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I haven't read the book but am curious also as a WOHM. For morning time, if she's playing around and not getting dressed, her consequence is we pick out her clothes and put them on for her. Similarly, if she's just throwing an absolute fit, we will just put her in the car in her carseat and then brush hair or put on shoes once she's calmed down and we are at daycare.

Following!!

I really like the book in terms of acknowledging my child is a human being (for lack of a better way to put it).

Examples:

1. Not just sneak attack wiping his face -- I did this all the time. He would scream, I thought it was the lesser of evils. The book said to ask before you do things and it has changed our dynamic. I'll say, "do you want me to wipe your face," and often he will reply, "no." I'll then say, "okay, I'm going to give you another minute in your chair. After that you can wipe your face or I'll do it for you." Usually he realizes that it's going to happen whether he likes it or not, and he is much more happy if he wipes his own face. Sometimes I do it for him. My husband actually commented last night that we haven't had a face wiping battle (on of our biggest with him) in a long time.

2. Letting him feel his feelings. I used to try distraction when he would cry. She makes the point that toddlers are still people and how would you feel if you were crying and your husband was like, "look something shiny!" So, I let him feel his feelings and I'll say things like, "you obviously have some big emotions, it's okay to be upset. Let's sit together until you can calm down."

I'm far from perfect, but those two things were life changing. We're new to the tantrum gig, but just treating him like I'm a CEO and not getting so emotional / taking it so personally, really makes a difference.

I just sent my husband this article last night that I think summarizes what we are doing:
http://www.janetlansbury.com/2012/11/tantrums-and-meltdowns-my-secret-for-staying-calm-when-my-kids-arent/

@T.H.O.U.: It really blew my mind (I'm aware I sound like an idiot). I would distract DS constantly. I never tried to identify why he was crying and thus, never learned what was actually triggering him. For instance, he would randomly (so we thought) start screaming after we fed him a few bites of yogurt every morning. We would end up distracting him with goldfish or something else and end up starting our day feeling so frazzled. We recently realized after just letting it play out and him using a combo of the words he knows and signs that he wanted to feed himself. Dude, knock yourself out! We bring him down in PJs now and he makes a mess, but he's SO happy and our mornings are so much nicer.

@Applesandbananas: I think I'm a very good employer -- in all seriousness, though, I actually think I'm more empathetic. I would take things really personally and would get really frazzled with tantrums. Once I realized that it was simply him expressing himself, I could really disassociate myself and think to myself how much it really sucks to be feeling all these feelings and not be able to articulate them. It also helped me realized that I needed to cut down on my explanations to him, etc.

I'd love to follow this thread!

I've read her books and check her blog/FB page regularly to stay in the zone. I've found that her methods work extremely well with LO, who is 2.5. I don't see results immediately, but when we stick with it, he definitely responds positively.

Now that we have #2 arriving any day, I'm really curious and eager to try elements of her RIE method from the newborn stage.

The biggest take away for me from her books was basically to temper my expectations. She talks about "expecting the unreasonable"--basically you should expect your toddler to disobey, and do the opposite of what you ask, because that's normal toddler behavior. And also, she helped us realize that 99% of the time, they are not tantruming about what you think they are--they are not actually freaking out because their cracker broke, but probably because they are overtired, hungry, feel out of control, angry about something unrelated, etc. It makes it easier to be sympathetic when I can say, "Ok, you're not really just this upset over a cracker. Maybe it's because we've been rushing around this morning and you haven't had a chance to decompress at all" or something like that.

Also, we used time outs a lot before reading her book, and have since stopped, and I have found that I no longer need time outs, and I actually think time outs were contributing to our issues.

@Rockies11: I think that's a really key point - working with your kids rather than battling against them makes life so much easier!