For the first time today, I experienced an all-out, kicking and screaming, everyone's staring at me like I'm crazy temper tantrum from my 19 month old. Eeek was it embarrassing and I wanted to crawl under a table and hide! Our munchkin fusses and throws occasional tantrums, but this was one of those "legitimate" tantrums where I normally stare at other people in the store and wonder what made the child go off the deep end. Now I'm officially that mom too!
Our daughter is inching toward the terrible twos, and with it comes the latest of her milestones, the "Mine, mine, mine" phase. Initially we thought it cute, but as the sassing begins, the little evil glares you get along with the "No Mine" comments, and the occasional testing us to see how we'll react when she hits, is making us reevaluate how to curb this behavior. While we understand most of it's just a phase, we're noticing that the key deterrent is acknowledging our disappointment and verbalizing that "Not sharing makes mommy very sad" or "We don't hit or push" and physically making a sad face works best for us. I never considered myself the type of mom that would use tactics like that, but our daughter is so intuitive that she'll feed off of our frustration, and use it to fuel more bad behavior. As such, the corny time-outs I used to joke about and considered lame parenting actually work for us! Nothing makes our little one more upset than disappointing us, but realizing that it's okay to make mistakes -- both child and parent -- enables fixing those mistakes and giving the child the steps to correct bad behavior much easier. Needless to say, I think she'll think twice about her actions today. And thank goodness nap time!
-OzzyMommy
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