Screaming, head-banging toddler, 7.45am, at wits' end already!

[ilovejonty]

17 month old son just had breakfast and is now screaming and banging head on my knees, sofa, anything... what IS the matter? Was like this yesterday evening as well, could something be the matter or just normal toddler behaviour? It seems to happen because he wants something and doesn't stop until I work out what it is and give it to him. As he can't tell me what he wants it's more than frustrating for both of us and I am getting really fed up

Any thoughts?

Normal, he sounds like he's frustrated, shou;d improve when he gets more language skills. I'd try and ignore it and distract him a bit. I know it's frustratong for you too though! My ds often does it when he's bored or frustrated too.

agree, sounds frustrated. You need to work on his communication skills. If he can't tell you what he wants, then perhaps you could have pictures of items (eg food, drink, toy, cuddle, etc) so that he could give you the picture that shows what he wants. This will ease his frustration, and teach him that he can communicate his needs instead of screaming.

You give him what he wants as soon as he passes you the picture, and lots of praise for doing it.

oh, and when he brings you a picture, say it is the drink one, you say
"Oh, you want a drink? drink."
get him the drink, say drink again.
Then hopefully, after some time, he'll start to say drink and won't need the picture.

Ilovejonty, I was just trying to work out where to start a thread saying that i'm at my wits end with my 18 month old dd, who wakes every morning (usually between 4am and 5am) shouting 'walk, walk'! She screams the place down if I try and do something she doesn't want to do, and only wants to be walked around holding my hand. She is so frustrated about not being able to walk that I guess it is this that makes her so angry. She can talk pretty well, but for her it's all about the walking. Sometimes all I can do is lie her down on the floor and let her scream it out, because I don't seem to be able to do anything else - it feels horrible. You have all my sympathy, but I do remember dd1 being the same ( not quite so bad though), and it is something she has grown out of (she is 2.8 and now she just whinges and whines all the time!)

Good luck

Hazeyjane, know how you feel... it's the other way around for me, he walks (runs) everywhere but can't say much. However, he often drags me around with him, he comes up to me, grabs my hand and walks me around the house. Not sure how long I should go along with this [puzzled emoticon] it's a bit annoying when I'm trying to do something.

Unfortunately I think the frustrated pahse happens at the same time as a clingy phase, so like you say dd2 often does her screaming, head banging thing whilst clinging to my leg like a limpet. If I wasn't so sleep deprived I could probably deal with the whole thing better!

My ds used to do the head-banging thing. It used to go something like this - screaming child head-banging on any hard surface, and me feigning complete indifference (or walking out of the room so I didn't have to watch.)

I never got to the bottom of it - frustration or teething??? but it looked and sounded awful. I could pick out a few triggers like tiredness, but sometimes it happened at random. He is now 24 months and has grown out of it completely. Hang in there, and don't react to it. If you are in a crowd remove him (not easy - I know), and then you don't have to deal with other people opinions as well as your screaming child.