20 month old is driving me mad!

[Lookingadvice]

I have a 20 month old boy who has made anything he HAS to do an absolute nightmare! Any time he needs his nappy changed, his clothes changed, into the car seat can result in up to an hour of screaming and I’m just so emotionally drained of it. It’s 9:40am and have a terrible headache already just from changing his nappies and getting him dressed this morning. Nappy changes and getting dressed I’m basically wrestling him to the ground and pinning him down which makes me feel like an absolutely horrible person when he screams. To get in his car seat it can take up to an hour to actually get him buckled in so we can leave to go anywhere. I thought it was a phase at the start and it would pass but we’re going on almost 2 months since this started and every day seems to be getting a bit worse. He’ll scream and scream sore and I feel absolutely horrible making him do this stuff. He’s no problem doing anything for anyone else just seems to take it all out on me. I feel I’ve exhausted every tip to help distraction, getting him involved helping, giving him the choice to do these things, just forcing him and every approach has the same outcome. He’s in a massive daddy phase at the minute and this could be contributing a bit but as the one who spends all day every day with him it’s not practical. Any advice would be great how to get this phase over sooner or make it easier

Ok
Do you both work or just the one of you?
Most toddlers go through this phase.
Get your OH to convince hi. your DC will not change overnight
Take DC out for walks, plays by yourself they soon change.

Btw - who spends the most time with child?

I work two days a week while ds is in childminders and his daddy works 5 days a week usually only home an hour or two before bedtime. We go out somewhere together every day of the week to classes/ soft play / park / play dates. I think at the minute daddy’s a novelty because he’s only there an hour or two in the evenings and he’s stuck with me all day

Mine was like this, and still is a bit, but has definitely improved. Started at about 18mo and he's 2 next month.

We used the book 'How to talk so little kids will listen' techniques.

And as his vocabulary improves he gets less frustrated.

It is absolutely draining and you have my every sympathy.

Thank you I’ve just ordered that book, willing to give anything a go at this point just to avoid the daily fights over things that must be done multiple times daily.

Oh gosh this sounds like what I’m going through right now with my 20month old, how are things going now? Has it got any easier or did anything help with this phase, I do think it is a boy thing too

It did get a lot better thankfully! He’s completely out of it now, for the nappy changes we gave him a choice of who was doing it when daddy was home and when he wasn’t I gave him two choices of where he could get changed. Pretty much the same for getting dressed he loves cars and dinosaurs so I bought a few t shirts even with a small logo on them that he would like so once again in the mornings he got the choice out of two outfits I had already chose. He was a nightmare to get in the car seat so every time we were going somewhere and he wouldn’t get into his seat we’d go back in the house even if it took 5/6 attempts to get in the car he eventually dropped it. Looking back it seemed to be him finding his independence and by being told what to do and when he had no choice in the matter so when he felt he had the upper hand and he was making the decisions it snapped him out of it. I hope something there helps you as it really can be so draining!

Hello, just wondering if your little one has got through it yet and if anbything made the stage easier?

My 21 month old is the same as tou described above and I'm exhausted. She sleeps like crap too so I find it extremely difficult to deal with a full day of tantrums with little sleep. 😩

Just seen your update above haha silly me!