In need of new ideas please, nothing seems to be working at the moment

[Iamamesswhy]

DD is 2.5 years old and at the moment she is all over the place. She will screem if she doesn't get what she wants, she will stamp her foot on the floor and will turn around if she does not want to listen.

I know this is a very normal behaviour for a two years old that is trying to make her opinion clear to us but I really need new ideas to try to explain her that that behaviour is unacceptable. I do not like to use the naughty step as I think it is very cruel to let her cry in that way (I do respect if other parents use it and works for them) so any other ideas would be very nice.

I have tried to show her that it is not nice by doing the same to her and even though she does not like it and let me know when I ask her she keeps doing it. I have also tried to explain her that if she talks in that way I would ignore her but she screems even more and does not seem to work.

At the moment I am running out iof ideas so any advice would be much apreciated.

Thanks in advance

How about the naughty step but with you sitting beside her? Still the concept of 'time out' and getting her to calm down but without leaving her to cry. You sit next to her but do not give her attention, say something like 'We are going to sit here until you are ready to play nicely / listen to mummy'.

My DD is the same age. Mostly lovely, hilarious and affectionate, but lots of moments as you describe too. Like you, I don't want to do naughty step or similar. What I do at the moment is pick my battles carefully, prevent if possible, listen to her demands and decide if they're reasonable! If she shouts at me or whines, I say that I don't understand that voice and she needs to speak properly to me. She now often starts off shouting and then starts again without being asked, modifying how she asks me.

I do put her outside the room briefly if she deliberately targets the dog - this is always attention seeking for her though and happens when I'm washing up or something like that. I move her for her own safety to start with (dog is angelic, but only a pup and I'm trying to train him). Then I put the dog to bed and do something with DD for a bit once I've finished whatever I'm supposed to be doing. I try to pre-empt these moments too, by setting her up with an activity or having her help me with jobs.

Thank you both of you.

Belindarose: I will try your approach of explaining her that I can't understand her when she talks like this. The only thing that worries me about this i that DD is bilingual and she may think that it is the language that she is using that I do not understand but I will give it a go and see what happens.

Mumofthreekids: I am not sure if I want to use this. I will have to think about it but we may give it a go if anything works.

Any further ideas are welcome

Have you tried naming her feelings? So she is screaming because she can't do x and you say "You are angry becuase you want to do x" and hopefully she will say (one day...) "Mummy I'm angry!" Its not going to work overnight but I think, for me anyway, having them say what is wrong is preferable to being screamed at. Also the process of idenitiying your emotions is putting them on the road to controlling them - I am just learning this myself as an adult and I think it would have done me a lot of good to learn this earlier.

Ds is only 18 months but I find saying "you are angry because x" in a agitated way helps things calm down, sometimes.

I think at this sort of age they live very much in the moment so she does understand screaming and stomping is not nice to listen to but still can't help herself when she is riled up.

Sorry, I meant say "you are angry" in a slightly highpitched breathless excited way, not screaming back at him obviously - sorry if that came across wrong!

One technique I've been using very successfully with my DD to try and head off possible melt-downs is the give her a back-from-5 warning to prepare her for what we are about to do.

eg If she is busy doing something and I need to change her nappy, I say "I'm going to count back from 5 and when I get to zero I'm going to put you on the mat to change your nappy. 5,4,3,2,1,0"

It's never delivered as a threat, just matter of fact. And I always do what I say I'm going to do, so DD knows exactly what to expect. I've found it's brought about big improvements in encouraging DD to co-operate with me without throwing a wobbly.

It won't work if she's already in melt-down, but it's been very useful at de-fusing situations before they get tense.

Also, have you read Playful Parenting by Lawrence J Cohen? That has some good ideas.

Thanks albrecht. The problem is that we don't know why she is angry. We can see that she gets angry but it does not seem apparent to us the reasons. Sometimes there does not seem an apparent reason for all the screaming and shouting.

