2.5 yr olds unusual tantrums

[ethanete]

My younger kid is 2 yrs and 10 months old. She has been a very shy kid, takes a lot of time to become comfortable around strangers, gets scared easily for silly things. Till she was 2.5 yrs old, she was a very easy going kid. She would play with her toys for hours, she would indicate she is hungry, not much tantrums.

Things changed in last 2 months. I don't know what changed her. Nothing major changed in her surroundings.

She now has extreme anger management issues now. She wants to make every decision for herself - be it what clothes to wear, what food to eat, what shoes to wear, which car door she will use to get down, the way she wants to get down, TV channel, everything. She gets easily angry over small things and throws the loudest tantrums. Her tantrums are very high and intense. While she is throwing a tantrum, she screams loudly for 30-40 mins non-stop, she wants to break things near her, she wants to do exactly opposite of what we tell her, she wants to hurt things near her. It is hard to bring her back to normal.

When she is deep asleep at night, she wakes up screaming loudly sometimes saying "NO...no ...no...no" , sometimes "give me my jacket, gimme my jacket, gimme my jacket.." , sometimes something else. She screams for almost an hour before she cools down. She sleeps in the same room as me but in her toddler bed. I have tried all possible things to get her back to normal like asking her what she wants and trying to give whatever she wants, or trying to wake her up from her sleep and tell her the dream is over, or just letting her tantrum go but that doesn't seem to go, or telling her you won't get what you want if you don't ask nicely. She wakes up but she can't cool herself down. When she screams she has a heavy voice probably because of intense screaming.The continuous middle night screaming for an hour is not good for anyone in my family especially my 2.5yr old.

My older kid was never ever like this. This behavioral tantrum is new to us and we are finding it hard to deal with it. What should we do? Is this just a phase? Are there just another terrible 2 tantrums?

 

[allmytrustinjesus]

@ethanete https://centerforparentingeducation...d-development/child-development-by-age/#two.5

It’s very normal.

 

[chumleypm]

@ethanete This is what happened to my kid as well. Now she is 3.5 and it is getting better. Here is what helped.

Try to distract if you know the trigger is unavoidable. Praise any little bit of good behaviour even during the tantrum (e.g I see that you're really mad! But you didn't kick mommy today! Thank you, great job!). Discuss things you can do when you're really mad and role play (e.g punch a pillow instead of mommy, blow some imaginary bubbles/ balloons, count to 3 and take a deep breath etc). Generally i feel if it doesn't harm anyone (e.g lying on the floor and screaming, I'll allow it and it will be low on my priority list). People tend to say never give in, but if your child screams for 30-40 mins (just like mine), I don't think the "leave her be" method will work. She will injure her vocal cords that way. At that age, when self control is poor I think they start forgetting why they were tantruming in the first place. I recommend leaving her for maybe 5-10 mins, then pick her up and soothe her because anything beyond that point, she can't self soothe anymore (and continuously scream for 30-40 mins). So definitely don't give in to the original reason for tantrum or don't bribe with any other food or toys. Just hold her to calm her down and hug her or distract her "oh I think I just saw a yellow bird! Let's look for it! Let's try to count the birds we see!" and basically chat to yourself and she'll soon calm down and get interested.

It is going to be hard and you need to be able to stay calm and remind yourself she is not doing this on purpose. Ride it out and it will get better as she grows up.

I think the night tantrums might be related to the intense tantrums she has in the day. See if they improve as you try to help her reduce her tantrum intensity in the day.