I couldn’t express how complicated my feelings were when seeing her change. She used to be such a sweet, quiet, and well-behaved little girl, and she was always so happy. Just see what happened during these two weeks. My little cherub turned into a little monster! The tantrums of ‘the terrible 2’s” finally arrived, in a full-blown way.

But I understand it wasn’t her fault. She is not a bad child when she has her tantrums. She’s been through enough and besides, she didn’t do anything wrong. She is just acting her age. Because she lacks of control over her life, it is often the only way she can say ‘Enough! This is my life!’ She needs to express her feelings, needs and wishes. So it’s normal. What I need to do is to help her to express anger or frustration verbally or to release it in a more acceptable way. And according to research, ‘Tantrums are a behavior that’s virtually universal for some as early as the end of the first year, peaking for most sometime in the second year, and continuing in many children until beyond age four’; it’s ‘developmentally correct’. Bearing this concept in mind, I believe that we can head it off, and the most important thing I need is patience and time.

Once we came back, we started the battle. Another month has passed. Nicole’s tantrums have been gradually controlled and drawn back to normal. I won’t demonstrate in detail here how we cope with it. It’s a tedious process. There are so many guidelines and useful tips online for dealing with tantrums of toddlers. Once you need something, you just Google the keywords, and that’s all. Besides, keep in mind there is no patented parenting technique that magically makes tantrums disappear. But it is often possible to moderate or minimize them.

For me, I’d like to say, first, prevention is the best defense against tantrums. Regular meals, regular naps, regular routines for bed and bathing will reduce the risk of tantrums. Second, if it happens, the most important thing we parents need is patience. Keep calm and try to find out what factors cause her tantrums. Then get down to her level and speak softly to comfort her. Sometimes I help out and say, “You look like you’re cross about the word puzzles. Are you?” If she is going to extremes, try to divert her attention towards something particularly interesting, sometimes a special song, or a phone call to her daddy. Third, when she is obviously making annoying nonsense, I just ignore it. Making sure her surroundings are safe enough, I go about my own business and make it clear to her I’m not paying attention to her tantrums. It increases for a while. However, as she discovers that it’s just not worth getting all worked up when there’s no audience, she ends her tantrum soon.

I’d like to share with you my experience. What I learned from it is that we parents really need to respect our little toddlers. I believe every child is born to be the sweety of her parents. When we find that he/she is not behaving properly, the first thing we should do is to think about if there is anything wrong with our parenting skills but to not blame for it being her “fault.”

The original blog: http://blog.chinadaily.com.cn/blog-309597-20877.html