At the moment we have had some of this behaviour, what has happened was: I have tried to get her dress twice already. First time we went upstairs (sometimes I dress her downstairs but does not make any difference or even sometimes she can choose where to get dressed and again it does not make any difference) and she had a poo that needed to be clean, she started screaming and saying no. I tried to explain her that we needed toclean it so it would not hurt and she would not stop so I told her that once she was ready to get dressed to let me know and I would dress her and change her poo. Second time I managed to clean her poo but then she would not let me to carry on dressing her. I told her that she could do it herself and she said no (all this screaming of course). I explain her that that way of talking was not acceptable and told her to speak nicely, she would not have it. At the end I came down and then she run behind me dtelling me that she wanted to get dress but ten she started saying no. She seems to change her mind every two second literately (which it is normal at this age). It seems to us that she just keep saying NO even sometimes she wants to say yes (normal also at this age)

Any ideas on how to handle this ?

Hi Immaculadaconcepcion (nice name ). I do use the same technique but telling her in 5 minutes we do x The problem or maybe not is that when I tell her we are going something she tells me in 2 minutes and then she does not want to do it which makes me think that she understand what I mean but do not want to follow it. Any other ideas?

I have already checked that book on Amazon but I will look at it again.

Thanks

You could try the ABC method for a week or two.

Anticedent
Behaviour
Consquences.

You make a chart and put the headings in.
When she has a tantum/screaming epidsode fill in what happened just before e.g. you told her to hurry up and put her shoes on.
You fill in what she did e.g. started screaming
You fill in what you did e.g. shouted back/ignored her.

See what the chart looks like in a couple of weeks. You may see a pattern.

I know two year olds seem completely illogical but all behaviour has some sort of reason behind it.

Once you take a step back and look at what is happening (really hard when you are in the middle) you might be able to deal with it.

Fair enough, OP - maybe 5 mins is a bit too long?

Another book I've found helpful is Positive Discipline, The First Three Years - that had a lot of techniques worth trying and as you don't want to use punitive techniques (which is fair enough as they often don't work!) I think you would agree with its ethos.

PS Out of interest, are you Spanish, OP?

Inmaculadaconcepcion si. We are using Unconditional Parenting which I found really good and nice but at the moment we are even stuck in that way is whay we are looking into new ideas.

OhDoAdmitMrsDeVere: I am already doing this and I will check it and see what I can find. Thanks

Ah, then your DD is Eng/Spanish bilingual, I guess? We are trying to raise DD speaking Spanish too (we are not Spanish, but DD was born in Madrid and we can both speak it - not brilliantly in my case!! so thought it would be a good opportunity to start her off with a second language).

I sometimes find if DD won't respond to a request in English, she will if I switch to Spanish....

I speak with her in catalan, her dad in english but she understand perfectly spanish even though she does not speak it at all. That is why I worry telling her that I can't understand her, just in cse she thinks it is the language more than the way she is talking.

It is very good to start teaching them different languages as soon as possible because they see it as normal and do not have any problems understanding the languages at all. The important thing is to decided which language to use and stick to it. If you start changing the lanuage you speak to your daughter with she will get confused and she won't know which language to use.

Any other ideas or solution to our problems will be very much appreaciated. THanks

Oh yes we have the same poo situations - I just say "You don't want your nappy changed, you don't want your nappy changed!" Phew they are hard work aren't they?

How to Talk... is another book with a similar outlook but much more concrete examples of what to say. Its more for older children really but I'm trying to get into the habit of explaining things to him, rather than waiting for him to grown up enough. I've been meaning to look at it again as I read it when he was tiny.

(very jealous of you bilinguals - my mum has two languages but only talked to us in English, a missed opportunity.)

Albrecht: I have already read the book and as you I thought it was for older children although I am also using it so she gets used to it. I am just hoping it is a stage that she will grow out of it sometime soon as she did with hitting. I guess we just have to wait and see what happens and keep working hard.

Thank you very much

Re: language mixing.
Thanks for the advice, Iam - DD does come out with bits of Spanglish here and there, but she mostly seems to understand that English and Spanish are two different "codes" and generally uses them accordingly. However, she's still very young, so we'll see how it goes.

Good luck with the English/Catalan!

We have a little board book in Catalan which someone bought for us accidentally (thinking it was Castillano) - if you would find it useful, please PM me your address and I'll send it to you.