Tantrums

by Christy
(Georgia)

My four year old son dislikes the word no and if it is said he just throws himself in the floor and throws himself around the house. Some days I feel as if I am compromising with my four year old and it's not something that I like to do.

So here lately, I have tried the whole ignore him and it will go away but then he comes to me and starts pushing or hitting and it seems to anger him more to know that I do not feed into his tantrum. He throws out the "I hate you" line and it kills me every time.

A friend of mine says to not take that to heart that all he is saying is he doesn't have any freedom? How true is this and is there a better way to handle the situation other than compromising or ignoring him?

Comments for Tantrums

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Hand-grenades
by: @snglparents

I'm going to share something with you that will make you laugh, but it's entirely true, and it makes everyone laugh when I tell this story.
When I divorced my kids mom, my youngest was still in diapers. Well about a year or so into the new household status, my daughter started throwing herself onto the ground mainly because she wasn't comfortable with a certain situation or wasn't get her way with her older sisters.

I have four daughters and I'd ask the older girls where and what is this? I'd never seen this before and it came out of the blue. They informed me she had been doing this at her moms for weeks and the mother was just ignoring it. I was completely baffled by this since none of her older sisters ever did this and it was perplexing to me. My observations were she more or less was feeling uncomfortable or insecure with something whether it was not getting her way with her sisters, not receiving enough attention at the tail end of four active young ladies, etc...

Being the comedian I can be, and after watching this fallout a few more times, I informed her sisters the next time she dropped to the floor, I was going to yell hand-grenade and we would all throw ourselves to the floor. You can imagine the confused and distraught look on her face when this occurred. A few more times of that and she stopped.

My feelings are these attempts provided her some reassurance and allowed her to feel at ease with our attention.

Now, I'm not recommending you do the same, but with your imagination perhaps you can achieve the same results.
Tantrums
by: Anonymous

Well I am the mom of four, and I have heard the "I hate you" phrase more times than I can count... My one son, as he was suppose to be doing the dishes, told me he hoped I died in a plane crash (I'm a flight attendant) because it was his turn to do the dishes.

What I recommend is that you stick to what you know is good for him.. and let him work out his feelings.. and no he does not hate you.. at four he does not even know what hate is. My feelings about my children hating me was this: they may hate me, but they will be well behaved, considerate, well-rounded contributing adults.. I can live with that! :)

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