,she will not listen. Naughty step, I have done this in the past for other things, but she will not stay there once she's in a tantrum. I do talk to her afterwards about what she's done and how it makes everyone feel, which she understands, but it's all forgotten by the next time.
Last night she started tantruming, and as I was in the kitchen, I put her out in the hallway very quickly and shut the door - she can't open the kitchen door, and she actually calmed down alot quicker - I'm wondering if because I did that when she wasn't far in she stopped quicker. I'm sure she'll give me the chance to see if it works again soon! I also tried to make nottoo much of talking about it afterwards, I read something somewhere on mumsnet about that giving them attention to what they've done too, I think with my dd that that may be the case. She already knows it's wrong but doesn't change her behaviour. I'll try anything really!

Hi, I know (as probably you do with your lovely kids) what starts my dd off to full tantrum, I know what when she is getting tired that if I was to say bed now she would have a full meltdown so I start warning her 20 mins before hand for everything now, bedtime, lunchtime, when we have to leave somewhere etc. The hallway works well as well, unfortunately we dont have one as I would probably use it if we did. Another thing that we ahve is a start chart. Everyweek we change the subjects and have ones at the moment which are: eating all dinner, brushing teeth, saying please and thank you, going to bed one time and No Tantrums. She chooses a treat at the start of the week and if she gets lots of starts she then gets the treat. xx