I need temper tantrum help..

DS will be 21 months next week.

And the 'terrible twos' are starting.

He's not a huge talker. He gets frustrated and I know alot of this is communication issues but my problem is when I try to teach him in a situation (he whines for his juice cup. I hold it in front of him and say, "CUP?" he screams and kicks.. Is this a battle I should stay firm with?

I'm at a loss. We're up to several of these all out screaming fits a day. I can't ignore him if we're in a store..

How do you handle the full blown, breath holding, kicking, screaming, wild-child tantrums?? At home AND away from home?

Please. Help! Any and all advice accepted.

Re: I need temper tantrum help..

We luckily have not had to deal with a temper tantrum in the middle of a store yet. Kaydyn might start to get loud but we've been able to distract her so far from full on tantrums.

At home it depends on the situation. If she is freaking out because her water is in a regular sippy and not one of her Dora ones we just ignore her. As long as she is not being destructive by kicking, hitting or throwing things we leave her alone and let her calm down. If she is being destructive then we put her in timeout. Up until December we had the PNP set up in the living room and we would put her in there. Now she sits on a certain spot on the couch.

At my ILs house she does her timeouts on their steps. If she starts throwing a fit when we come to pick her up then she immediately gets scooped up and put in the car. The other day she decided to pick up a couple of picture frames in my ILs living room and she was mad because she couldn't go downstairs and she threw them on the floor. I immediately picked her up, told her to apologize to my ILs for throwing their pictures, and we walked out of the house. We reiterated on the way home that she should not throw things, that she needs to be nice to stuff...etc.

Re: I need temper tantrum help..

At home, the only thing that works is a time out. It's the only thing they HATE. Ignoring it does not work, they just keep going.

In the store is the WORST. This rarely happens to us, but the other day Erin had a big one. I'm talking screaming, thrashing, hitting... the whole store was staring at me. I had just started to shop and only picked up one thing, so I told her if she didn't stop we would go (she LOVES shopping so I thought this would work) but she was so cranky and mean that it didn't . I put the item back and left. This in a way was a punishment for her because she loves to go food shopping. If I had a full cart, I would have pulled over, got close to her face and sternly told her to stop, but honestly it wouldn't have worked, but I would have just got what else I needed and left. It's hard because people stare at you like some freak which makes it worse... have you never seen a screaming toddler before???

Re: I need temper tantrum help..

bumping for the evening crew.