Toddler screaming

Only praying sister. Praying and drinking calming tea😭 there is nothing that helps and accepting the unfortunate truth that this is normal and extremely common makes it already much easier. Instead I think what we should do is learn how to react and treat this screaming. I try zooming out and seeing that with humor, like my naive poor little child is not developed enough to understand that not everything and always is possible but in a sense that's their problem and not mine, so I don't need to drive myself mad that they are screaming because I stopped them at eating their third chocolate. I did what is right for them and they need a meltdown on the floor? Okay. Must be difficult to learn the reality of NO or ENOUGH. But that's life my dear little friend🧘‍♀️

I even took my toddler to a self help group of other parents that all have "difficult behavior" toddlers because I thought my toddlers tantrums are more like an exorcism and not simply handling emotions. And I saw how the therapist acted with my son and I took that with me. When he started throwing himself on the floor and throwing stuff and screaming she offered him a hug, he screamed even louder. And she said: You need a few minutes to let it out? Do it. When you're ready, I am here.

I got an idea from a book and it really worked with mine, I grab a bit of paper or open something I can draw on on my phone and I draw a picture of a sad/angry face and say "this is you". The first time she took a minute, came and looked, I said "it's a sad face", I drew tears on the sad face and gave it hair, then when she smiled I drew a happy face. It really gets her attention, she comes and sits with me now when I say "OK let's do the faces" and asks me to make their hair different colours, give them a little tongue etc and describes how the faces feel. I happened to remember and try it for the first time when my husband was in the room and he asked if I'd hypnotised her 😂 I don't know that it will work in all situations or work forever if I use it too much but the times I've done it it's worked really well to distract her and I think helps her work through the emotions too?

Another idea from the book that I haven't tried yet because mine is a bit young, is to "give in imagination what you can't give in real life" e.g if they can't have a cookie you could try saying "you can't have a cookie, that makes you mad. Imagine if you could have all the cookies you wanted!! How many do you think you'd have? What flavours? Colours? Shall we draw them/add them to a shopping list for another day" etc

I have been telling my son to take a deep breath and calm down, then have a little talk about emotions (its ok to feel sad/angry/etc.) It works some of the time 😅 at least the deep breath distracts him a bit.

I guess having a newborn just a week ago my hormones are everywhere. I’ll try the suggestions and hopefully something works 🥴💕

My son has definitely been acting up more since his little sister arrived. He does it for attention, I think. Just try to react as neutral as possible when she does it, she likely is doing it because of your reactions and it puts the attention on her for a bit

@Melissa yes so has my daughter! I feel horrible because it feels like I’m constantly telling her off she’s so good with her baby sister tho it’s just the screaming! Maybe I’ll take her to an indoor play center or something too

Just let her scream. It's better then hitting you. She's using it as a technique to manage her frustrations. She's definitely on the right track to finding something that helps her regulate her emotions. She'll move on from the screaming at some point. Just tell her it's ok to scream if it helps her feel better. Sometimes I'll get on my knees so my son and I are at the same eye level and ill tell him I know you're frustrated and ask if he wants a hug. 9 out of ten times he says yes.

Also using the word "no" less helped as well. Instead of saying no or stop etc I would physically walk him away from whatever it was he wasn't supposed to be doing (jumping on the couch)and at the same time telling him "you CAN sit on the couch or you CAN lay on the couch) and move him into sitting or laying position and if it didn't work or I just didn't have the patience to do that multiple times in a row I would just lead him to his dry erase board and say " would you like to draw a picture for mommy"... Etc. the word no can quickly trigger tantrums in my opinion. I hope this helps.

@Jennifer Ramirez thank you I’ll give it a try!