Tantrums are a part of everyday life for some children, although they may be much less frequent or rare in others. Even though your baby is responsible for his tantrums, you can avoid many by organizing his life so that the frustration remains within his tolerance most of the time.
Avoid tantrums
Tantrums are always worth avoiding if you can, without compromising your own limits, because they do nothing positive for either of you. When you have to force your child to do something that is not pleasant to him, or forbid something that he liked, do it as tactfully as possible. If you see that he is getting angry or upset about something, try to make it easier for him to accept it. Of course, he should go out with his coat on, if that's what you told him, but he may not need to have the collar zipper buttoned yet. There is no advantage in challenging your child with absolute "dos and don'ts" or in cornering him in situations where his only option is to explode with rage. Leave him a decent escape route.
What to do when my child has a tantrum?
Remember that his excess of anger or rage terrifies him. Make sure he doesn't hurt himself or others. If after the fit of rage subsides, you discover that you have hit your head, scratched your face, or have broken a vase, you will see these damages as evidence that it cannot be controlled and that you do not have the power to control it either. and keep it safe.
It may be easier to keep your child safe if you hold him gently on the ground. As he calms down and sits close to you, he will discover, to his amazement, that everything remains the same after the storm. Little by little he will relax in your arms and the screams will turn into tears. The raging monster is now simply a baby who has screamed exhausted and foolishly scared. It is time to comfort him.
There are some children who cannot bear to be held while having a tantrum. Physical restraint gives them more reason to get angry and makes the whole thing worse. If your child reacts this way, don't insist on physically dominating him. Put away anything that could break and try to prevent him from hurting himself.
Don't try to argue with your child. While the tantrum lasts, your little one is beyond reason.
Don't yell back at him, if you can help it. Rage and anger are very contagious and you may feel angrier with each of their screams. Try not to participate in the tantrum. If you do, you will probably prolong it as when he begins to calm down, he will pick up on the angry tone in your voice and start over.
Don't give any reward or punishment for a tantrum. You want him to see that tantrums, which are horrible for him, do not change anything, both for and against. If he has a tantrum because you don't let him go out into the garden, don't change his mind and let him come out after he has calmed down. Likewise, if you were going for a walk before the tantrum had, you should stick with the plan, as soon as it calms down.
Don't let public tantrums make you feel bad. Many parents fear tantrums in public places; however, you should not let your child feel this concern. If you hesitate to take him to the corner store, to prevent him from having a tantrum because he wants candy, or if you treat him extra carefully when there are visitors in case the ordinary treatment causes an explosion, he will realize what is happening.
How to handle tantrums?
Once your child realizes that his genuinely uncontrollable anger is having an effect on your behavior towards him, he is likely to learn how to use it and enter a state of semi-deliberate tantrums typical of four-year-olds whose tantrums have not been handled effectively.
Continuing story below
Imagine that your child will not have a tantrum, behave as if you have never heard of them and then treat them, when they occur, as something unpleasant, but completely irrelevant in the course of the events of an ordinary day. It sounds easy, but it is not. I once visited a friend whose 20-month-old son had asked her to remove the lid from her litter box. She said, "Not now, it's almost time for your bath," and kept talking to me. The boy tugged at his arm and asked him again, but got no answer. Then he tried in vain to open it himself. He was tired and the frustration was too much for him. Exploded.
When the tantrum had passed and her mother had calmed her down, she said, “I feel like I'm very bad. This was my fault. I didn't realize how important it was to him to play in the sandbox. And then he took the lid off the litter box.
The mother's behavior is easy to understand, but also an excellent example of how not to handle a tantrum! She said "no" to the boy when he asked for help the first time, without pausing to think carefully about what he had asked for. The boy's efforts to remove the cap from the sand did not show him how desperately he wanted to play, because he was not paying attention to it. Only when he had a tantrum did he realize that the boy really wanted to play in the sand and that there was no good reason not to let him play.
It's normal that you wanted to make it up to your child by letting him play after all, but it was too late for that. Even though it might not have been a good decision at first, you should have stuck with your original "no" because by changing it to a "yes" after the tantrum, what you did was make your child feel that his explosion had had the desirable effect. It would have been better for both of them if she had listened carefully to her son when he first asked for help and thought better of his response, rather than giving in to the boy's wishes after his tantrum.
It is not easy to be a small child, and go uncontrollably from these states of anxiety to explosions of rage. Nor is it easy to be the father of a young child, and have to live with such a variable emotional state and keep it in balance. But time helps everyone. Much of the emotional turbulence will have subsided by the time your child has completed his transition from toddler to preschooler.
Tantrums are left behind
Your little child will grow up, grow up, and be able to handle things better. That means you will have less extreme frustration in your daily life. You will also be able to know and understand more, and your life will have less news that scares you. As he loses his fear, he will stop needing so much reassurance from you and gradually he will learn to speak freely, not only about the things he can see in front of him, but about the things he is thinking and imagining. With the help of language you will also distinguish between fantasy and reality. Once he gets to this point, he may be able to see that most of his worst fears are not true, and that most of the demands and restrictions you place on him are reasonable. Terra