Totally irrational tantrums

[ensure]

How do you deal with them? DD is 2 and a half and has never really had any tantrums before... until now.

Suddenly she is getting into hysterical tantrum-y fits about her sleeves not being the same length.
One day I casually commented 'oh we forgot to roll your left sleeve down after washing your hands, let's make them the same length again', and she seems to be thinking about it all the time now for some reason.
If she's tired, she gets really stressed about it and ends up in such a state, I don't know what to do! It's totally out of character for her to be honest.

Anyone been through anything similar? Should I be ignoring it when she mentions it or trying to explain they are actually perfectly alright? I can't fix her sleeves as she keeps asking me to, because there's nothing wrong with them, and I can't let her go about with no sleeves; it is far too cold!

Totally normal ime.
You can try to reason with them...with my DD1 you can to an extent but when my DS was a toddler you couldn't at all.
I find that the best thing to do is ignore, ignore, ignore.

Whole point of tantrums is their very irrationality!

Truffle is right. And try and keep a straight face when confronting the sheer loopi ness of it all...:

Glad you both said that it's normal! I didn't know whether to laugh or cry yesterday trying to tackle the behaviour!

DD1 was like that at 2!

I usually cheerfully said something along the lines of 'oh it doesn't matter!' and ignored any wailing that followed.

DS went through a phase of 'irrational requests' and a similar method worked.

It is normal, but it may well be fixable - Best of luck!