18 month old turning into tantrum queen

[mollykins]

My dd has just recently started to throw full on tantrums of the tears, thrashing about, impossible to console variety. It's pretty scary as I'm due in a few weeks so unable to be quite so active with her. She'll run off in the park, steal other kids toys, permanently want snacks, wants to play with anything she knows she can't have, in fact just generally every day is a real trial and i'm exhausted by it. PUlled a tummy muscle yesterday from running after her and picking her up thrashing about. There must be a way to handle this, also is this normal at this age. I'm getting pretty down about it, emotional anyway as had PND with her and am worried about that with the next one. She has one nap a day of about 2 hours and is cutting some back teeth.

It is normal. Especially when teething.

It gets so much easier to cope with when you have had the baby and those hormones are no longer raging around.

Turn on the tv and give yourself a break.

molly have you met my 20 month old dd? You have just described her!

It is hard, ime it does gradually get better as she learns to communicate more effectively. That was my experience with my older dd who is now 5.

With a younger child like your dd and my dd2, where possible it is best to distract them I think, then they forget what was so "traumatic" (in their eyes). They have less stamina at this age than say a 2/3 year old.

Good luck with the birth of your next dc.

Agree about distraction. That's what I try & do with 20 month old DD who is quite prone to be a bit of a DRAMA QUEEN. It can be quite amazing to see just how quickly she can switch from a full blown tantrum to fits of laughter. Of course, the best thing is to be able to distract her before she gets into the full blown tantrum.

And it is perfectly normal at this age.

Good luck [smile}

Sounds pretty normal to me. I swear by the TOddler Taming book, had some invaluable advice on handling tantrums and bad behaviour without resorting to selling your child on ebay.

She's testing the boundaries (as I understand it, they need boundaries to feel secure, though why they have to bloody test them I don't know!) and seeing how far she cn go. Kids also have an amazing ability to know when your at your lowest ebb.

Distraction can work when you see a tantrum coming ..'ooh, look at that aearoplane/tractor/funny man/dog etc, isn't that exciting, let's go look closer'. Takes their attention of things. We also used the naughty step (in our case, room) and that works well, providing we do it calmly.

I'm sure it is her age (and probably from cutting her teeth too) and she will get better.

Also, I had PND with first one, but not with 2nd, so you might be ok this time.

DD was like this, she is 41/2 now excellent company. My way round tantrums was to do everything to avoid getting into a tantrum likely situation.

Cheers all, helps to know it's normal, you spend so much time thinking you're getting 'it wrong'. Also the great riddle of parenthood: why do other peoples kids always look better behaved than your own. Never fails to amaze me when clearly we all go through the same things.

not only do other people children look better behaved but children always misbehave & have tantrums in front of the most grumpy child unfriendly people out on the same day as you are.