Monday, March 21, 2011

Tantrums

Whoa, Nelly! Have we reached "that age"? We sure have.  The age of tantrums.  Something we are trying to nip in the bud now.
I teach parenting for a living and while talking the talk is easy from my side of my work desk I get a reality check when i get home and have to practice what I preach.  The current approach is ignoring the tantrum but keeping a watchful eye so she doesn't hurt herself if she starts rolling around. 
Usually a tantrum is fueled by me or Josh telling her no.  If she is on a hard surface I try and move her to a carpeted area and then just let her have her tantrum while I keep a watchful eye from across the room.  At her age I don't let it go longer then 7 minutes because to be quite honest I would rather her not make herself sick and she can't calm herself down after that point.  After she stops or after I pick her up I put her on my lap, calm her down and explain to her why I said no, etc., give her a kiss and hug and then let her go back to playing. 
Our theory is letting her realize at a young age that daddy and mommy are not going to tolerate temper tantrums and when we say no it means no. 
What are you discipline techniques? Have you had to deal with tantrums yet?  If not how do you think you will deal with them? 

Here is one of the "tantrum pictures" I snapped a week or so ago...this one will come back out in about 15 years...





2 comments:

  1. We ignore tantrums as well!! Except I'm not nice enough to move her to a soft surface. If she decides/choose to throw a tantrum then she will get all the uncomfortableness/pain that goes with doing it. She threw tantrums about 2 weeks and now they are few and far between. :)

    Now when she throws a tantrum, she is not allowed to be downstairs with the family. She must go to her room until she is happy again then she can come back downstairs.


    As far as discipline... if she's doing something wrong she gets a warning. If she does it again, she goes to time out, no matter where we are. We kind of follow the 'Supernanny' technique of timeouts. They've worked wonders for us, and for the most part we maybe have 2 or 3 timeouts a week, and maybe one tantrum. Not too shabby for an almost 2 year old!!

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  2. we are so right there with you... watching the screamer flop in the foor.

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