Terrifying meltdowns at 14 months

[BipBippadotta]

Over the past week or 2 my normally cheerful DS has flown into intense, howling rages that last up to 45 minutes. He flings himself around, he will not go in the buggy, and he will scream, and I mean SCREAM until he is too tired to scream anymore, and then he just slumps back limply and whimpers and looks despondent. Nothing consoles him at the height of his rages - he doesn't want to be touched or held refuses milk, snack, dummy, toys books. It's not clear what brings them on. Sometimes he wakes up in the middle of the night screaming the place down and cannot be comforted.

He is very large (nearly 15 kilos) and very strong, so keeping him from smashing his head in on the pavement when he starts his reverse-dolphin head-flinging stuff is like trying to wrestle an alligator. Does this sound normal? It feels pretty extreme to me. I wasn't expecting full-on toddler tantrums until he was actually toddling.

He is still a way off walking, and only started crawling at 13 months, but otherwise seems to be meeting milestones. He talks, he points, he laughs, he says his name. However, there is ASD and ADHD in our family, so I'm a bit hypervigilant about anything that looks like it might warrant some early intervention.

Am I overreacting? He has had all of his molars and canines coming in at once, so I wonder if that might be something to do with it?

Hello.

We never had the thrashing you describe but do have some similarities. Our bubba was biiiig and slow at his crawling and walking milestones. Crawling at 12months, walking at 16. I think the size and weight definitely was a hindrance to him.

We had a number of teeth coming through at the same time and it was like his personality changed overnight. It also effectively brought the 18 month sleep regression forward a few months. He went from plopping him in bed to sleep and him being out in 30" to full-on screams to the extent he would vomit. A couple of times he managed to fall out of his bed too which isn't easy to do. He basically went wild unless we were there to hold his hand. Literally.

If it's any comfort once his teeth were done he basically reverted back to the happy little man we knew before. Sadly it took a while for the sleep to get back to normal.... Obviously we are lucky that we were able to comfort him and it might not even be the same thing but I always just assumed it was because he was in pain and didn't understand or know how to express himself and it had all gotten too much.

Thank you so much for replying! I'm so glad to hear it resolved for your ds. Mine has just sprouted yet another 2 teeth overnight so I'm leaning towards thinking that may be the main issue.

Just reread your initial post and the lack of eating and night time screaming were also there, both of which were completely out of character. Not that we put 2 and 2 together at the time but this is when his first lot of molars were coming through. Can only imagine how much it hurts and how confusing it just be for them.

As I said it really did improve for us, it was just horrible at the time. Took months to get the sleep back on track but hey ho. As a matter of that the last week he's turned into a little monster going to bed, waking at night, skipping meals etc. Sure enough he's started breaking out in spots and getting drooly so I'm putting all my money on his last 2 teeth making an appearance!