Patience Tips

oh I def feel your pain. I go into the bathrrom or anywhere else that has a door and shut it. There is always someone with j during this time. but if i dont see him i tend not to lose my patience ya know?

I also make j sit down somewhere with his blanket untill he stops whining or crying. not so much time out but more like a cool down period. But the trick is that I dont allow him to get up untill he says sorry for his fit and he stops crying and uses his words.

try to teach him a breathing skill when hes mad. one of the kids i watch breaths slow in and out when hes angry and it really helps to calm him down.

yeah i second what momtobe19 wrote. when meghan was little, she'd have tantrums allllllll the time so i would have to walk into another room and calm myself down (for me it was smoking a cigarette but i don't reccommend that :P)

another thing that worked, but again, i wouldn't say it was a particularly good idea. but when she was having a tantrum, i'd get down on the floor and start kicking and screaming to and she'd get so fascinated watching me, that she'd forget what she was screaming about in the first place.

I have become pretty good with this but once in a while I am pushed over the edge. That's when I yell. Usually I just remove myself from the situation, whether it be literally or just mentally. I find that if a tantrum is ignored, it ends rather quickly.

i dont know about andrew but if you ignore J he gets louder and then starts jumping up and down and screaming. I have to do something anything but ignoring him will make it worse. is andrew like that kell?

I ask Cae if he wants to go for a walk, then we walk around and play outside until he calms down.

I've always just reasoned with him. Or offered an alternative so it didn't seem like such a shut down, like "no you cannot have this, because xyz, but you CAN do this, do you want to do this instead?". I tell him that I know he's mad, and it's okay to be mad. Usually it nips tantrums in the bud, letting him know why he can't do something or have something, what something else is that he can do/have instead.

although motherhood always requires patience, we're thankfully past the tantrum days now. not because my kid became an angel overnight, but because he has learned language skills, self soothing skills, and is very receptive to talking it out when he's upset rather than just losing it like when he was younger. all that comes with age.

i remember watching him throw a huge tantrum once when he was 3, both of us getting more and more upset, no one to pass him off to, nowhere to go to get an escape, after days and days of never getting a break. i believe it is in THOSE times where the real deep down motherhood skills come in. it is much different when you are relaxed, have your own needs met, and have help than when you are just sick and tired of everything and oh look, the kid is losin it again.

one thing i always did was almost overcompensate in every one of those situations. i'd get extremely, extremely calm, really fast. i'd make myself slow my breathing, i'd sit down on the floor next to him, and i'd focus on my own reaction. it helped. it also helped to talk quietly to him. really quietly, so he would have to stop screaming to be able to hear me. i would start first with telling him i loved him, asking him for a hug, asking if i could hold him. after we did that for a little bit, i'd get to whatever the issue was. it always worked. he always chose to sit on my lap and let me whisper to him over continuing to scream and kick and shout. even when i thought he was acting like a total jerk at the time, giving him love was the one thing that consistently worked.

if you think about it, the ages of 18 months to like, 3.5 years, have to be so intense for them. they are going through so many confusing, conflicting changes. they are learning so much about the world and trying to make sense of it all with limited reasoning skills. i know i get frustrated and yell and pout when the world pisses me off or something happens that i don't agree with or i don't get something that i feel i'm entitled to. its a natural reaction to get upset in those situations.. now times that feeling times a thousand and add limited ability to understand whats going on, and you have a toddler on the floor having a tantrum. i dunno, i always felt really empathetic to my kid in those times.

all that being said, i also had to lock the bathroom door and sit on the floor and cry while he screamed on the other side. this is one tough gig and when you're at the end of your rope and on your own to try to deal with it all, well we are only human.

good luck mamas.

Sometimes when my daughter is over tired she just cries and cries and can't be settled so I put her in her bed and shut the door and within 5 minutes she is asleep. But I am only able to do that as she can't walk away from the situation yet.

normally the tantrums come when im most worn out and so is my daughter. im starting to recognize the warning signs such as skipping a nap or not having a midmorning snack and now at the top of my list too much tv. my gut reaction is to yell and break something. but if i catch myself before my frustration passes the boiling point i usually go smoke a cigerette but if i dont break in time i usually go off by myself and yell and slam doors and such.

i read somewhere ( it may be hipmama survival guide) that when we rage we release endorphins that sooth and calm us down and that we become rage-a-holics who constantly rage to calm ourselves down. i wonder if any mama's feel like they get addicted to " letting it all out"?

me too..holy crap.

I still need my patience skills. Sometimes I just take a deep breathe and think in my head they could be doing worse and things will be over (their tantrum or what not). Sometimes to vent off my own steam, I go into the bathroom and scream into a pillow.

And oh yes, I still do that. It actually helps and makes me feel a lot better and helps me handle the situation with her a lot better. Plus kids have a way hard time explaining themselves than we do. We can call our friends or write in our journals or vent on girl-mom and they obviously, don't have that. It's super duper hard to keep that in mind. And yah, like what kaya said ... they go through a lot during those times. Even with my kid now, like all the changes just the two of us have endured the past year has been intense.

We were at my dad's over the holidays and she got upset because she hates when I use certain lotions (don't ask) and started crying about it. So I brought her into the room, asking her to calm down, take a deep breathe - but she wouldn't. So I left the room, she cried for a bit then came out & was happy for the rest of the day. It seemed she just needed to vent out some frustration (don't we all?) and was cool to everyone the rest of the day.

Yes, good luck.

jaydens big thing is candy. i gove him lollipops once and a while but he whines all the time for candy. I have such a hard time dealing w it especially out in public. I have a short temper with j and i dont know why because i nanny and I can handle any other tantrum from any other kids but not j.

now that he has his own room in our new house i will put him in there with his blankie and shut the door untill i calm down to talk to him.I cant talk while im mad cause j screams over me and i cant talk and i start to yell at him. i wish i had more patience