Sudden behaviour change in daughter under 2

[mello0h]

My daughter is 1year and 8 months and has gone from being the calmest and easy child to almost over night having literal screaming fits when I do things like get her dressed, change her nappy, not let her watch TV (aka peppa pig) or sometimes just when she's standing around.
She is quite good at communicating and usually would pull a stroppy face or walk away with her head down if she was 'cross', or tell us what she wants, but now its just screaming tantrums. She also says 'ow' during them sometimes, but im not sure she knows its a pain related term.

Should I be concerned (medically?? or psychologically?) or is the whole 'terrible twos' come early and can this happen seemingly over night/ is normal to be so sudden?

Terrible twos come when babies can communicate but not enough; when they can move but not go as fast as they want or do what they want - but for some babies that stage can start earlier. For DS it started at 12 months as he’s an early talker and walker. A lot of kids at the nursery where I work started tantrumning at 9 months and are still going through it at 2.

All you can do is be super strict with nap and bed times (build a routine if they don’t have one), give choices, use distraction during known triggers. For example DS will tantrumn at nappy changes but not if the TV or radio is on during them.

Dd started awful tantrums at 1yr 4 months. Like pp said it happens when they can communicate but just not exactly the way they want to and dd was an early talker. She went from being an absolute delight of a child, smiling and happy all day, to following me around the house screaming for hours! The good news is that by two and a half she was completely finished the terrible twos and I was happy then to have got it out of the way quite early.

Thank you both! It was more the sudden onset that worried me but it does make sense. I am trying the distraction technique but she seems to know what she wants enough to still battle me xD

Yes in my experience it did come on quite suddenly while we were away on a 4 day holiday, she came back a different, very grumpy child! You have my sympathies it is such a tough age but will hopefully be short lived!

I'm going through this too. My daughter is 15 months and we've already had a few months of the temper tantrums and screaming, smacking etc.
She is very advanced physically but has next to no verbal skills so I guess she's angry that she can't get across what she needs to.
I was a bit worried about the frequency but it does seem like it's the terrible twos coming early. I just hope she grows out of it early too (doubt it though).