Things  have become inc­rea­singly cal­mer around our house lately.  Thank God.  The stress of this past month has been enough to nearly knock us out.

Let me back up.  We’ve been dea­ling with some pretty shoc­king 4 year old tan­trum beha­vior from our son.  It star­ted back in August, just a month after his fourth birth­day.  I imme­dia­tely began researching (thank God for Goo­gle!!) tan­trum beha­viors, anxiety, and just about anything I could find rela­ted to the sub­ject.  The results were mini­mal.  Not much seems to be writ­ten about this stage in life.

BC’s beha­vior and the root cause of why he was acting out con­su­med us.  It’s all we tal­ked about.  Not kno­wing why was about as hard as not kno­wing how to stop the actual beha­viors.  I star­ted reaching out to friends.  Asking if they dealt with simi­lar pro­blems when one of their chil­dren was four.

The resoun­ding answer?

Yes.

Most every mom I spoke to had or has a child going through this phase.  With this rea­li­za­tion, about 10 pounds lif­ted off my shoulders.

My son is not bro­ken.  He’s testing.

I can deal with tes­ting.  Bro­ken?  No.  Tes­ting, abso-freaking-lutely!

Once we rea­li­zed the root of BC’s tan­trum beha­vior was a strug­gle for power I was able to jump into action.

Tan­trums at our house hap­pe­ned gene­rally during three dif­fe­rent times.

1. School Drop-Off

During the drop off at school BC’s beha­vior went from sweet, loving, and out­going to horri­ble, thrashing tan­trum beha­vior.  We called ahead to the school, let them know of the new deve­lop­ments and crea­ted a plan with the teachers.  We’d bring BC to school (kic­king and screa­ming) and the teachers would peal him out of our arms.  We’d quickly say goodbye and leave.

And then I’d cry.

Each day we applied this tech­ni­que, it took a total of 10–15 minu­tes before he was calm and pla­ying with the other kids happily.

This las­ted for 4 class ses­sions.  At that point, BC deci­ded to attend school hap­pily.  Phew!!

2. Time Outs

One day BC deci­ded that he would not sit on a time out any lon­ger.  This is when all nego­tia­tions in our house came to an end.  He must obey.  We attemp­ted the Super­nanny tech­ni­que of put­ting the child back to time out without any eye con­tact, emo­tion, or communication.

This was hard.  I got mad.  I was tired.  So was my son.

But I did it.  The first time it took 57 minu­tes of con­ti­nuously put­ting him back on time-out. There a LOT of screa­ming, crying, kic­king etc. before he’d stay.  But he stayed.

This was by far the har­dest thing I’d ever done.  But I did it and it made each addi­tio­nal time-out we dealt with so much easier.

The next time-out took 17 minu­tes of ‘put backs’ before he stayed.

That was the last time he tes­ted so seve­rely during his time-outs.

3.  Bedtime/Nighttime

This was the har­dest tan­trum for us to break.  First we were very con­cer­ned because we knew that our son was effec­ted by my grandmother’s death this sum­mer.  Her fune­ral was the first time he saw me cry.  He knew my  grandma and mis­sed her terribly.  The night­time rou­tine became tor­tu­rous for us.  It began to take about an hour to put BC down, and there were still no gua­ran­tees that our tac­tics would work.  Half the nights ended in a full blown hour-long tan­trum as we attemp­ted to leave the room.  By the end of the fit, we were sit­ting with/ laying with/ hol­ding our son.

Totally inef­fec­tive.

This was our final fron­tier.  We had to move past the night­time tan­trum in order to be freed from this horri­ble weight that was effec­ting our entire family.

We finally deci­ded that enough was enough.  I let BC know that then next time he didn’t stay in bed at night­time he’d be put back to bed over and over again until he sta­yed.  In addi­tion, I would not talk to him.

At 12:30 a.m. a follo­wing day the tan­trum began.  In Super­nanny fashion, I said, “It’s bed­time dar­ling.”  and pla­ced him in bed.

The second time he got up, I firmly said, “It’s bedtime.”

The third through the 75th time he got out of bed, kic­king, screa­ming, etc. I simply pic­ked him up, put him on his mat­tress without a word or eye contact.

He was pissed.

But after 35 minu­tes, he stayed.

That epi­sode was well over a week ago and the last time we had a tan­trum in our house.

Help­ful Tip:

If I could sug­gest anything to you as you go through this phase it would be to com­ple­tely dis­con­nect, emo­tio­nally during these episodes.

If you don’t, you may hurt your child, inad­ver­tently, or make the tan­trum worse and last lon­ger by reacting.

Dis­con­nect and pre­pare for a long, drawn out fit.  Because when you decide to change your beha­vior, your child will push har­der to get what he wants.

Dis­con­nect.  Then recon­nect when the epi­sode is over.

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Thus conc­lu­des my first epi­sode of Lear­ning Through Expe­rience!  Stay tuned for the next epi­sode when I say, “This is NOT a democ­racy!”

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If you liked this post, you may also like my post on Night­time Potty Trai­ning.