Knocked Up : tantrums

Ten Ineffective Tantrum Strategies

knockedup — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 14:59:00 GMT

Axel, at two, has discovered the awesome power of the Tantrum. He explodes in a Hulk-like transition, going from a cheerful kid to a red-faced demon. I have discovered that, in the face of the Tantrum's ferocity, both reasoned and thoughtful strategies and unreasonable spur-of-the-moment approaches are repelled by an invisible, spitting and crying forcefield. Here, in no particular order, are ten strategies that have failed, at least once and often multiple times, to stop the dreaded Tantrum in its path of destruction.

1. Raising one eyebrow and look at the tantrum thrower like he's a lunatic. It may be true that screaming at a piece of toast that your mother gave to you after you said, "Toast please," instead of chewing on the toast, is not rational, but the eyebrow trick only exacerbates the yelling. Saying something like, "Seriously? The toast is right in front of you." is equally ineffective. Unfortunately, this is the most natural tantrum response for me - I am usually so surprised by the tantrum trigger (mittens being too mitten-y, or the water cup that was perfect yesterday being intolerable) that what I'm thinking (What? Huh?) immediately shows up on my eyebrows.

2. Providing a choice, ie, "Would you like to walk or ride your trike?" You might assume that a two-year-old would choose one of the options offered, as the parenting books that suggest you offer your child appropriate choices would like you to think. You would be wrong. The two year old, at least the one who lives in my house, will choose an option not offered, ie, "Carry! Carry! Carry!" and do an angry fire ant-stomping jig whilst insisting on this non-offered option.

3. Offering help, when help has not been explicitly requested. Once a child turns two, offers of assistance are likely to be met with roaring and gnashing of teeth. Two year olds prefer wrestling matches with their truck-covered pajamas over being disentangled from their cotton straitjackets by a parents' hands.

4. Suggesting a nap, nutritious meal, or deep breath. These strategies may work if you can ease your child into them, but if they are suggested outright in our house, ie, "You might feel better if you eat some lunch," they will be met with kicks and shrieks.

5. Using a timer for "time in" or to designate when an activity will start, as in "We'll do whatever you want for the next ten minutes, until the timer beeps!" or "When the timer beeps, I'll play the Elmo game with you." Some books suggest the timer has magical powers in the world of people under four feet. Axel does not respect the timer's authority - unless the timer is telling him that cookies are done baking, in which case the timer is the bomb. But if the timer suggests that something fun is over, the timer is clearly mistaken.

6. Describing something, matter-of-factly, as a rule - "Oh, we have to wear our coats when it's cold outside. It's a rule." Just as Axel does not color between the lines (what toddler does?), he does not think that rules should be respected, even when I tell him that his favorite people follow those rules. Grandpa wears his shoes outside? Ha. Axel will believe that one when he sees it, and he would like to see it right now, even (especially) if it is 6:30 in the morning and Grandpa is in California.

7. Time outs, when given by me. When Axel chooses to put himself in time-out, it works. When I put him in time-out, it works for a few minutes at best. I usually feel better after the deep breaths I take while he's in his room, though, so I guess I'd call it a semi-effective strategy.

8. Reason. Explaining why something is OK does not work, because Axel lives in bizzaro world. He told me yesterday that having one snap on the bottom of the leg of his overalls unfastened was not OK, in those words; when he dropped a bowl on the floor and it broke, and I told him it wasn't OK to get down because he'd cut his feet, he laughed. Cuts on feet - OK. One snap unfastened - not OK. What I think of as reasonable is not reasonable, and, thus, my explanations suck. Maybe I should try reverse explanations, like telling Axel that we have to take baths because if we don't we'll get beamed to the moon and have to live on cottage cheese and fruitcake.

9. Ignoring the tantrum. Turn and walk out of the room, and a wailing toddler will often follow you. Sometimes this one works, but it has something to do with the phases of the moon and the reproductive cycle of the groundhog, neither of which I understand, so I can't predict when it will and won't work.

10. Trying to distract the tantrum thrower. Present a cool truck, and you've just given the toddler a new projectile. Try to sing a song, and you will find that your voice, the same voice that once soothed the child to sleep with endless rounds of You Are My Sunshine, is now the worst sound in the world.

