Tantrums

My kids have thrown tantrums. Some children were better at it than others. My oldest rarely did and my son only a couple times. My fourth child does periodically but not in public. My third child threw tantrums several times a week. Usually it was inside our own home but a couple times was in public. One time was so bad in Target that I didn't take her back shopping with me for six months. I rearranged my schedule to avoid it happening again. I was so traumatized, lol. I got such AWFUL stares from most everybody in the store...they looked at me like I must've done something to her to make her tantrum so badly. There were a few sympathetic stares and one man nicely offered to help me get something off the shelf that I couldn't manage with a screaming toddler at the same time. The sympathetic people were most likely parents. She tantrumed through the store, through checkout and all the way out to the car. She tantrumed so badly trying to get her in her car seat I stuck her in the car, shut the door, and stood outside the car watching her tantrum while I tried not to cry myself. I was SURE security was watching me on their security cameras or something, lol. It was awful.

When I see kids having tantrums in stores, I don't give nasty stares. I've been there. I don't leave my home with the intention of having my child throw a tantrum in public to irritate other people. Actually, if the people throwing irritating stares had known it was due to her frustrations at not being able to hear or communicate well at that point as a result, maybe they would've been a bit more sympathetic. Maybe not. Some people think children should be seen and not heard. What bothers me more are kids that run all over the place and get in the way of the carts (and won't move!) or roller skate down the aisles with no consideration for anybody else around them.

Anyway, I came across this post about how to handle a child's tantrum today. It started off sounding interesting at first. I thought it was going to go into a parent having a tantrum to show how silly they looked. However, then it went to having your children do something that caused them pain, actually encouraging them to do it as a lesson with pain, the article lost me. We made it through the tantrum years with three out of four so far; one left to go. I think I can make it through our last child without having them hurt themselves to teach themselves a lesson.

Before anybody gets the wrong idea, I do expect appropriate behavior from my kids. In fact, we've been called "too strict" by my husband's ex because we have expectations for our kids (and stepkids) and consequences. Obviously, I really care what she thinks considering what I think of her parenting. *eye roll* We've been complimented many times on how well-behaved our children are while out in public. However, I think there is a bit of a learning curve for toddlers. The "terrible twos" didn't get that name for no reason!