I was in the supermarket the other day and my dear sweet son decides that he would ummm well..... --- Let me set the stage for you: He has toys, snacks and his water cup. He DECIDES that he wants MY inkpen. Mind you, this kid has all this stuff to keep him busy but...he just has to have MY pen. Well...of course I ignored the first few minutes of ranting and whining. All the while, I'm rushing through the aisles grabbing what I need to make a quick dash out of there!
Then he got LOUDER and started SCREAMING LOUDER AND LOUDER!!!! and yup you guessed it, he threw his head back and wailed as loud as he possibly could. I'm thinking (wow, i don't remember the toddler what to expect books telling me about tantrums at the age of 15 months)... Well...of course, I gave in and took the INK stick out the pen and gave him the pen.
He stopped crying, took one look at the pen and looked at me as if to say, DO YOU THINK I'M AN IDOT? DID YOU THINK I WOULD NOT NOTICE THE FACT that you took the ink stick out? Then of course he did what I can describe only as the FINAL straw! He threw my ink pen across the aisle and starting YELLING louder and louder. I popped his hand and said NOOOOOOOOOOO....this woman walking past us and she says~~
OHHHH!!! HOW HORRIBLE!!
Yes, people, this woman walking by...says.....HOW HORRIBLE! I said, LOOK LADY (PG VERSION OF COURSE) MIND YOUR OWN BUSINESS- UNLESS YOU WANT SOME! YOU WANT SOME? Of course she kept on walking as if denying my wonderful invitation for me to kick her butt!
Soooooo....if you haven't figured it out people, I've been having a very INTERESTINGLY STRESSFUL past two weeks! PLEASE!!! Pray for me!
8 comments:
We had our first real tantrum yesterday at teh mall (my daughter is almost two.) This lady just sat there and STARED the entire time, giving us the "MY child would NEVER do that" look....finally my husband walked over to her and told her off.
I look forward to the day that that woman's child has a tantrum, and i hope that not only is is ten times as bad, but that i somehow get to witness its occurance!! lol!
Gavin has been throwing tantrums since he was about a year old. You'll notice they start to get more and more dramatic.
Good for you telling that snooty skank off. The other day Gavin was throwing a fit over having to wear his glasses at the grocery store. So I was holding him down putting them back on. Some guy honestly told me "don't be so rough with him". I turned around like a spawn of satan and told him he better move his old ass fast or I would kick it. Nosey people!
Okay - I have now read backward through late January. Lovely photos of a lovely family. You're blessed even with the occasional meltdown.
Don't let the b-----ds get you down.
Oh yes the terrible twos started here about 15 months as well, my prayers are with you. I actually had something similiar happen to us in a grocery store, T was very upset and crying and this old lady started sighing and stuff. Well I let her have it, Do you have kids? Guess they never ever cried huh? He is a baby get over yourself. Ugh just thinking about it gets me worked up.
I well remember the tantrums, definitely started before two, and lasted a little past three.
Good for you telling that woman off. People are so quick to judge others.
Yep, my boy started around 15 months too. And still has the ocassional melt down at almost 4. Usually occurs when he's really tired or has low blood sugar, so I enforce his bedtime like a fiend, and ALWAYS carry snacks.
It might get worse before it gets better, but it will get better!
I've come through from the MysticalIncence Blog.
I'm trying to find the bit in your post that screams “I'm an abusive parent that's beats my child in anger”, and I'm sorry sweety but I just don't see it. I'm guessing by “popped” you mean slap. okay, so you slapped your child for throwing a pen, I probably wouldn't have done that, but I wouldn't have given my child the pen (because I would have expected her to throw it at SOMEONE going by). Before I go on, firstly, it's obvious your not an abusive parent. To me I see a thoughtful parent. How? Because you had yourself prepared, or at least tried to, with all the things to amuse your child. On the MI blog you asked what others would do, so here's things I do to keep my daughter occupied while shopping.
1. If it's a quick trip I take one of the little kiddy cars that plays music. She loves it, and if anything she wants to go faster, which makes a quick shop easy. The only down side is the bitching that occurs when she has to get out of it, but after doing this a few times that isn't an issue anymore.
2. I try to involve my daughter in the shopping, asking her what she wants, even if I know she doesn't really know the difference between crunch and smooth peanut butter and that I'll be getting smooth anyway. What this does is give her the opportunity to share in what I'm doing, and I know she enjoys this.
3. Persistence. When my daughter use to throw tantrums while shopping regardless of how much I tried I would tell her that she could sit in the car and wait. No, I never left her unsupervised in the car, but I did put her in the car and close the door. Boy did she scream. But it didn't take long for her to realise that the repercussion for throwing a tantrum while out was not being part of the outing. Try picking a repercussion ahead of time that works for you and stick with it.
Granted, my daughter is now three, but she was once that screaming child rolling around in the middle of the isle throwing things and kicking people. Ohhh, yes, she was a princess when it came to tantrums. People will try to tell you a child will give up throwing a tantrum once you either ignore them, or they “run out of steam”. Well I can tell you right now that anyone with a kid like that has an angel. My daughter can scream ALL day, this is not an exaggeration. But it's because of this that I learnt to come up with weird ways of distracting her and keeping her entertained.
I hope this is helpful, and if you want to scream at me about something feel welcome to pop over to my site and tell me to bugger off.
Read some of the other posts here so thought I'd chime in here too.
Stick with it, you're doing fine. All of us as parents should always try to improve, i'm still learning, does that mean accepting advice every fools gives us? No, we read or hear about something and WE have to decide if it fits our situation.
From what you said this is what I'd say:
1) Ignore bystanders. They are "coming in on the middle" of the movie. They don't know what happened 2 hours ago, a week ago. They are taking it all out of context and thus ARE ignorant with regards to the situation.
Now if they, the bystanders actually try to GET invoved, talking to your child or interacting in a way you don't like... get them to stop! Period. If your way of handling this particular tanrum is to let the child scream it out in then that's what you're doing. You decided to do that approach for a reason, right? Some try to do something else can certainly make it worse.
Example: my child has a little autism and as such founds alot of places uncomformable....like toy stores. Now some just walking in the store with us there sees a screaming/misbehaving kid and the parnets giving him a toy for it.
What WAS happening was therapy. Showing him place like a toy store could be enjoyable if he found something he liked and/or understood teh situation. He wasn't crying FOR a toy like everyone else thought, he was crying becasue he was uncomfortable IN the store. Our NEXT trip went much better, we had trouble getting him to go into the store but once inside he enjoyed looking around.
2) You have to pick your battles. What is worth fighting over and what isn't, long term.
Pick the important ones and win those either by patience, being more stubborn than the child and ,yes, sometimes a swat on the bottom. (A swat on the bottom especally with a diaper provides plenty of cushion). It grabs attention and the child focuses, then you deliver the verb message of (this thing causes spankings).
Spanking also casue the punishment to be over quickly. BAM, and it's over. Then you can get RIGHT BACK to interacting with your child in apositive way discussing and playing. "Time out" can be effective but it draws out a punishment and that isn't always what you or the child needs.
Win a few important battles then the smaller ones often fall into place.
3)Be consisent. If you say something is going to happen try to make it happen for the child. (Store and then McDonalds or whatever, not as a reward but as a schedule they can focus on). Also if you do a "be good or no ...this) you have to stick to that too, don't cave.
Real life often has "no do-overs" and it's better a child learn that nicely from a caregiver than meanly elsewhere.
There's other little stuff I'd say but already this is a longer post than I'd planned.
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