Moms of 1+ year olds re: temper tantrums

I think Alex has entered the "terrible two's" about 9 months early. That girl is so freakin' stubborn! If I tell her "NO", or if I take something out of her hand (and that girl has the grip of death, let me tell you.. it takes about 2 minutes of wrestling!), she goes into a full, drawn-out, dramatic, princess-y temper tantrum. She starts crying hysterically, walks away from me, throws herself on the floor, WAILS and starts hitting the floor with her little fists.

Now, usually what I do is ignore her, but I have no idea what I'm doing and if that's how I should handle these little "episodes". Now, my question is, (a) does anyone else with a 1+ year old experience this, and (b) if so, how do you handle it?

Re: Moms of 1+ year olds re: temper tantrums

Oh my friend...... I feel your pain. Nate started this about 2 months ago. He does the same as Alex and recently added throwing anything he can get his hands on. I tend to ignore him for the most part (just watching out to make sure he doesn't hurt himself). I noticed that they've gotten shorter when I don't give him attention.

Re: Moms of 1+ year olds re: temper tantrums

Of course! Didn't you ever hear that the terrible two's start at 1?

Fortunately, Jake's tantrums aren't as melodramatic as it sounds like Alex's are (yet?) but he does have them. When I have to take something away from him I talk to him in a calm voice as I'm doing it ("Mommy needs to borrow that now"), and I say thank you when I get it away from him. Then when the tantrum starts I distract him with something else as quickly as possible.

It usually works pretty well. The tantrum usually lasts no longer than 5 seconds.

Sometimes he'll throw a tantrum on the changing table and distraction doesn't work on those. So I stop what I'm doing, I turn my face away from him so he realizes that I am not paying attention to him and wait for him to get it out. That seems to work too. Once he realizes that not only is he not getting attention, but his tantrum is delaying him from getting off the table sooner, he stops.

Hope this helps!

Re: Moms of 1+ year olds re: temper tantrums

Thanks ladies...