Parenting Views

My views on education, mutilingual parenting and other parenting topics
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February 8, 2009

Conquering an Angry Child- Temper Tantrums

Dominique Parenting Views Temper tantrums

This is the 2nd post in the series in Conquering an Angry Child. Being the month of February(Love) I will be focusing on how we can use Love to shape the character and behaviour of our children

Is this how your child behaves when he doesn’t get what he wants? In an flash your happy -go-lucky toddler turns into a little devil screaming and crying with arms up and throwing himself backwards and onto the ground.

This happens quite often with Roy. He displays his disatisfaction and anger very easily. I guess that it will take him sometime to learn how to express himself differently.

Getting worked up and insisting there and then that he complies with you will never work. I have tried been stern at him and explaining that I disapproved of his action . It didn’t work!!

When your kid is throwing a tantrum the only thing in his mind would be to get his end result- his wish/demand realised. Anything and everything you do wouldn’t deter him.

If you try to restrain him and prevent himself from hurting himself when he send himself free falling like a bungee jumper you are putting yourself in the losing end of a physical battle.

It is amazing how forceful these little tykes can be when they start to act up. Even though Roy currently weigh 13kg it does take my full strength to properly restrain him to prevent him from unintentionally hurting himself.

There were many occassions whereby I got physically injured when dealing with Roy’s brute force. As he grows older and heavier putting him under such restrains is not a option. I do not want to risk suffering from a sprained wrist or bad back due to dealing with him.

Now when he acts up and wants to force himself onto the floor I would simple pick him up and genttly lower him to the ground. Roy would be kicking and scream while lying or rolling around while I would calming stand and watch him with wet wipes on hand to wipe him down after his ” expression session”.

I find that it works better as the most it only take 5 minutes as he knows that such outburst would lead nowhere and both of us are not physically hurt during each episode.

How do you deal with your kids outbursts?

February 4, 2009

Conquering an Angry Child-Mealtime battles

Dominique Parenting Views, Recommendations Anger, tantrums

Last month I was blogging about Encouraging your Reluctant Pre-schooler. This month I will be focusing on how I deal with temper tantrums. [ This post is adapted from my Newsletter short series which ran in 2008]

“I want Cheezels” Ryan keeps on repeating himself like a broken
record, be very persistent in his request.

Does this scenario sound very familiar to you? Getting your child
to eat his dinner can be a daily torture for the parent. It still is for me.

Ryan still takes an extremely long time to finish his food and if you leave it for him to self-feed it can take anywhere between 2-3 hrs.

Roy on the other hand eats faster when we feed him but he can’t sit still and will often give you the run around after 2 to 3 spoonsful of food.

No matter how stressed up and angry you may feel it is very important that
you keep your cool and not to give in to their tantrums.

Shouting and scolding your child will only give adverse results and
make you more desperate as you would not be able to diffuse the
built up tension between your child and you.

It may lead to unwarranted actions like physical punishment, or even threats which you may regret later on as both physical and emotional scars are inflicted on the child.

If you are getting very worked up by your child’s behaviour, step aside and take a breather to refocus yourself before you deal with your child.

Let me share with you how I dealt with his behaviour in this situation.

Understanding that Ryan is an intense and persistent spirited kid, I knew that he was frustrated that he did not get his way.

To diffuse the situation, I took him to the “time out” bench to chill for 5 minutes . With tears rolling down his cheeks and a pout on his lips he still adamantly demanded for Cheezels while plunking himself down
on the seat.

[ Time out wasn’t really working for him and really this detention ran in contradiction to my desired outcome which was to reduce the total time required for the boys to have their meals]

Taking the packet of Cheezels I held it in front of him.

“I know that you want to eat this and are very upset that you are not able to do so ” I said. ” We need to talk about your feelings.”

Ryan told me that he felt mad that he couldn’t get what he want. However he knew that it was dinner time and he needed to finish his meal before he could have the snack. We came to a compromise that evening as he went with the idea that he could take 1 piece of cheezels if he had 2-3 mouthfuls of dinner.

[ I know that it may sound like a bribe. Ryan is very difficult to feed and daily dinners take 1-2hrs. I would try anything to shorten
the time taken for dinner]

That night we finished dinner within 1hr with the table cleared and dishes washed We managed to have some spare time before his bedtime to read through one of his favourite storybooks together before Ryan headed to bed happily.

Now Ryan takes a shorter time to eat and I have changed the reward to having more TV /PC time after dinner.