I feel so bad even posting this, but someone mentioned how there’s only the “good” stuff on the blog, so I figured I should give a glimpse of things not going so smoothly. Since I took the Love & Logic parenting class (which I still need to blog about…!) things have been *so* much better, but we still have rough spots and occasional battles. Cleaning up toys, especially outside of our home, seems to be my toughest problem. Also, “fun” outings often lead to tantrums… he has trouble managing all the excitement and energy, and then the intensity of it all can lead to any letdown or disappointment turning into a meltdown, and he has trouble calming down and getting back to neutral zone. His passion and exuberance can go both ways :) And to be honest, if he was always a “perfect little soldier,” life would be way too boring.
At the Discovery Place Kids museum, there was a huge train table --- recipe for disaster. Pretty much ANY public train table is really just a bright, cheery, wooden catalyst for 2-4 year old meltdown mania. Remember my Books a Million traumatic experience almost a year ago?
So Jackson was doing ok at this train table, except that he, along with every other little one, wanted to have all the “cool” trains for himself. It’s a constant “no, you can’t take the toy from the other little boy until it’s your turn” or “please remember to share” or “please be patient and wait your turn.” I start to sound like Charlie’s Brown’s mom even to myself. RURRRHRRURRRH RUHHR RURRRHHHHHHH .
When it was time to share his coveted flatbed truck (a new obsession of late) with another equally possessive little guy, he hit tantrum mode, so we headed off to the bathroom for a time out. This is a 15 second sample of what a time out meltdown in public is like for us. Loop it for anywhere from 5-15 minutes.
He is starting to get better with self-soothing though, which is actually helpful for limiting the tantrums, so they don’t last as long these days. This is not something that comes natural to him, and I often have to help him remember techniques (deep-breathing “blowing out a candle”, sucking his fingers – ewww, wish he hadn’t laid on the floor beforehand --- counting, and his favorite…. hand in the pants – which I don’t remind him to do, but I also don’t ask him to stop if it’s for soothing purposes). I wish we had a better place than bathrooms for time outs though … yuck.
At any rate, the tantrums have really evolved over the past year, and I found myself really upset over it a few months back (enough so that it propelled me to taking the parenting class). I remember breaking down and just crying one day after our highly-anticipated trip to the Pumpkin Patch resulted in a hasty departure and no pumpkins because J couldn’t recover from a meltdown. Since then, things have calmed down tremendously, and we only have tantrums like above when he gets frustrated in exciting, stimulating settings. And he recovers much quicker today than before --- he is much better at self-soothing, and I am much better with managing a calm, empathetic response during the crisis-at-hand.
Dear (older) Jackson – please forgive me for putting a video of you having a tantrum on the intarweb. Even in tantrum, you’re actually kind of cute.
** Facebookers – there is a video in the original post
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