I am looking for information and anecdotes about children that are about 20 months old and their tendency to throw tantrums.
My nephew has started to become belligerent when it comes to throwing tantrums. For example, he gets a hold of something that we would not like him to hold, then refuse to give it back. Usually we would try to distract him with some other attractive object and sneak the former object while he is not looking. If we even try to gently wrest the object from his grasp, he starts crying really badly. Like really badly. It is a bit terrifying.
Part of me thinks that this behaviour is learnt. He must have noticed this strategy working for him in the past so he has begun to do it more.
On the other hand, children do be throwing tantrums. I also don’t want to baselessly entertain the notion of stricter parenting. As a cold, heartless individual I try to be skeptical of approaches like this to counterbalance my biases.
Thoughts and experiences?
He likes tubes a lot. Specifically tubes with stuff in it. Like moisturiser, toothpaste. He also likes opening them and eating whatever is inside which is where the problems come from. He also likes holding things much bigger than him. Like he would see me using a broom then demand for it then try to use it himself, imitating as he saw me use it. I don’t mind this since someone is usually supervising so that he doesn’t hurt himself. He also likes holding pens. He begins with drawing on the walls which is fine. But then he proceeds to jam them in power sockets and sort of wedge them in a lever action to break the nib. If that doesn’t work (sockets are blocked) he tries to rip the nib out with his teeth.
That sounds really fucking hard to deal with! Mine was thankfully never that suicidally experimental with objects. Does he have a busy board or something similar where he can play with these sorts of actions in a safe manner?
Does he eat any actual food from a squeeze tube? If so, I’m wondering if you could use that as a launchpad for incorporating some color and letter recognition into trying to correct this behavior. “Sorry, see this is the BLUE tube, so this is toothpaste, which means you can’t eat it. Do you remember where we keep the GREEN tubes? Can you get one of those instead?” sorta thing
also, idk why I didn’t notice this before:
that sounds like a meltdown - those objects are important to him for some reason
Idk what he’s getting out of having them, but there’s something there that deserves examination - does he have much autonomy? What kinds of choices and control does he get? Maybe this is a struggle to feel in control of something?
The world can be a very confusing and scary place for tiny humans, and if they don’t have bigger humans talking them through everything and helping them make choices and exercise sensible control, they will sometimes lash out. Even stuff like “Do you want to wear the purple shirt or the red shirt today?” or “Yes, I know it’s frustrating when water falls from the sky while you’re trying to play, but it’s just rain and it’ll stop eventually. Do you want to go inside and get dry, or do you want to have a minute to get your frustrations out? You know what, I’m having a rough day too, do you want to yell together?”
We bought a small activity board by Fisher Price. It isn’t as close to being as expansive and intricate but he doesn’t show interest in it anymore. There are other toys around–stacking blocks, bootleg lego, a toy balancing scale. But I think right now he is too young to be playing with these as is intended. He likes toppling the stacked blocks and likes pushing buttons on tou balancing scales which emit sound. But they don’t hold his attention for very long. I think that could be normal for his age though.
But there are things that can hold his attention for very long. He likes playing with water. He likes having control of a hose with running water then likes to put water on whatever he can find around. I bet he could do this for one whole hour but we only let him do this for 5-15 minutes tops. He also plays with a broom for fairly long. I think he just has his preference. I also think toys are just an accessory and the presence of a person to interact with him and guide his experience is more important. But it’s hard to tell what a tiny child should be doing with a given toy and harder to encourage them to do it. I’m fine with the uncertainty and hearing other people’s experiences helps in orienting the perspective a bit which I appreciate.
I’ve been contemplating giving him a tube of mayonnaise to see what he does with it. I feel like he is gonna wolf it down because mayonnaise and moisturiser are a little bit similar. I havn’t done this though because store bought mayonnaise is gross and I don’t wanna subject him to it. Maybe there is something else I can try.
This is worth trying when he is older I think. Right now he wouldn’t understand this.
Part of what worries me is that the child has a cousin that is two years older than him. The unfortunate thing that these cousins have in common is that both are being raised by upper middle class Hindu fascists. I cannot concretely explain what this entails but there are a lot of things that they do that are similar. My nephew’s caretakers used to talk about how the cousin is a difficult child to deal with because of her predisposition to throw tantrums. I raised the issue that my nephew could have similar behaviour and they said “that just won’t happen” without knowing or acknowledging whether that behaviour is normal or if not, what caused it to become a habit and how to avoid it. It’s already tragic that parents have no quality resources to help them unless you happen to have bought the right Product™ which is rarer than miracles. My nephew’s parents don’t know any other parents with children his age. It feels very weird.
It sounds like he would really enjoy a water table, which would let him play with water for hours without wasting hundreds of gallons.
this makes me very sad to read - it sounds like these kids have emotional and sensory needs that aren’t being met (or even acknowledged as needs), and when they display distress about this, it’s called a tantrum 😔