Tantrums are unpredictable and capricious. Some days, we escape without a significant meltdown. Other days, Axel has a breakdown because he wants to be at the park, then he wants to get to the park but not in his stroller, then when he's at the park he wants to be in the swing but not in the swing that he is sitting in at that moment and hell no he does not want to be pushed in the swing in the manner in which he is being pushed, then he loses it because he wants to go home and, of course, when he's on his way home, he cries that he must return to the park, but not before shaking hands with that working tractor down the street and having anything other than what is offered for his snack.

Against the Tantrum, I am like a rhythmic gymnast trying to kill a 500-lb fire-breathing dragon with my twirling ribbons and hula-hoops. Luckily, it follows a better to burn out than to fade away sort of a strategy, and, just as quickly as it comes, the Tantrum retreats, leaving a happy moppet in its place.

Eighteen

knockedup — Mon, 04 May 2009 17:07:00 GMT

This morning, Axel had his eighteen month check up. He's one and a half and a handful of days; he's closer to two than he is to one. He's no longer a baby. And, since he's no longer a baby, he's doing independent, grown up things, like engaging in a shirt-a-mano wrestling match, slithering his arm out of a sleeve and stretching his shirt over his head with such force that he topples backwards.

Sometimes, the shirt wins - or the shoes, or the pants. Sometimes, Axel is victorious. It's unpredictable, this clothes wrestling, but always good for a laugh. I know I will soon regret laughing when Axel takes off his shirt - probably when he starts getting naked in the middle of a busy playground - but the sight of a pint-sized He Man ferociously struggling against a machine washable cotton blend caught around his flushed face is hilarious.

So, how did the clothes wrestler measure up at the doctor's office?

Twenty pounds! Well, if I round up a handful of ounces....

Yes, he's still small. Food, like clothing, is sometimes Axel's friend and othertimes his bitter enemy. It's hard to pack on the pounds when you won't even take a bite of apple pie and ice cream. His love of sweet raisins is isolated; the child has not inherited his mother or grandfather's unquenchable sweet tooth.

Just over thirty inches!

He's almost half as tall as I am. Give him a few years, and he'll be throwing me over his shoulder with as much ease as he now pushes cardboard boxes across the floor.

A 19 1/4 inch head!

That would be why his shirts get stuck when he tries to yank them over his huge cranium. His weight is still under the fifth percentile; his head circumference is in the 75th. I continue to marvel at his neck's ability to hold that big noggin up.

Two dimples!

The dimples, along with indiscriminate waving and shouting of "Hi" and "Bye" to his neighbors, fellow toddlers, and tractor friends, are getting Axel far in his quest to become the youngest mayor of Denver. All that greeting has future politician - or maybe future busker - written all over it. He has also figured out that, as Scarlett O'Hara said, you catch more flies with honey. So, he grins, puts one hand behind his back, and uses the other hand to attempt to pry off the outlet covers. Or he smiles and says, "Yesss?" in his sweetest voice, grabbing hold of my hand and leading me to the back door when he wants to play outside instead of eat lunch or take a nap. Of course, when his desires are not met, it leads to inevitable rage and yelling. He is a toddler, not a smooth-talking Pinto salesman, and has not yet figured out that more than a wink and a smile is often necessary to get your way.

Add an amazing, fear-inspiring desire to throw himself off of furniture and playstructures, to dare squirrels to give him rabies, and to challenge trucks to a hand-to-tire combat, and that's Axel, at eighteen months.

The Wee Raisin King

knockedup — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 14:06:00 GMT

Raisins are generally good. They're sweet, chewy, handy to throw in a bag. I can see why people like them; I've been known to eat them myself. I do not, however, understand Axel's obsession with the raisin. He'd pick raisins over ice cream any day. If there were a raisin fan club, he'd run for president. If someone offered to fill a baby pool full of raisins, providing a sun-soaked opportunity to roll in dried fruit and gorge himself on their chewy goodness, he'd dive right in. He'd like nothing better than to be king of the land of raisins, sporting a cardboard crown adorned with sundried grapes.

The most accurate comparison to his love of raisins is a slightly unstable celebrity stalker's feelings about his target. Raisins are perfection. They deserve all of the awards that dried fruit makers association can give out; they sure should've beat the sundried plum for snack of the year. He'd have all the California Raisins action figures, still pristine in the box. He would also woo the raisins' publicist, in an attempt to get closer to the raisins, and threaten the raisins' security team for keeping him at a distance from the object of his adoration. Then, eventually, the raisins would do something to shake his love for them - spend too much time with a pack of walnuts, or shrivel and dry up - and he'd turn all of his pent-up anger toward the raisins, tossing them to the ground and stomping on them.

