Kicking and Screaming

28th October 2009 | 2 comments | 0 people like this

Kelly Moorhouse feels the full force of a two-year-old tantrum.

There are few things that monopolise one’s attention more than a toddler tantrum in full flow. Ruby has had hissyfits before, and what could pass as strops, but I was in no way prepared for the screaming, thrashing, earsplitting tantrums that have issued forth from my little angel in the past couple of weeks. We have at least one major-league tantrum every day, plus three or four mini ones, and it is quite honestly a marvel to behold.

Almost all are triggered by my refusing something, whether it be something to do, eat or play with. “No, you can’t have another bowl of cheerios, you’ve had three already and it’s almost lunch time. You can have an apple instead,” is enough to throw my otherwise extremely amenable daughter into a spiral that can continue for up to an hour, to the point where both of us have completely forgotten what it is that she was screaming about in the first place. The best one yet was the hour and twenty minutes of screaming which ensued when I removed her from the bottom of the slide at the swing park because there was a queue of six children behind her waiting to go down.

On this one I have had to refer back to my own advice and very carefully Pick My Battles, but as my friend shrewdly put it, negotiating with Ruby does often feel like negotiating with a terrorist, and the fact is that I am not prepared to be held hostage by a two-year-old who thinks that she can get whatever she wants if she simply screams loud enough, so unless I am out in public where the volume of my child is more likely to have an effect on someone else’s day I tend to stick to my guns and just ride it out. She gets a few chances to calm herself down, and then she is removed to the bedroom where she can scream away to her heart’s content, while I get the washing up done and wait for her to calm down. Don’t think I’m being callous. I would love to be able to stop her from getting so distressed, but I have tried pretty much every trick I can think of to divert these meltdowns and nothing even scratches the surface, which leaves me with little option but to Ride It Out.

I can see her point of view too. It must be terribly frustrating to be two years old, feeling like you have no control over anything and being unable to express yourself fully. It’s my idea of hell, and I can understand why sometimes all she wants to do is scream. I try to give her as much choice as I can about things, and let her feel like she is in control, but as she said herself the other day when I asked what she was crying for, “Sometimes I want to cry.”

Don’t we all?