Heinz - Tinytums

Tantrums

You need to lavish them with attention when they're being good.
Kirsty, 25, says tantrums can be controlled – to a point.

“My little girl can be a real drama queen. She’s very good at throwing a wobbler to try and get her own way. We were out at a busy, crowded shopping centre recently and I was trying to persuade her away from the kiddies play area. The place was absolutely packed full of people and that’s the worst time for it, when you’re out and about. She wasn’t going anywhere and when I told her she had to come she threw herself on the floor and started wailing and flinging her arms and legs about.

“To tell you the truth I usually find the melodramatics quite funny. But when you’re out and tired and it’s hot and busy, it’s not always so funny! I didn’t really have a choice but to pick her up and carry her still shouting at me out to a different place until she calmed down.

“It’s a simple formula to follow, but one that requires quite a lot of will power. Basically you need to lavish them with attention when they’re being good and absolutely ignore them when they’re having a tantrum. Never give in to their demands and never shout back. The calmer you remain and the more you ignore them the quicker they are to stop doing what they’re doing I find. I suppose because their tactics are just not working.

It really upset me because I don't want my daughter to bite another child
“Of course there’s some behaviour you just can’t ignore. For a while Emily went through a biting phase. It really upset me because I don’t want my daughter to bite another child at nursery or something, I’d really be ashamed. But I think she bites down on things when she gets frustrated, she’d bite down on her duvet and things like that. But one day she bit down on my husband. I shouldn’t laugh! We were out on a walk and she was going through one of those kissing gate things by the river. She was lagging behind quite a lot and my husband was trying to urge her on, but she was trying to go the other way. So he was kind of nudging her on with his legs and she was getting angry and she bent down and bit him on his...bits! I’ve never heard him tell her off like he told her off then!

“She didn’t really bite again for a while after that, but then, not so long ago she bit her brother about four times in the space of a fortnight. It’s really disturbing; she bit his head one day. We have a naughty step which they have to sit on by themselves as punishment, so she ended up on that quite a lot, but it didn’t seem to be a deterrent and I wanted her to know how serious I thought biting was. In the end we confiscated her favourite toy for a week and had a really serious chat about biting and getting frustrated. I persuaded her to start counting to ten instead of getting angry. Actually, now she just counts to ten and then gets angry, but the biting has been curbed it seems, touch wood.”