What do I do when my kid is being melodramatic?
Tell him about it. I used to say, "I'm hearing this much drama and this much genuine sadness [illustrating proportions with my hands]. Lose the drama and I'll be happy to help you with the sadness." I can't deal with fake tears. So I don't. I think it's valuable to tell kids that you're willing to listen to small frustrations expressed honestly. I think it's valuable for kids to know early on that manufactured drama is a bad idea. Occasionally I've misjudged the proportions, but the attempt has been good for protecting my own reserves.
My mother says my daughter is manipulating me with her tantrums.
I roll my eyes at your mother. You guys, think about the strategizing that goes into effective manipulation. A manipulator has to think to himself, "Okay, I want Outcome A but I can't seek that directly, so I'm going to engage in Behavior B in order to elicit Outcome A from Person C. Let us consider, for approximately three seconds, the odds that we will see that level of planning and judgment from a person whose planning and judgment skills routinely leave her saying, "Oops! First we put the pants on, and then we go outside." Let us ALL roll our eyes at your mother.
Maybe she's hearing overtly fake tears. You can address those. It's true that tantrums can be an attention-seeking behavior. I've written before about the importance of attention in a healthy parent-child relationship. You can address that too, if you need to. But please: the idea that you're being suckered into an unwise choice to extend patience and compassion to a child who is overwhelmed by her emotions, and you should stop doing it at once? I mean.
Somebody's been reading too much John Rosemond.
What about when he hits me?
Shut it right down. Do not tolerate it; do not ignore it. Create physical space between the two of you so he cannot hit you. Inhabit your authority and say very firmly (but still not unkindly), "That is not okay. You will not hit Mama." Accept that it's normal for kids to try it, and know that you are teaching your son something he needs to know for the rest of his life: no matter how mad he gets, he cannot hit a woman he loves. It's probably going to take some repetition. Keep at it. If you're dealing with frequent explosions, give some thought to containment strategies you can use when a tantrum strikes in public-- maybe taking along a soft carrier for the baby so you can strap the toddler securely in the stroller and move briskly to a less public location.
If violent destructive tantrums are a recurring issue, I encourage you to seek compassionate professional assistance. Ongoing issues with physical aggression suggest that maybe you're beyond stick-shift-in-San-Francisco territory. If you find yourself in a Yemeni city, where you don't speak the language and can't read the street signs, you're going to fare better with an interpreter.
How do I know when to negotiate and when to stand firm?
An often-repeated piece of bad tantrum advice is that you should never give in to a tantruming kid because it teaches her that tantrums get her what she wants. The thing that makes it bad advice is the "never" thing. If it's a tantrum over whether you should give her chocolate syrup for breakfast, then yes, absolutely: let it wash right over you while you prepare her a delicious scrambled egg with toast. Do not succumb to the chocolate syrup temptation.
But sometimes kids tantrum because we get it wrong. You promised that she could feed the leftover sandwich bits to the geese before you left the park, but you got distracted and forgot. When you pitched them in the garbage can, your daughter lost her mind. In this case, refusal to respond to her tantrum says not only "I'm going to keep doing my thing while you are sobbing great heartbroken sobs," but also, "And I get to break my promises with impunity and maybe even scold you about it afterward." Reverse course! Show your daughter that you are a trustworthy and responsive parent with occasional absent-minded moments! If the baggie with sandwich ends isn't too disgusting, fish it out and say you're sorry you forgot. It's normal to get upset when people break their promises. Her normal response doesn't void the promise.
It's not always that clear cut, of course. Often kids will freak out because they want something much less unreasonable than chocolate syrup for breakfast. Again, think about the long haul. It's important for kids to know that firm limits exist in this world. It's also important for kids to know that many things in this world are negotiable. It's okay to sit down next to your shrieking child and say gently, "You really wish you could wear the red sweatshirt today. I think we can do that." You don't have to worry that you'll be sentenced to years of tantrums if you say yes to a reasonable request expressed badly. After the tears are dried you can say, "Hey, next time you can use your big-kid voice to tell me what you want to wear. Let's practice." Have some fun practicing requests in a big-kid voice. Maybe it won't stick for the next time, but eventually you'll get there.
Kids don't tantrum because it's fun; they tantrum because they're figuring out how to do it better. And you can help them get there -- you really can.
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