So, he has a love/hate relationship with raisins. Usually, he loves them, marching around the kitchen, pointing at the cupboard and demanding 'sins (his word for raisins). But sometimes, right after he demands the raisins, he screams at them - and anything else he may have been offered for a snack - and has a perplexing tantrum that seems to be triggered by the existence of raisins, or by the way I have delivered the raisins to him, or perhaps the refusal of raisins to do a little dance to "I Heard It Through the Grapevine." It makes no sense.

This is what it means to be a toddler. You love raisins. You hate raisins. You love raisins but you hate that you can't have a neverending supply of raisins and thus every bite of raisin is tainted by the knowledge that it may be your last. And so you yell. About dried fruit.

As you might guess, Axel's been exercising his free will a lot lately. He is free to demand more raisins. I am free to refuse to give them to him. He is free to scream and writhe on the kitchen floor. I am glad he's got a healthy set of lungs and he's expressing his independence I just wish that his desires matched up with my desires more often.

While monitoring the swine flu news, I've been reminding myself how lucky we all are to be healthy. I have found myself mumbling under my breath, "I am thankful I have a healthy child," after the tenth demand for, yes, more dried fruit. It's true. I am thankful for my health and the healthy of my son.

I am not, however, thankful for raisins. Raisins, and whatever addictive to toddlers chemical they've got in them, I could do without. Tantrums, also.

The raisin king disagrees.

Cry, Cry Baby

knockedup — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 01:51:00 GMT

Axel and I are both very emotional. He's one, so many, many things he encounters daily are mildly traumatic. I'm pregnant, so I tear up during bad movies and any baby-oriented commercial.

Last night, I stopped on a classic movie called Stick It. I don't mean classic in the Casablanca/It's a Wonderful Life sense. It's classic in the tween girl/slumber party sense. If I were a thirteen-year-old gymnast, I'd probably keep this movie in heavy rotation, along with all the High School Musicals, that traveling pants movie, Grease, and Pump Up the Volume. I caught the last fifteen minutes of Stick It, in which the main character has some sort of profound voice over about wishing that her parents were still married, things were perfect, etc., etc., ending with the thought that she wants someone to say that they're proud of her. And then, guess what her coach says? Yup. And guess who started crying?

Yup. It was very, very embarassing. Luckily, I was alone. Too bad, because I think the movie would've been better with a generous helping of chocolate covered Oreos followed by some serious rounds of Light as a Feather, Stiff as a Board.

And then, then, I saw this Pampers commercial, full of adorable sleeping babies with their perfect little bow-shaped mouths, snoring. It ends with a shot of the globe and the words Peace on Earth. Sob. If you're pregnant and you can watch that one without shedding a tear, you're a far stronger woman than me. Pampers, you owe me a case of Kleenex.

Axel, on the other hand, is brought to tears not by cheesy things from movies, but by janitors, naps (anything related to them, from needing one to taking one to waking up from one), high chairs, socks, getting himself stuck underneath furniture, and adults refusing to give him knives/glasses/pots of boiling water/pepper grinders/ovens/anything dangerous.

(Totally unrelated picture above taken in happier times while Axel shot down a slide. I can't bring myself to take pictures of him while he's sobbing.)

On Saturday morning, we were at a community event at a local high school. The friendly janitor, sporting overalls and striped elbow-length gloves, a set of jangling keys at his waist, joked with us. Then, he made one of those wide open eyes/open mouth excited faces at Axel. Axel screamed and sobbed in terror. Since sociable Axel's training to be Fun Director on a cruise and has taken to waving and saying "Hi" to everyone from strangers in the grocery store to holiday light-covered trees (inanimate objects need a little love, too), this was a little surprising. Each time the janitor walked by, his keys announced his presence, and Axel started to cry again. I'm not sure what it was about the janitor that made him cry - maybe he didn't like the smell of bleach, or thought it was a little ostentatious, the way the janitor flaunted those keys, since Axel never gets to nibble on mine.

Since I can't always seem to find a reason for my tears, set off by the Lifetime network or the sight of naseau-inducing tiramisu or nothing at all, I guess I shouldn't expect to make sense out of a one year old's crying. We're both sobbing up a storm, without much of a reason.

