on temper tantrums...

I am getting tired of these. I mean REALLY must we freak out over every little thing?! Especially out in public. Does my child honestly enjoy watching his mothers face turn 50 shades of red and start sweating profusely as I am attempting to wrestle the child back into the shopping cart that I am trying to keep moving through the store to finish my errands so I can go home and crawl under a table and die from shame and embarassment.

I have been reading up on the toddler years to try and find some reason strike that reasons got nothing to do with this. There is no reason it just is. Well then, I have been trying to understand it more to possibly have chance of living through it. And actually after reading I was really on the road to handling it fairly well.

First, I learned that a child in the midst of a full blown tantrum is not in the mood to be reasoned, bargined, or bribed into cooperation. They are so beside themselves that no matter what you say (aside from giving them what they want in the first place) they don't want to hear it.  Here in lies our first problem, I have a very strong willed child. He knows what he wants and cannot be distracted from it. Unfortunately for him he has a strong willed mother, who was a nanny for many years and has never given into a screaming child and does not plan on changing that anytime soon.

My plan for dealing with this was to find a place away from people and just let him cry out his frustrations until he was done and ready to listen to reason. And it actually worked pretty well because 1. I was away from people so my child was not bothering anyone as he sorted through his problem 2. I didn't get upset with him as I have before while trying to talk him out of the inevitable tantrum, I just let him be mad and get it off his chest 3. He didn't get mine and an enire store full of people's attention which only fuels a tantrum and 4. Once he was done we could go on with life.

Second, children like mine do not handle change well. Part of his independence is that he doesn't want to be forced into doing things. Like getting his diaper changed. For a couple months he would completely lose it when we changed his diaper, we would have to just pin him down to get it done.

But now we explain to him what is going to happen and what will happen next so he knows what to expect and doesn't feel forced into it. He has done so much better once we started explaining it to him instead of treating him like a baby. Now we can say "can you go get mommy a diaper and lay down?" and he will, just like that.

Third, active children such as mine sometimes get overwhelmed and overtired which leads to the tantrum. My little guy is not an observer but a doer (is that a word?) Meaning he will not just sit back and watch things happen he wants to be involved. We have cousins that live close by and whenever we are with them he is great and loving life for about 2 hours and then he melts down. And I have determined from my readings that it is because he is so excited and active and involved that at some point he just hits a wall, and by nature he won't just sit down and rest and watch for a while. SO he loses it.

How we deal with this? Well 12 hours of sleep a night plus one 3 hour nap helps. (Don't be jealous it is my gift for dealing with a wild child everyday.) And when we notice a meltdown starting to form we take him away from the situation to let him rest and have a calm moment.

With all these things in mind you would think that I had things under control. And then today happened.

I had no motivation to leave my house this morning, I beleive it was a message from above that no good would come out of trying to run errands but we were running dangerously low on toilet paper. No TP + Pregnant bladder = trouble. So off to target I went. And I started by explaining to the child "We just have to go into this one store and then we will go get lunch." And he seemed on board with me until we approached the building. Then the screaming started.

fight or flight, fight or flight, fight or flight...

but we REALLY needed toilet paper so I pushed on figuring that I would find something in the store to amuse him. I was wrong. The screaming intensified. I got some of the dirtiest looks of my life from every person I passed. All the sympathetic mothers must have heeded the warnings this morning and just stayed home. I soon had a cart full of things and a completly inconsolable child who was challenging my every effort to keep him in the cart. I reasoned, I barginned, I begged, I even threatened that he was going to be "IN BIG TROUBLE" (scary I know). But he didn't care. Instead he tried to claw his way out of the cart and so that he could grab onto me with his vice-like arms. Hence the opening to this post and my reason for wanting to die right there in the middle of the paper goods isle.

The morale of the story is this 1. listen to those little hints that perhaps this is not going to be your day and cut your losses and stay home 2. Stock up on toilet paper 3. Don't ever claim that you have life under control because life likes to prove you wrong 4. Never take a hungry, tired, crabby child to target.