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I have a determined little girl on my hands who is too smart for her own good a lot of times. She throws tantrums a LOT, and a lot of times I can resolve them simply by figuring out what is wrong (normally it's a misunderstood phrase from her and I'm "doing the wrong thing"). However, there are often times that she throws a tantrum because I say something like "I KNOW you want to go for a walk, but Mummy said noooo. No walk right now. We will go for a walk after (take your pick of activity), but right now no walk." My version of toddlerese, because I can't bring myself to say "No no no no no, no walk, Mummy said no walk, but Rebecca wants to go for walk" LOL.
When there is no reasoning with her and recognizing her feelings doesn't stop the tantrum she gets sent to sit (or lie) on her bed until she is ready to come out and say sorry. She DOES understand that when she is disobedient/disrespectful she has to say (sign) sorry for what she did and give a hug to the person she offended. Sometimes she'll sit in her room for HOURS and scream, and sometimes it lasts two minutes or less. However, it took teaching her that when she is sent to her room she has to stay there before this worked as well... and before THAT we had to teach her that bed time means she stays in her room. It took a LOT of walking her back to that room to get it to click, and it REALLY required a lot of consistency.
Most recently I moved her back to her room for bedtime, and she quit telling me when she needed the toilet (so we had 3-4 accidents minimum in a day), and it was EXACTLY when I started putting her in her room again. We had to decide if we were going to give in and let her come back to sleeping in our room the whole night, or if we were going to continue to force the issue. We decided it was more important to win that battle she had chosen to wage, because it was going to teach her that she could win if she held out long enough if we caved in to her silent demand...
Really, I think it just has to do with you sticking to your guns. We have the benefit that my daughter is like my personality twin, so when the stubbornness/strong will rears its' head, mine is there to fight back, so I do NOT cave easily at all, lol.
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