Toddler (a) whining and (b) throwing

[Rainatnight]

Two toddler issues so I thought I'd wrap them up in the same post! Feel free to reply to just one or both.

DD (will be two in June) has always been remarkably cheerful and good natured. People remark on it. As she's approaches two, we're certainly seeing more toddler behaviour , which is fine. The thing that's really grating on me, though, is a sort of whining/moaning/wailing that's just started recently. Does anyone else's toddler do this? It's often when she's frustrated (in the buggy, doesn't want to be, WAAAAAAAAAH) but sometimes for no apparent reason. She's teething massive molars at the moment and I've just gone back to work, which might be making a difference to her overall levels of grumpiness. We've just had a very trying morning of it, so I thought I'd ask you lot of you have it too, and what you do.

Second - throwing stuff. Can you tell me what are your boundaries about this? I've always been fairly relaxed, taking the view that it's just baby-ish experimentation and stuff but it feels like it might be a bigger deal now she's getting older? We spent a (stressful) weekend with my parents recently who told her off a lot for banging and throwing stuff, which I was really surprised by cos it had never bothered me. But today she picked up a small bowl and didn't exactly throw it at my MIL, but definitely to her with more force than was polite/necessary. Which made me think I need to take action. What do you do?

Thanks

Never had the whining but stopped the throwing at 12-18 months by teaching DS to put things down "geeeennnntttlllyyy".

Like a lot of LOs he would pick something up, play with it, andwe played the then just toss it out of his world when he was done. We went to a music group and flying drumsticks were par for the course.

So, we played the "put things down geeeennnntttlllyyy" game, others did it too and it worked for most.

Sorry, formatting messed up, but hopefully you can get the gist!

My twins are exactly the same age and we definitely have more whining atm. I've started saying 'use your words' (as they are quite verbal - when not whining!) and if that fails try to distract with an interesting toy/book etc. I think it's frustration. We haven't experienced the throwing yet, maybe only a matter of time ...

Whining - Get down on her level and talk to her. "You can get out of the buggy after we get off this bus" "If you stop walk nicely next to mummy you can get out of the buggy" If you don't know why she's whining, get down on her level and ask if she can tell mummy what's wrong. This will get easier as her speech improves but you want to basically teach her that mummy will help you if you use words, not if you whine. If she's whining because you won't let her lie down in the middle of the road then you have to filter out the whining, distract her or get down on her level when the whining steps down a notch and offer a hug and clean slate. You understand that she will get annoyed about not being able to do what she wants but you can't explain why all of the time so it's a way to say "let's move on"

If she's throwing dinner, drinks or at people then I'd tell her off but general plastic toys then I wouldn't (but I'd expect her to retrieve anything out of reach) If she's enjoying throwing then it might be a good idea to take advantage of the warmer weather and go outside with a ball.

Thanks very much, everyone. Nice to know I'm not alone! Now that I think about it, the whining also coincided with cutting down on her dummy use, so she's probably really fed up about that.

She is really super verbal - has loads of words, and speaks in quite long sentences, and had NO problem usually telling you in no uncertain terms what she wants Which is why I find the whining weird, cos she can definitely tell us what's up. But I'm going to keep doing as GandT and Jamie suggested and encourage her to use her words when she's whining.

Hercules, what are the development trajectories? My MIL in law said something similar that throwing is just a 'thing'. (She was a Reception teacher and is just generally quite switched on and lovely about little kids).

I do think the throwing thing is hard for them, cos we take them to a park and encourage them to throw a ball, we don't mind if they throw soft toys, but then we do really mind them throwing other stuff so I think it's hard for them to tell the difference sometimes.