Hellobee Boards

No idea on books and this might be totally pointless because my LO is younger (21 mo)... but we have a lot of tantrums about her dad doing things with/for her. She's a mama's girl and she gets upset when her dad tries to take her away from me to do things with her (to give me a break lol). For us nothing has solved the problem but the severity has been drastically decreased by just basically ignoring it. We don't give in when she wants me to do something for her and they used to be majjooorrrr tantrums but now mostly she cries for like 20 seconds and is over it.

But 2.5 year old tantrums might be a whole other category we haven't experienced yet

We had a really bad spell from 2.5-3.....which coincided with a new baby in the house! But I agree with @hilsy85: as I always do when it comes to tantrums. Janet Lansbury has helped us SO MUCH. I listened to her book No Bad Kids and it was life changing for me. Her podcasts ("Unruffled") are awesome too. She recently did a podcast on parental preference that I think could be helpful to you! I haven't found her preachy. I find her pretty practical -- and I like listening to her versus reading her -- because I like hearing the tone she uses when she demonstrates how to speak to toddlers.

@Foodnerd81: ha yes he once tantrumed bc he ate half his banana and was upset bc he wanted to be big again...

@winniebee: I am always kind of holding my breath, like--this won't work this time, will it?! But then it usually does!

@winniebee: @hilsy85: I like JL too. Even her voice itself is so calm! I was listening to a podcast with ds in the room and he even seemed drawn to her voice!

Things went massively downhill for us right at 2.5, and we don't have another baby. So yes part of it could be the baby, but it's also the age. We haven't found anything that's really helped so I'm mostly here to follow

I think it's the age, we didn't have another child but my son still threw tantrums. I learned that my reactions were not helping the situations, so I work on controlling myself while my son works out his emotions. We talk about it after everyone's calmed down.

@JoJoGirl: Pretty much this! No big changes in his life, but 2.5 changed him and he's a tornado now. Anything will trigger a tantrum, from not getting a treat that he expects to wanting to jump up the stairs to the daycare a SPECIFIC way and if we do it wrong, meltdown, let's try again.

The other day we had to go up the daycare stairs 5 times. Give me all the wine.

@JoJoGirl: YES! I turn the light on to his room. MELTDOWN. I ask him " what???" and he replies "IIIIIIIIIIII WAAAAAAAANT TOOOOO TURNNNN ITTTTT OOOOON". So I have to turn it off and let him. LOL Like dude, just ask.

My DD is a few months younger and there's no baby, but we're dealing with the same thing. Poor DH can do nothing right, either I have to do it or she has to do it herself. Part of it actually is on DH, as he doesn't have enough patience to let her dawdle and do things at her own pace, so he tries to hurry her along, and cue screaming and tears. To be fair, sometimes we really do need to get going...but a lot of the time, a few more minutes won't make or break things. And we end up spending more time dealing with the tantrum than it would have taken her to do it herself. But sometimes she's just dead set against having DH help her and we haven't figured out how to address that appropriately. DH isn't really on the Janet Lansbury bandwagon so I don't know how much I can press him on that...but I'm reading this thread with interest! It's so hard.

What @HILSY85 said. And this is actually what I found Janet Lansbury most useful for. I generally find her podcast on the preachy side and her tone condescending--my husband regularly yells things at her from the other room when I am listening --but her constant reminders that tantrums are ok helps me to accept that. That is, toddlers have a lot of big emotions that they don't know how to deal with, and tantrums are part of them figuring it out.

@JoJoGirl: @.twist.: omg you guys! I just made a similar post and then found this one from a few days ago and I completely commiserate with what you guys said! It's crazy! How do you keep smiling through it and not lose your shit 20x a day???