rasputin Wed 24-Mar-10 20:27:08
"I didn't say you weren't being strong. I said set clear boundaries. You read that as a critical comment. It was just a list of ideas to help, any book will say 'set clear boundaries'"
Typical example of mother who thinks her limited experience - of three easily managed children- can be applied to the whole world.
I have grown up with a very large extended family, and if setting boundaries was the only factor, then I would find it difficult to understand why the same parents could use exactly the same boundaries and still end up with two or three children who only tantrummed once or twice if at all, and then one child who had violent tantrums and became absolutely uncontactable.
If you have the latter kind of child, then Mummy getting angry isn't actually going to scare them, because they are so angry that they are not taking anything in and consequently cannot be frightened. My Dad used to have to pin my little brother down, I used to have to do the same with dd- they were still not frightened. Consequences did not matter either because when they were in tantrumming mood they did not care. My brother once kicked his way through a solid wooden door with his bare feet- if that amount of pain didn't detain him, how much do you suppose he cared about not getting any biscuits for a few days or having a few toys confiscated?
As for tantrumming being due to lax parenting because of previous exhaustion, my parents had the following setup:
first, one fairly reasonable child who had few tantrums and stopped early
then, once the first child was already at school so their exhaustion was minimal, their second child (=me) had a very fiery temper and tantrummed frequently until about age 4
then, very shortly afterwards sweet reasonable little brother was born who never tantrummed and hardly ever had to be punished for anything
and then, their fourth, a very temperamental child whose tantrums went on well into school age.
As for my own experience, my eldest had tantrums, my youngest did not. No change in our parenting- but they are chalk and cheese when it comes to personality.
"My 3 yr old (obv very recently was 2.7yrs so I do know what that age is like) never hits other children because I have always said 'hitting is wrong' and repeated it when any playing got too rough when he was 18months ish."
Bless, this shows a total lack of understanding of what it is like to live with a very Angry child. When I said that to dd she would reply, "but I want to hurt you, I hate you". I can assure you that I did not let her get away with it, I did pin her down when I had to to stop her from hurting me, I removed her instantly from toddler group etc so she couldn't hurt other children, I did use sanctions and I worked with it for several years: she (like my brother) has grown into a very reasonable person without violent tendencies. But it took several years. The idea that every angry or violent child is like that because his mother has simply forgotten to inform him that tantrumming is wrong is just hilarious. If you have the kind of child who just loses it, then telling them to stop isn't going to make much difference, you have to resort to damage limitation (stopping them from getting at anyone). Dd once told me much later that when she was having a tantrum, she couldn't feel I was her mum, I seemed to turn into some alien monster that she had to try to hurt. But she did grow out of it, and is now a sane reasonable teen with a great sense of humour. I needed every shred of mine!