Tantrums at 15 months - how to handle them

[aideesmum]

My lovely ds 15 months has started having tantrums.
Mostly it is because he gets hold of something he knows he is not supposed to have so I take it off him and he goes mad!
During his tantrum he wants me to pick him up but when I do he wants to get down again, it goes on like this for a while.
How is it best to deal with this until the tantrum is over?

My Ds who's 16 months does this as well - thing i've found works best is to just completely ignore him - he HATES it - and so goes from being really angry to just crying and then wants a cuddle and everything is fine.

agree with katylou, my 16 month old dd does exactly the same thing, the attention makes her worse not better so i just blank her. she'll stop after a minute and look at me really quizically at which point i start talking to her as if nothings happened. worked about 80% of the time which is probably the best you can hope for at this age!

We do the ignoring thing as well and then when ds 19mths, does something good soon after (not straight away as this would be a bit confusing for him) we clap and tell him what a good boy he is. It's just the supernanny thing, ignaore bad and reward good. Seems to be working, but that doesn't mean the tantrums stop, they're just a little shorter than they could potentially be if you give them any attention.

Ignoring him probably will work but my ds has a lot of tantrums when you take things off him etc. but I try to see it from hi view. He is angry at me and as he is so young the only way he can express that anger is to scream and have a tantrum. My view is that I still remove the thing that I don't want him to have it it is inapporpriate/dangerous etc. but I give him my attention while he gets angry with me.

I am available for a cuddle if he wants it during a tantrum and I try to reassure him saying 'I can see you are angry but you can't have xxx because ...' etc. the crying does go on for a while and he can get very angry, hitting me etc but I actually feel that my role is to let him know that it is OK to be angry.

As he gets older we will work on better ways to express that anger but as he has no speech and limited understanding all I can do now is show him that his anger is OK with me and I still love him but that he won't necessarily get what he wants by screaming/shouting.

This is of course in an ideal world and I do still get annoyed sometimes but in general I never ignore him when he is upset, though I do not allow him to have the thing that the tantrum is about.

My G, at 15 months also has tantrums when she wants objects she can't have or I have to take objects away from her but,I find distraction is the best thing,I'll get her enthused about something else and she often forgets what she wanted in the first place. I realise that her inquisitiveness means she needs alot of stimulation.