Cranky Pants

knockedup — Mon, 01 Dec 2008 02:53:00 GMT

Axel started wearing a new pair of trousers this Thanksgiving - a pair of bright red, shiny cranky pants. He's always been a generally cheerful kid, but when he's not, he lets you know immediately. He let us know a lot more often this past long weekend. The problem is that he knows exactly what he wants, but oftentimes what he wants is something he can't have - and he's no longer easily distracted by a spatula. Each day is full of ovens he can't touch and knives he can't grab and glassware he can't throw and mamas he can't bite. It's a cruel, cruel world for a little man bent on exploration/destruction.

Handling a willful one-year old screaming to be let down in the middle of Target so he can pull all the toxic cleaners off of the shelf is one of the many parenting situations that makes me feel like an amateur - like a tired, slightly desperate high school sprinter falling to the ground while trying to keep up with world record holders. It makes me wonder why I'm so foolish to attempt errand-running with Axel in tow. The other parents - especially the parents with a couple of kids - seem to be in a calm, controlled, expert zen master state. Their children are not screaming or writhing or eating bark or trying to throw themselves headfirst out of the grocery cart. Maybe they've got it together more than I do and are sharing tricks in some secret backroom, or maybe they're just having a better day than me and Axel, or maybe they've figured out a sophisticated system of bribery.

Patience is a prized, elusive virtue in our house. Axel wants what he wants when he wants it. He also not advanced enought to understand when we reason with him - or to be formally disciplined - and he's too smart to be distracted by my lame techniques, like tossing Puffins at him every chance I get or handing over junk mail. Patience is what I most want to cultivate in my adorable, passionate, dramatic, very very very loud little boy. Just a few minutes so I can finish eating a meal. Just thirty seconds so I can finish putting on Axel's diaper. Just a few relaxed moments when Axel maybe realizes that not getting to grab hold of a butcher knife is not, in fact, the worst thing in the world.

And so, once again, I'm turning to you for help. Maybe I'm delusional, thinking that I can encourage patience in someone under the age of three. But if I'm not, and if you have any ideas on how to delay or soothe the savage baby beast, I'd love to hear them...

Baby Rage

knockedup — Sun, 09 Nov 2008 22:05:00 GMT

Axel still gets mad when he's tired, and even more mad when someone tries to help him address the problem of exhaustion by encouraging him to sleep. He screams and cries and then, a few minutes later, a switch gets flipped and he's suddenly silent and asleep. There's no winding down - it's yell yell yell yell yell yell yell zzzzzzzz.

The other night, Sean was reading the great classic The Grouchy Ladybug to Axel. Axel likes to speed-read, so there's just enough time to repeat, "Wanna fight?" or identify the sparrow on the page before moving on to the next page. Once the ladybugs were happily eating aphids together, Sean offered Axel a bottle. Axel drank a little and sweetly, angellically, nuzzled into his father's chest. Then he decided he wanted a little more milk and did his adorable open bird-mouth request for a nipple. Sean offered him the bottle.

Axel (perhaps in homage to the grouchy ladybug) screamed at the bottle and pushed it away as violently as you can push something when you weigh less than a case of beer. This is the normal reaction to something that you've asked for - screaming and pushing. I like to do that after I order in restaurants - "Salmon? You think I ordered the salmon? Well you can take that perfectly cooked salmon and stuff it! And don't even think of offering me that molten chocolate cake for dessert!"

So, Sean put Axel down in his crib for a few minutes, because Axel had made it very clear that he didn't want anything that his parents could provide. Axel wailed. After a few minutes, Axel hadn't fallen asleep, so Sean went back in and found that Axel had, in his rage, taken off his pants. There he was, sitting up in his crib on top of his grandma-made sock monkey quilt, pantsless. After reporting to me that our son got so angry he took off his drawers, and trying to stifle his laughter, Sean went in and re-dressed Axel, offered him a little more milk, and Axel went off to dreamland.

In addition to angry pants and sock removal (maybe because his legs and feet get hot when he's mad? or because his pants are a symbol of the man holding him down and requiring that he wear clothes? Perhaps it's early rebellion against the dress code he'll encounter in middle school?), Axel has two other ways of showing his anger: an angry dinosaur shriek triggered when he can't have something sharp and pointy and likely to strangle him, and exertion farts. When he's particularly mad, he flings back his body, screams, and lets out some loud gas. This makes it hard to take his anger seriously. He's so mad that he toots. I know I shouldn't laugh, but it's hard to keep a straight face at a pantsless, farting kid who lets out high-pitched velociraptor sounds audible to dogs a few states over, all because I won't let him wrap a jump rope around his neck.

(Picture taken just before a scream at the horror of having to go out to breakfast.)

So, how about you? What funny things do your children do when angry?