so the other night i went to this free class offered by our hospital on toddler behavior. it was amazing. it was taught by a clinical pediatric psychiatrist who had lots of letters after his name, so he knew some stuff. for reals, he had all kinds of smart things to say & i'm pretty much an expert on toddler behavior now, too.
: : insert about ten minutes of laughter : :
ok, i'm back. so one class on toddler behavior didn't actually make me an expert but i did learn lots of interesting things. like, did you know you can pretty much assess what sort of personality your kid will have throughout their entire life by the age of six months? studies have shown that mellow babies more often than not turn out to be mellow adults & the same is true for "spirited" babies. interesting, right? ok, maybe that didn't knock you out of your chair but just stick with me.
they gave us lots of tips for handling tantrums, which dramatically spike between 1-3 years. apparently if you have a girl the tantrums go wayyyyy down by the age of three. but boys? they have almost twice as many tantrums on average than girls & it continues on until about 4 or 5. lame.
case in point: this kid. they showed this video clip & it's pretty freaking funny. so here i am showing it to you.
you better have watched at least the first forty-five seconds. because that kid is awesome.
anywho, one thing to remember is that tantrums have meaning. they are a milestone & totally serve a purpose... by throwing fits, apparently your kid is learning how to deal with anger & will learn how to react based on your reaction. so the number one rule to dealing with a tantrum? stay. calm.
if you freak out & try to fix everything or yell back or get flustered than your kid will most likely escalate. so take a deep breath... count to three, ten, or maybe a hundred... and stay calm.
another fun fact i learned? as a general rule of thumb, your kid understands about 10x more than they can say. so parker's clearly saying like 6-7 words? that means he understands somewhere between 60 to 70. whoa. i need to start giving him some more credit. how frustrated must he be that he knows what he wants, but totally lacks the ability to tell me? this is where i start wishing i took baby signing time a little more seriously. oops.
so i'm totally interested in hearing what has worked for all of you. what are some of your tips for dealing with tantrums, or keeping them minimal in general?
i've noticed some days where i feel like all i'm saying is "parker no! no! parker... no!" i need to make an effort to say other things. you know, the whole five positives to every negative. and that's usually when i need to stop what i'm doing & give him some one on one attention. i have really been trying to focus on telling him when he's being good & reward him for that behavior right away.
some day we'll actually set rules & try time outs. but for now? i'm just trying to keep him fed & napped so that when we're in public we have as few meltdowns as possible. because as cute as his little frowny face is, i prefer this one much, much more.
your votes put a smile on parker's face every day. i promise they do.
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