Your child reaching the terrible twos: Coping with wayward toddler behaviour
- By Team TDO
Does your baby behave like this (or worse)?
- Wailing all the time for no apparent reason.
- Terrible temper tantrums he had not shown before.
- Kicking up a fuss at the slightest provocation.
- Biting.
Well at 24 months your baby has just realized that he /she can move about a little bit and wants to explore the world around which starts on the nursery carpet and ends at the stack of toys at the corner of the room. Along with new-found mobility, there’s also a hint of an identity which has started to form, so all this kick-fussing is just its way of showing resentment at all the times it has been picked up and thrown in the air to delight curious neighbours. He probably even hates that baby talk that momma gives him every now and again. We admit, it does take a lot of patience to deal with your baby at this stage, but just hang in there - this is what you could do to deal with the situation and to have peace reign supreme once again in toy land.
Don’t vary meal times: Even if he is at his worst, flinging his food tray away hang in there. Let him bawl his head out and then resume feeding him like nothing happened. He is going to need his extra calories to get even madder so vary his diet with different types of delicious foods like
- Small slices of pineapple and strawberry
- Tiny bits of cheese
- Flavoured Porridge
- Yogurt
Most of his attention will be everywhere except his plate, so don’t throw a conniption fit, just yet (Wait till he hits his teens!). Try to win his attention back to your feeding hand and don’t shout at him as it will only make matters worse.
If his tantrums occur in the dead of the night then make sure he doesn’t sleep in the late evenings or he will be peppy through the night and bring the whole neighbourhood down.
Furthermore, you will have undoubtedly read a pattern in to his behaviour by now so if you feel he is most likely to manifest his bad behaviour then make sure you are not in a public place like a hotel or the talkies. A pacifier or a huge teddy bear might just help your baby calm down especially at those unusual moody times. So keep trying different things that might soothe him to sleep or at least stop crying.
Finally here’s what an expert feels about the terrible 2s:
“It's an old-fashioned idea and not supported by research,” says Alan Kazdin, Ph.D., director of the Parenting Centre at Yale University. The term was coined in the 1950s; perhaps because so much pressure was put on families to be detergent-commercial perfect that the moment a child grew out of compliant infancy, moms were freaked out.”
Do you feel terrible too?
