Toddler tantrums

[Onthegrapevine]

My 16 month old has really started to change over the last couple of weeks and the main change is tantrums.

If we take something away from him, he’ll cry hysterically and throw himself on the floor.

Today I was walking him in to town and it started raining, so I tried putting the rain cover on his buggy and he started planking, crying and kicking it off to the point where it was impossible for me to actually put it on. He was quite happy to sit in the rain! Excited, in fact.

I’ve read a lot about “gentle parenting” and so whenever he behaves like this at home I sit with him, talk to him calmly etc but honestly after the rain situation today I’m wondering what I’m supposed to do in these situations.

I don’t really know what I’m asking. I suppose for some ideas on ways to help him become less distressed when he can’t have things he wants.

He’s my first and up until now he’s just been a baby so things have been fairly simple. Now that he’s developing his own character there seems to be lots of different ways to parent which can hugely affect them in the future.

Should I always give in? Is this the build up to what they call the terrible two’s?

He’s such a happy little boy the rest of the time, but he’s developing a right temper when things don’t go his way and I just want to make sure I’m dealing with that as best as possible.

I remember feeling a similar way last year. I felt like DS just didn’t understand me well enough or couldn’t articulate himself well enough for any of these methods I had read about to actually work. In my opinion it did lay a good foundation for us, and we can talk/cuddle our way out of most tantrums pretty quickly now. I hope you find the same thing.

You can't always give in. What about when he has a tantrum because you're stopping him from running in the road, or picking up pebbles and putting them in his mouth. Or not even always safety/life endangering things - if you meet up with a friend who has a toddler, and yours wants to take the toy they are playing with. Saying let's take turns will only get you so far, and sometimes the meltdown happens the instant they are denied the thing they want NOW NOW NOW. Picking your battles is a good strategy but life is frustrating at times and part of growing up is learning how to cope with feelings of frustration.